hathycol | o little town of bethlehem

When I was a small child and Dad was working an early on Christmas, we'd get up at 5.30am so that we could open our presents together early in the morning. This was possibly also to make sure that batteries existed, and so forth.

However, even on the mornings that Dad wasn't working, or indeed when we were older and hell even LAST YEAR my mum gets ridiculously over-excited and pops her head around the bedroom door, shouting "SANTA'S BEEN!" at about 8am. This wasn't funny when I was fifteen, and definitely wasn't funny when I was twenty-two.

So this year, I reckoned I had it all sewn up. I would spent Christmas morning by myself, having eggs for breakfast and get the lie-in I never had before. I was going to be CUNNING. This was the plan, before The Great Winter Lurgy took full effect.

Christmas Eve was going very badly. By the time darkness fell, I was uncontrollably shivering and feeling quite a lot like I was going to die. I went to bed with a hot water bottle and slept uneasily for a few hours. Now, possibly re-reading all the Harry Potter books over the last fortnight was a mistake, but as the fever really fit in the small hours I was fairly convinced that I was Harry Potter under some kind of jinx that meant I couldn't move. This illusion eventually lifted, which unfortunately led to spending Christmas morning throwing up over the toilet bowl. I mused out loud that this was earlier than I even used to get up as a child. The toilet did not respond, alas. I ended up putting on Classic FM for company. It was like a scene from a soap opera, me lying on the bathroom floor in a completely empty house and carols in the background.

A few hours later, sheer madness kept me perky until Mum came to pick me up. Went back to parent's house where I was promptly sent to bed ("DRINK MORE LIQUIDS!") and woke up again much later on to eat Christmas dinner. Didn't eat it all. Very, very distressing. I did get a slanket for Christmas, though, and I enjoyed the Doctor Who special.

I didn't sleep that night, though, and maybe I shouldn't have eaten any Christmas dinner at all, as I spent Boxing Day throwing up consistantly for about six hours. I was meant to be going home in the evening, and I had every intention of doing so, until I realised that doing home meant I had to put a bra on, which just felt like too big an energy expenditure.

Parents drugged me so I could sleep. "It's just cough mixture," Mum said. "Sort of. Look, just drink it."

I slept last night. Not perfectly, and not unbrokenly, but I slept. I've made it back home now, and need to do laundry/cleaning/etc, but for now I am just going to gingerly eat soup and watch the garden thaw out.

At least this won't be like the Christmas where I managed to put on five pounds in five days. Worth concentrating on the positives, I feel.