..And not a child in the house was washed. Mostly because the only child I've got has with his usual impeccable timing decided that this was just a downright lovely week to stay at home with a silly temperature and get under Mummy's feet while she did her up-most to put on the pantomime that is Christmas!

Oh my but it was a such a darling weekend. We went to see Nativity which was quite the most festively tear-blinkingly lovely film I've ever seen (though Finley hid behind his hands throughout and thereafter declared it "terrifying"), then spent Saturday tra-la-la-ing around the kind of enormous big shopping mall that brings out the Christmas beast in the most unlikely of candidates. There was gnocchi and red wine in Carluccios, a journal that made me swoon procurred in Selfridges for brain-storming the details of my top-secret project for 2010, and a handful of gifts bought for stockings...

And then it was on to baby-sit a beautiful house. The kind of house I wanted to shove in my handbag and refuse to give back. The kind of well appointed house where lo and behold everything works, and one doesn't have to peel away the seal of the fridge to grab the milk or faff about with the mysteries of digital television in order to sit down and feel positively faint at the sight of Robbie Williams dueting with my beloved Olly (my cards are on the table there aren't they!). The kind of house where life is easy because money makes it that way and thoughts and idea's come-a-tumbling because it belongs to someone else and one need not worry about the memories lining the minamalist surfaces but can instead curl up on the couch and wait for gorgeous boyfriend to do something spectacular with haddock and gorgonzola.

The next day after breakfast-a-deux we went hunting for a Christmas tree, though the very thought of dragging a tree into the house before the ritual that is Tree-Decorating Day on the 17th was giving me palpitations and I could barely explain such vaguely ludicrous trauma to Richard who set about his mission with all the enthusiasm of a festive elf. And so it was that we stood dithering in quite the coldest "room" full of trees, debating the merits of a most peculiar blue tree and finally settling upon an eight foot tree with a long trunk and  well balanced branches just perfect for the eclectic, rather bonkers collection of decorations I intend to throw at it in the next few days, and which could I suspect bring about the early death of what has been a beautiful friendship with a man whose heart hurts in the midst of all my "junk".

And then we went to collect my little boy who had spent the afternoon following a reindeer driven sleigh carrying Santa and had developed a temperature in the early forties for his trouble. A little boy who spent the next two days slipping deliriously in and out of sleep, chattering to himself and resisting all attempts to make him comfortable, then sprang out of bed this morning, dragged on his party tie and declared himself well enough to attend the Christmas Shebang in school!

So here I am: a week before Christmas with a naked tree gracing my dining room and a list as long as my arm of jobs that need doing. And am I doing them? Well...the short answer is no. I figure Christmas will still be on it's way tomorrow and this afternoon it would be ok to make the house twinkly for a little boy liable to be exhausted after a day partying. I think it would be perfectly fine to re-read a lovely little post about Brocantehome that made me cry (I love the idea of being someone's blog-crush!), indulge my new piccallili fetish and scribble in my new journal.

Christmas will still be on it's way tomorrow...