Avoiding the D word

I’M writing this as the air still bristles with anticipation and mince pies, but, as I’m not making or shopping, cooking or chopping, it’s easy to focus on January. Actually, that’s not true. I’m extremely anxious because we’re going abroad and I have no idea how to do Christmas away.

I ring my sister. ‘Well, I took everything,’ she says (she really means this—turkey, sauce, crackers, the whole lot), ‘but I’ll never go abroad again.’

I Whatsapp the children to ask if I should take stockings, presents and should we even bother with a tree at home. This is all so desperately unromantic that I’m bringing myself down.

I picture us wandering the streets of an unfamiliar town, trying to find somewhere to eat on December 25. In my mind’s eye, I’m in tears. Everyone is in tears. I have destroyed the remaining fragments of their childhood. What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have worried that six of us in two bedrooms (we’ve just knocked down the other one) might lead to unrest and possible violence.

I ring a friend for reassurance. ‘We went abroad once,’ she tells me. ‘It’s the only time I’ve ever been homesick.’

By the time you read this, it may have been a triumph of new experiences, a liberation from tradition, a relaxing success from which I approach January with a clear head—which I will need, because January means two words, two letters: Government Gateway ID.

Even typing that catapults me to the following scenario: I will try to login to submit my online tax return. The Government will not recognise me. I will apply for a new password and, when that doesn’t work, a new ID.

I will get locked out of the system, which is when I will begin web-chatting with Carl. From whom I will be mysteriously disconnected. I will ring again, I will wait in a queue, I will stab 1, 2, 5, 7 on the telephone keypad to select options and then a woman—not a real woman— will say: ‘Please look at the website. Goodbye.’

This will have taken up most of the day. On my next attempt, I will finally, and wondrously, hear a person, a real person.

Last year, he introduced himself as Carl. ‘Carl!’ I shouted in delight. ‘I’ve been web-chatting with you, but we got cut off.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘it’s you.’

Yes, yes, it’s me. Off we went through various hoops until I said: ‘It’s okay now, Carl, I’ve got this. Have a lovely day,’ because I loved Carl. But then the final hoop turned out to be unsuccessful, so I hit the phone again and listened to the same music and the same messages until, finally, a real human.

‘Carl?’ I said, amazed. ‘Lucy?’ ‘Carl, are you the only person who works there?’ He assured me he wasn’t. ‘Because, really, what are the chances that I get you every time?’ ‘What indeed,’ he sighed. I hope he’s still there this time.

Aquestion I’m often asked these days is do you feel daunted? Worryingly, this question usually comes when looking at the bit of garden where we’ve done the most work and which I think is pretty much finished.

The house is another matter. Over the next six months, it will be mended and extended. One corner is not, apparently, ‘tied in’, so the walls are bulging outwards and unnerving amounts of sky can be seen at a corner of the bedroom and sitting room below.

When the digger was scraping at the foundations of the extension we’re replacing, I thought the whole place might crumble. The builder stood with his hands on the dodgy corner, shouting above the brutal roar: ‘If I feel this move, I’ll get him to stop.’

That’s when the digger hit the water main. The stopcock was located under the skip. I covered my eyes and found an urgent errand elsewhere, because this is the best way to avoid any concept of the D word.

The next question is ‘How’s the river’, by which people mean ‘Are we worried about flooding?’ Zam assures me that this won’t happen and, anyway, I recently met a woman who lives in a mill that’s flooded several times over the decades, but who said cheerfully: ‘We just put gumboots on the dining-table legs and pile everything on top of it.’

Daunted? Obviously not.

“What are the chances that I get you every time?” “What indeed,” Carl sighed

Lucy Baring lives by a river in Hampshire with her family, some chickens and a dachshund called Fletcher. The day after this article was submitted, her kitchen flooded