by In my last post I said my cold was getting better but it was a false dawn. I’ve had a rough time the last eight days, with all the symptoms of bronchitis: wheezing and hacking up thick dayglo yellowish-green slime; lack of energy; a mild fever. I haven’t been in the mood to do much apart from read and play the occasional game of Scrabble online. I was very glad that I could let Christmas be a non-event. Today, after a welcome 8½ hours’ sleep last night, I might actually be on the mend.
My parents didn’t have the best of Christmases either. Dad had a bad headache on Christmas Day which they celebrated at their place in Moeraki. Not that celebrate is the right word. It was largely wrecked by my 45-year-old cousin, the elder sister of the cousin I stayed with in upstate New York in 2015. She doesn’t have kids but she’s done well both in her career and in the property market. And she’s a self-obsessed arsehole who blames her mother – a very intelligent, practical and down-to-earth woman who I have a lot of time for – for just about everything. Which she did at my parents’ place. My aunt was in tears, and I think my uncle (76, and the only one of Mum’s three older brothers who is still alive) was speechless.
From my Romanian book I learnt a new word (or rather I relearnt it after forgetting it): haz, meaning fun, joy, merriment. I said to Dad that none of us had an awful lot of haz over Christmas. Dad said, so we were the haz-nots. Very good.
