Christmas lights

One of our college janitors always appears to me to be what we Scots would call “dour”. This is pronounced to rhyme with “poor” - unless you have the sort of accent that would pronounce that as “pore”. Imagine a full-bodied Scottish “ooo” in the middle. D-oooo-rr. Anyway, it means a sort of mixture between gloomy and grumpy, and it may be significant that we Scots seem to need such a word.

This chap has a very nice wife who works in the college office so I suspect he’s secretly also nice. He may simply have discovered that it’s more convenient in our establishment to send out unhelpful vibes. If you have the reputation of being helpful, people ask you to do things. Which is time-consuming (she said with feeling).

The other evidence against this janitor’s actually being dour is this amazing Christmas display (above) that he puts up every year. I blogged about this last December as well, if you care to be redazzled. It’s maybe not hugely tasteful, but you can’t help admiring the effort he puts in. Ladders are involved. So is a lot of global warming, I’d think.

As a comparison, this display at the top belongs to one of our neighbours (not in our street, Anna, if you’re trying to place it. Turn left at the top of our street and go up the hill. The green house. But you possibly never went in that direction). Sorry about the rubbishness of the photo. I don’t think my camera’s up to night photography. But you can see that his effects are less random than those achieved by the janitor, who seems to disagree with the “less is more” philosophy. In his world, more is definitely more. The neighbour goes for artistry. I suspect that the janitor has a nip of whisky before starting.

And then we have our house, where, at the moment, less is – well, nothing much at all, apart from the cushion cover. I do also have a poinsettia in the front window but I don’t think we’re in danger of winning a prize for the most original display at this stage. This weekend – are you reading this, Mr Life? – I hope to persuade my dear husband to put lights on the little tree in the tub outside the front door. He’s a good soul but tends to point out that struggling with lights and prickly trees is not one of his favourite things. And then the following weekend we’ll do the indoor tree – which has to be persuaded into its water-filled holder, further persuaded not to fall sideways like a stricken warrior and then strung with lights. At this stage, Mr Life tends to retire from the fight, all his Christmas preparations over apart from the wrapping of presents, which we usually share on Christmas Eve, grey with exhaustion.

But let’s end on a positive note. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. And I’m going to start my Christmas shopping this weekend. I’ll be up town at 9am and home, all problems solved, by 11.

You think?

(By the way, why did no one admire the splendid job that Mr Life did rewickering the back of the chair? I was very impressed myself by this hidden talent. He reckoned that if he were doing it for a living he'd have to charge about £250 per chair to make it worth while, but maybe he'd get quicker with practice. He's not taking orders, though.)