Christmas morning was spent with my spirit animal, a hamster

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, I arranged mouse-like piles of muesli in the hope of tempting Minky the hamster out of hiding again. I was worried that her months in the wild had been tough on her. The fleeting glimpses I’d caught of my runaway hamster since she reappeared had left me concerned that she was half-starved and suffering from mange.

There seemed to be something poetic about it, Minky’s reappearance as the year drew to a close. She was my spirit animal – perhaps all our spirit animals – limping bedraggled and bewildered towards the end of the year we’d been so sure would be better than the one before. Which of us this year will be confidently toasting a fabulous 2022?

I didn’t see Minky on Christmas Eve, but when I came downstairs on Christmas morning I was as excited to find that those little piles of muesli were all gone, as a child who sees that the carrot they left out for Rudolph has been nibbled. At least Minky wouldn’t be hungry.

Feeling buoyed, I set out for a walk. Christmas Day is the one time of the year when Londoners act like Northerners and say “hello” to strangers. The first few people I met were not entirely strangers however, since we had been introduced at the neighbours’ coffee and mince pie morning held at the bottom of our street on the 23rd.

Ahead of that outdoor gathering, the street WhatsApp group had been a-flurry with requests for spare lateral flow tests. There were none to be had in the entire borough. Fortunately, Brenda had been stock-piling the tests since they first became available for free back in the spring. She arrived at the street party with two carrier bags full of the things and dispensed them with great largesse. The gesture seemed to go some way to repairing the breakdown in neighbourly relations that had been caused when Brenda installed an industrial-sized freezer in her front garden in response to news stories about a shortage of turkeys. Fortunately, everyone in attendance at the street gathering that morning had been able to procure what they needed for Christmas dinner. There was, however, much chatter about missing parcels and the local Amazon drivers’ tendency to confuse “safe place” with “on front step in full view of the street”.

Anyway, on Christmas morning I wished my new neighbour-acquaintances a “Merry Christmas” and made my way to Wandsworth Common, which was even more hazardous than usual with the footpaths full of children learning how to ride new bikes while their bleary-eyed parents tried to control new Christmas cockapoos. The febrile atmosphere that comes with hundreds of children who’ve had chocolate for breakfast suggested tears before lunchtime.

My neighbour Brenda and I had agreed that I would be at hers at midday for a pre-lunch drink. I took the ingredients for a negroni and the giant family pack of M&S mac and cheese that I would have eaten by myself, had she and I not decided to spend the day together. When I arrived, Brenda answered the door in a Christmas apron and handed me a Santa hat. She whispered, “We’re not alone. My sister’s here.”

Brenda’s sister had previously turned down an invitation to lunch on the expectation that she would be spending the day with the chiropodist from Tewkesbury she’d been romancing over Facebook. However on Christmas Eve, he’d sent her a message to let her know that he was stuck in a hospital in Istanbul and needed £10,000 for his immediate repatriation.

“I did a Google ‘reverse image’ search,” Brenda whispered. “This time the scammers were using photos of a retired vet from Norresundby. Don’t mention it to Gwenda.”

“Your sister’s called Gwenda?”

“Don’t start…”

I promised I would not mention Gwenda’s romantic misadventures, but in the event it was all she wanted to talk about. Three negronis in, we’d set the world to rights and promised to renounce men forevermore.

After lunch, we broke out the Baileys and watched And Just Like That...; Brenda, Gwenda and I agreeing that it could never be the same without Samantha and wondering if the scriptwriters had any idea what a bullet to the heart that comment about “sixty-something sexpots still being viable” in London would be to those of us who were nearing or past our NYC “best before date”.

“Samantha needs a show of her own,” Gwenda suggested. “They could call it ‘Sixty and Still Viable’. I got loads of action in my sixties.”

I liked Gwenda more and more.

I staggered back across the road to bed in the early hours of the morning, promising Brenda that I would give her “three rings” to let her know I’d made it, though she could just look out the window to confirm that.

I did make it to my house, though I didn’t make it to bed. Instead I lay down on the sofa, waking only when something ran across my face at 6am. Thank god it was Minky. Alas, I was still too merry to have any chance of catching her. I was glad to see her all the same.

So that was Christmas. It wasn’t what I had planned but the pandemic has shown us in no uncertain terms that making plans is very 2019. The new normal is about going with the flow and finding joy in what we can do rather than mourning what we can’t, right?

On Boxing Day morning, I headed back to Brenda’s to help her tidy up and divvy up the leftovers we’d been too sloshed to deal with the previous night. While I was there I got a text from Glenn.

“Come to Devon for new year,” he said.

Having heard all about our favourite ex-postie from Brenda, Gwenda clutched my arm and told me. “I hearby release you from the vow we made to eschew all men.”

“You’ve got to go,” Brenda seconded. “Make a dash before the bastards lock us down again.”

“OK,” I texted Glenn back. “What’s the plan?”