I REALLY don’t know why women pay an absolute fortune for plastic surgery. Not when when there is a foolproof way of losing 20, maybe even 30 years, without even so much as a whiff of general anaesthetic.
No, it’s not a new wonder cream made from turtle droppings, nor is it collagen or botox. Those of us in the know call it GHAC – Going Home At Christmas.
You may be a mum of three, a six-figure-salaried businesswoman, even a geezer bird more than capable of knocking back 14 tequila slammers a night. But you can guarantee, as soon as you set foot through the parental door, that you’ll revert to the toe-scuffing, chore-dodging teenager-with-attitude you once were.
You know this by the way your father looks repeatedly at his watch when you’re on the phone, and by the way your casual announcement that you may not make it in time for midnight mass this year is met by collective horror – as if you ate babies in your spare time. And especially by the way (according to some of my girlfriends who have ‘live-in’ boyfriends) you and your partner of many years are allocated rooms separated by a Gobi desert of hallway. Which does have some advantages – when else do you get to resurrect the thrill of forbidden sexual activity? (Mum if you’re reading this , this obviously doesn’t apply to me.)
I blame advertising. You don’t see Christmas images of sexy 30-ish young women, do you? No, the head of the table is always a heavy-hipped matriarch in an apron – who I can’t possibly be. Therefore I must be the giddy irresponsible part of the equation.
I’m a 39-year-old mother of three, with too many careers and a house to run (and no house-maid). I rarely sit down before 9.30pm. Yet from the moment I arrive home, while my mother works herself into a frenzy of cooking, wrapping and bed-making, I’m already calculating what tasks I can invent to save me from the Christmas Day washing up (because the dishwasher is always too full).
You could say it’s part of our generation’s much-publicised refusal to grow up. Or that the safest way of maintaining family stability is to keep everything as it’s always been. I mean, I’m sure my mother wouldn’t want her position as matriarch undermined by me muscling insensitively in on tasks such as potato peeling. I tell myself that even if I offered, she’d probably decline — not because she doesn’t want me to help, but because, deep down, we both feel I’m not quite competent enough.
Still, there is something undeniably delicious about being fussed over by your family, even if it involves being told not to come back from the pub any later than 10.30pm. We all need something safe to rebel against. And we are old enough to know that there is no such thing as a free Christmas lunch.
Besides, it’s no fun having to be the grown up. One friend confided horror at finding the Christmas tables turned one year when when her parents came to stay. After two or three days she began to bridle at her faith that the supper-fairy would always provide and at how, slumped in front of the TV, they’d ask hopefully ‘if anyone’s making a cup of tea’. It was as if, she says disbelievingly, they believed their presence was present enough.
I too have hosted Christmas of late. I had pictured myself as a slimmer Nigella Lawson type, smiling graciously as my children sang carols to grateful, sated relatives. Instead I found myself shaking with exhaustion by Christmas Eve, barking at my hysterical offspring while my father poked his head round the kitchen door to ask – yes – if anyone was going to make a pot of tea.
No, in an increasingly uncertain world, it’s comforting to know some things never change, that there are a few days when you can legitimately abdicate your responsibilities and squabble with your siblings. And hey – there’s nothing wrong with regressing to the teenager-from-hell, so long as it’s only for four days.
So yes, this year I’m going to spend Christmas with my parents. They don’t know it yet, but I’m sure they will be glad to have me and my three terrors. Christmas is a time for giving, after all.
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