Year's end

I've just noticed there are precisely two calendar months until Christmas Day.

This feels wrong on so many levels. There hasn't been enough of a change in the weather for starters. It seems like it's only late August or early September, whereas in reality we're less than one week away from Halloween. The air isn't sharp or fresh enough, the ground isn't cold enough, too many trees have too many leaves for it to be this close to the festive season and, erk, 2007.

I'm also not ready for the collective bout of celebration and introspection that accompanies Christmas. It's usually the time to put a stamp on the year and total up the balance sheet for the preceding 12 months. Instead I feel like I'm too close to events to treat 2006 to any dispassionate concern or detached observation.

There's also the stuff that I fear about Christmas and which is hence lurking all too readily around the corner: forced conviviality, office merriment, and mass hysteria.

Plus it doesn't feel like one year since it was last here.

Maybe I'll become more well-disposed towards it when the weather gets colder (which it surely must) and the decorations go up and the Christmas double issue Radio Times comes out. At the moment, though, it feels not two months but two continents out of reach.