brother and opted for a local state school. He works in some capacity on one of those television programmes about buying and selling or swapping or renovating or redecorating houses to which British viewers seem to be addicted, there are so many of them on every channel. He describes the genre dismissively as ‘property porn’, but says it’s a good way to learn the ropes of documentary-making. Maxine, his partner for the past two years, is a TV make-up artist, pretty, leggy and friendly, with an estuary accent and hardly an idea in her head that isn’t connected with TV, fashion and cosmetics. She makes Ben take her to trashy horror films because she wants to see the make-up.The unspoken consensus of Fred’s family is that she is rather common, and Cecilia is painfully divided between a fear that Ben will marry her and a moral disapproval of cohabitation. But Maxine gets on well with Dad, who is rather smitten with her, and has bought her his biggest box of chocolates.
Fred, her mother, Giles, Ben and Maxine have gone off to Midnight Mass (pronounced ‘maass’ by the Fairfax family) which begins at ten-thirty with a carol service. Ben is not a practising Catholic, Giles only a nominal one, and Maxine doesn’t practise anything except make-up, but they accompany Fred and her mother in a spirit of seasonal solidarity. In the past I have sometimes gone with them, since it is just about the only religious service I positively enjoy, the carol singing bit anyway, but I didn’t like to leave Nicola, who has retired to bed with her baby, responsible for Dad. He has in fact gone to bed too, but last night I found him wandering about on the landing in his pyjamas looking for the bathroom in a dazed and confused state, with an enamel jug in his hand which I had given him to pee in if he was taken short, having somehow got it into his head that he had to empty the jug immediately in the bathroom, due no doubt to the antihistamine tablets which his doctor gives him as sleeping pills - they are safe but fuddle his old brain. I didn’t think Nicola would know what to do if she ran into him on the landing in similar circumstances.
Tomorrow morning Anne and Jim are driving up from Derbyshire, and Richard from Cambridge, in good time for Christmas dinner, which is really a late lunch. Marcia and Peter and their two children will join us, so it will be a big party. Richard’s presence is a bit of a last-minute surprise. He phoned up this morning to say he’d like to join us, but would have to drive back to Cambridge the same evening. I shall try to persuade him to stay the night.There is too much fog about on the roads - worst of all in the Thames Valley, apparently. Heathrow is immobilised, flights cancelled, travellers sleeping in the terminals.Trains are consequently overcrowded and roads jammed. This mass multi-directional migration in midwinter is insane. All our bedrooms are spoken for, but I can rig up a camp bed for Richard in my study. I haven’t seen him for months.
25 th December. Another Christmas Day is nearly over. It’s ten past eleven. Richard declined with thanks my offer to make up a bed for him here in my study, and has driven off back to Cambridge, so I am able to make some notes on the day before going to bed myself. A lot of people have already retired, exhausted by hours of compulsory festivity and each other’s company: Fred (who has certainly earned a long rest) led the retreat at ten, accompanied by her mother, followed by Giles and Nicola (who said they were woken up by their teething baby last night), and Anne, who needed no excuse, for she looks heavily pregnant - hard to believe that the birth is still two months away. Marcia and Peter went home with their offspring hours ago. At ten-thirty Ben, Maxine and Jim settled down to watch a classic Hollywood film noir on the television. Dad, who slept - and snored - in the drawing room for some time after lunch, with a newspaper over his head, was inconveniently perky this evening. The film was not to his taste, and after a few critical remarks about the depressing effect of the black-and-white photography and the melodramatic style of the acting, designed to persuade the others