Christmas Day At Work With Caitlin Moran

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So I spent Christmas day morning and early afternoon at work. Don't feel sorry for me. I think I've made it clear in the past few months that as I've grown older I tend to greet Christmas with a grudging handshake more than a warm embrace. Still to any observer in the kitchen yesterday at four thirty am I must seemingly have looked a pitiful sight taking my croissant breakfast alone whilst listening listening to a recording of Book of the Week on Radio 4.

A quick digression. As I was listening to the Book of the Week, Love Of Country by Madeleine Bunting, an account of her journey around the Scottish islands, I made the decision that should I outlive my wife, I'd move to the Welsh Tuscany that is the Rhondda. For the moment Treorchy would be the specific target,though that might change. Funny how big decisions in your life can be made in unexpectedly quiet moments.

Working on Christmas Day morning does also have other advantages. You are not nagged at for not being involved in the Xmas dinner. Neither are you condemned for nodding off in the evening.

But anyway so to work. It's 6:00 am and I'm prepared. A bottle of mineral water,a pack of chewing gum and a book, How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran.

For the first hour there's hardly any work to do, so there was a lot of reading. By seven o'clock I've read eighty pages.By the end of the second hour there was more work so  the page count moved to 120.

So to hour three. Less work this time. At 8:45 I get a call from the wife. Daughter is still asleep and she finds herself bored in front of the TV. Daughter is fourteen. Proof that the allure of Christmas does lessen when you know it's secret. By the end of that hour the page count moves to 200.

Work then really hits in. By the end of hour four the page count moves to.....err 208. And that's where it stayed until it was time to leave.

And the point is this. How To Build A Girl is a great book. A pure pleasure to read. The sort of novel that you start to deliberately slow for fear of finishing it. Last year Alan Coren made me forget working in the holiday period and it seems Caitlin Moran is doing it for me this time around......and she's just as good.

So for being with me on Christmas Day morning at work thankyou Caitlin Moran.

Until the next time.