Christmas

Christmas and New Year are over. I usually say thank god, Scroogishly, but actually this one wasn't so bad. We spent Christmas with our daughter, son-in-law and his parents. This was a bit of an experiment in in-law bonding. It went surprisingly well, despite big differences, particularly in political views - some of us being Thatcher and Royalty admirers and others being old socialists and republicans. The main thing was that there was a lot of warmth, kindness, booze and food. Tristan and me cooked a goose together, which turned out very well. The weather performed very well too. We also were able to sit outside on Christmas Eve on the terrace in the sun, and then we had snow on Boxing Day.There was definitely less panic and mad shopping here than in the UK. People only have the Christmas day as holiday and we didn't see any TV adverts. On the other hand there was still very annoying Christmas musak in the local supermarket. All in English, or perhaps I should say American. I'm dreaming of a . . . and Jingle Bells. Horrible.We also had a bit of local socialising over the holiday - we took a little gift to our nearest French neighbours, plus drinks with a German couple who live close by and who have been so helpful to us. They invited us to a mulled wine evening, which was our first really French evening out, although only two of the eight people there were French - two were Spanish, two German and two English - us! I will write a whole blog on this evening so more later.Now him and me are settling into weeks of winter here, mainly alone and quite lonely, of which a lot more lately. For the moment, though, I'm still working out this blog business.What is difficult about writing a blog is that, as it's so public, so hard to explore in any honest way some of the things that are really important to us. Relationships for instance. Our family and friends, the difficulties of keeping in touch from so far away, the fears of being forgotten, of becoming distant, the pleasures and challenges of seeing visitors in a different context.How do you avoid being so careful that the writing becomes bland and boring?How do you write honestly without breaching your own or other people's privacy?I'd appreciate your views if there's anybody out there.