Where Did Christmas Go...(Allegra goes all sentimental and wise)

It gets worse every year, indeed it flies by quicker every year. Christmas 2004 is done and dusted and to me it didn't even feel like it got started. It just seemed like an exhausting build-up, a flurry of activity and now this, that horrible flat feeling, when all you have is a bag full of gifts gathering dust, and the family's left before you got a chance to chat. Sorry if I sound self-pitying and depressing, that's just how it felt to me, it never really took off. This year was severely lacking in that magical high you feel as a kid all December and Christmas, when it seems to go on for days, not just gone in a minute.

Living further away from family and friends, you truly value and realise how fundamental they are to your life, and your structure. I used to take for granted the network of people who used to be 10 minutes away from me, indeed they often used to annoy me. But spending the weekend with them this Christmas, I finally apprieciated their worth. We're all now spread over the South East, and our meetings have to be logistically organised-phone calls, and scheduling and such. I miss them more than I ever thought I would. It's so sad that despite all our lives taking off for the better, and with age, money, opportunity and the like, that we have to compromise our together-ness, and see each other a lot less.

I'm in a bad mood, yet another thing I didn't really live to the full. And to make matters worse, I can't get a train ticket so I can travel back to uni for my friend's New Year's Eve party. Not only have they put the prices up, but the services are really limited, meaning I'm unable to travel back on the 2nd in time for work, as no trains get into London before 4pm. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

***

However, as many Bloggers worldwide have commented in light of recent news events, all this complaining seems a little brattish when there's thousands of people dead and millions whose lives have been wiped away in ways other than death. People who had nothing to begin with have had that multiplied tenfold.

As helpful as news coverage can be (e.g. SkyNews' decision to dedicate their ticker to messages from those in S.E. Asia to family here in the UK), it seems that it is not always appropriate that the camera acts as our all-seeing eye. The eye-witness footage of two tourists swept away from their resort whilst clinging desparately to a patio table, the shot of a corpse's foot, images of lost bodies floating in the ocean all seemed a step too far to me, as the "interactive coverage" of the Iraq/"Armchair" War did two years ago. Whilst media today should not censor, it should perhaps show a little more humanity and discretion in what it does show instead of slowly desensitising us to such horrific images through it's voracious gaze. The camera renders nothing sacred.

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It's always been something that my mother drummed into me, me especially, as I have a tendency to be weak, timid and naive at times, especially under authority. But standing up for yourself is a life tool, as I am sure everyone knows. When I was criticized and sneered at by my boss in front of my colleagues for failing to do something I didn't know I had to do in the first place, my first reaction was to crumble into tears and get someone to stick up for me. But I guess it's a sign of growing up that I refused to back down and unneccessarily take the blame, and instead retaliated and explained why I hadn't done as I was supposed to. It's also a sign of growing up that you stop placing everyone on a pedestal because you feel so grateful they are nice to you, being as cool/powerful as they are, therefore allowing them to treat you as they wish (which often means "like shit") and instead see them for what they really are, and learn to protect yourself. It's a good feeling to feel anger and not the preventative tears of despair.

I've just got to take this step with loser ex-flings, pick off the final bristles of my former doormat-self. :-)