Festive Perfection

As the train pulled away from Edinburgh, it felt like all of the stress and tension of the last semester was draining out of me. I had two books and my mp3 player ready to distract me over the next three hours until home, but before I knew it my eyes had closed, and I'd passed out into a dreamless sleep.

A buzzing in my pocket woke me up. Squinting outside, I saw that we were almost at my home station. The buzzing turned out to be a message from my mum, just letting me know where she was parked. I'd also missed a few snapchats from Bob and the others - from the sounds of it, the bar crawl was going very very well.

As the train slowed down, I double checked I had everything on me and hauled my bags out onto the platform. Walking around the station building, I immediately saw my mum waving from the car. I ran over and dumped my stuff in the back, before climbing into the front seat and leaning straight over to give my mum a hug.

"Hey, you! Someone's glad to be home!"

"You have no idea..." I muttered into her shoulder, surreptitiously wiping a few tears away.

I was quite happy to let mum chatter away on the drive home, filling me in on the local community and what everyone had been up to since summer. Living out in the country, the village grapevine was thriving and well, meaning nothing ever stayed secret for long. On the other side, whenever anything bad happened, it meant you had an entire community immediately there to help. In the summer, when my neighbour's barn had burned to the ground due to an electrical fault, they could hardly move for all the offers of help that had poured in.

I felt myself begin to truly relax as we wound up the country roads towards our house. I'd missed the countryside so much - as a city, Edinburgh is beautiful, but it doesn't hold a patch to the forests and rolling hills of my home. Every house we passed was lit up by Christmas lights, adding yet more beauty to the landscape.

When we opened the front door, the house was silent apart from a sliver of light from under the living room door. I went to drop my bags off in my room first - I knew once I sat down in there, I wouldn't be moving for the rest of the evening. I'd just shrugged off my backpack when I heard running steps behind me and two forces rugby tackled me onto my bed.

"Jaaaaaane! You're home!"

Laughing, I wriggled out from underneath Peter and Alyssa and started messing up their hair. "I am! Finally!"

"Come on, hurry up, you need to come through to the lounge!" They both grabbed my hands and pulled me down the corridor.

Going into the lounge was every bit as amazing as I'd been dreaming of. There was tinsel on every picture frame, and Christmas cards adorned every shelf - and the tree, oh the tree was beautiful - filling up the corner of the room, glowing softly with its multicoloured lights and every inch of it covered with decorations. The fire was roaring and the scent of pine floated through the room. It was perfect, and as my dad enfolded me in a giant bear hug, everything seemed to hit at once and I started sobbing into his jumper.

"Hey, hey, it's OK, you're home!" Dad led me over to the sofa and let me lie down and cuddle into him, as Alyssa and Peter stared at me in worry.

"Sorry - I'm OK, I really am - they're happy tears, honestly. I'm just so glad to be home. These past few months have been awful. I'm just so happy to be home and able to relax and actually sleep for three weeks!" I smiled and tried to wipe away the tears from my face as mum opened the door. Isla came bounding into the room, and made a beeline for my sofa as soon as she noticed me. I couldn't help but giggle as she enthusiastically started licking my face clean.

Moving onto the floor so I could properly cuddle her, I noticed Alyssa and Peter impatiently waiting with something behind their backs.

"Surprise! We kept your Christmas decorations for you!"

"And not just one - Peter liked one, but I liked this other one better, and as you missed putting up the tree we thought you deserved two." Alyssa held out something sparkly to me in her hand.

It was a family tradition with us - every year, each of us kids got a new decoration to put up. It meant our tree was always a glorious hotch-potch of mismatched, weird and wonderful decorations telling a story of places visited, of unique decorations found and of whatever theme had been the craze that year (leading from three tiny sparkling Harry Potter lightning bolts, to the Frozen Planet year where we each had a polar bear, a penguin and a narwhal decoration between us).

Alyssa's decoration for me was a gorgeous, delicate shimmering collection of snowflake strands, tinkling against each other. Peter's was a fluorescent green shimmering orb with a picture of a collie on it. I adored them both, and pulled both of them into a giant hug with the dog in the middle, feeling perfectly content.

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Christmas morning passed in a wonderful blur of Santa presents, helping mum in the kitchen and taking the dog for a walk with dad. I know I'm a bit old for Santa presents, but having two younger siblings, my mum always feels she can't not provide me with something to wake up to in the morning. As Alyssa and Peter have grown older and more appreciative of lie-ins, I've slowly become the person to get up first on Christmas morning to help mum stuff the turkey.

After Christmas lunch, we settled down in the lounge, stomachs full to bursting, to swap our family presents. To keep Isla happy, she always got to 'open' hers first, which mainly involved us half opening the wrapped bones and treats until she could smell them, and then she generally took care of the rest. This year we'd also bought her a new bed, which she immediately curled up on with a bone in the middle of the room.

I'd bought Alyssa a pair of book-themed earrings from Etsy, with the character names 'Tess' and 'Angel' from Tess of the d'Urbervilles in each ear - it was one of her favourite books and she adored the BBC adaptation with Eddie Redmayne as Angel.

For Peter, he'd been joking with me for ages about stealing Dave's giant beanbag from the flat to give to him, so I'd actually found him one of those 'gamer chair' beanbags that support your back whilst you sit on them. It was in a massive box, so we hadn't actually put it under the tree, and I had to go carry it in from my room. It was completely worth it for the look on his face - both when I entered with this giant box, and when he opened it to find his beanbag inside.

Time flew past for the rest of the afternoon enjoying our gifts and playing board games. I nipped back to my room for a second to check my phone and reply to all the Christmas well wishers. Working through all the generic 'Merry Christmas' messages, I hit across one from Bob: Ahh! Doctor Who in an hour!

Checking the timestamp on the text, I realised it was less than ten minutes until it came on. Jumping off the bed, I ran down the hall into the lounge.

"Guys! Doctor Who time! Ten minutes!"

Peter whooped and high fived me, whilst Alyssa made a face.

"No, do we really have to? It's Christmas, who wants to watch some stupid sci fi programme, let's watch a film..."

Dad ruffled her hair from behind. "Come on Ally, it's a Christmas tradition! And we'll watch a film after, your choice..." Slightly placated, she leaned back against dad and was soon absorbed back into her book.

I lay down on my stomach in front of the fire with a cushion to rest my arms on, soaking up the heat. My phone buzzed again: Are you ready...?! 

I grinned to myself and quickly typed back. Yes! Who do you take me for? Wouldn't miss this for anything!

He texted back straight away. Well, hobbits are very hard to predict at times...

Peter looked up as I giggled, and shared a look with Alyssa.

"Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!"

I glanced up in confusion. "Uh... why exactly are you guys beeping?"

They dissolved into laughter. "It's the Bob alarm!"

"Yeah, every time you talk about him, or start texting him, the Bob alarm goes off!"

I frowned at them. "Well, how do you know I'm even texting him now?"

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. "Fine. Who are you texting?"

I blushed deep red and looked down.

"Knew it! Beep beep beep!"

Luckily at that point the Doctor Who theme music started, and dad shushed everyone before they could say any more. Clearly, though, I needed to get more of a control on how much I talked about Bob - not exactly a good mark in the 'I'm completely over him' argument I'd been trying to convince myself of for so long.

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Before I knew it, the holidays had flown past to my next major landmark - my birthday. Having a birthday between Christmas and New Year was something people always assumed I'd be upset about - after all, what about all those joint presents I must get? And what about the fact that no one was ever around?

Luckily, as my gran had a birthday on Boxing Day, my mum had been raised with the very strong mentality that giving joint birthday/Christmas presents was never acceptable. It was true that people were never around - but honestly, I liked just spending the day with my family and getting full control over the dinner menu. I went through phases of what birthday cakes I wanted: when I was younger, I had a bone cake made from swiss rolls and white fondant icing for a good four years, before graduating to 'fish cakes' decorated with white chocolate buttons. Recently, I'd formed a little obsession with my mum's pecan pie, and I'd been craving it for months. Not the most orthodox 'birthday cake', but it is the one day I can't be judged!

And this year, it wasn't going to be a completely relaxing day anyway. I had train tickets booked for 7am tomorrow to head down to England, to spend New Year with Dave before he left. On one hand I couldn't wait - I'd never met his adorable dogs, and it would be fantastic to have some revision stress-free time together. On the other hand I didn't want tomorrow morning to ever arrive... The thought of not seeing Dave again until September killed me a little inside. What would I do without my best friend and flatmate to keep me entertained in the evenings? Who would I feed all my failed culinary creations to? Who would I have to give me tough love when I needed it? It felt like a little piece of my heart was going to leave with him.

A hand waving in front of my face brought me back to earth.

"Calling Jane, calling Jane, is she there? It's our turn!"

Grinning, I took the box of cards from my mum and turned to face Alyssa and Peter. I'd got the board game Articulate for my birthday, and we were absolutely loving it.

"OK, the topic is places... let's go!" Mum quickly turned over the timer, as Alyssa and Peter waited for me to start explaining. "Right, it's a big bit of water, not an ocean or a lake but somewhere in between-"

"A sea!" Peter exclaimed.

"Yes! But a particular one, it's a colour..."

"Red Sea! Red Sea!" I shook my head at Alyssa. "No, the other one! Other colour!"

"Green sea! Blue sea! Purple sea!" I started laughing helplessly, frantically waving to indicate Alyssa should keep going. Peter rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Alyssa! Black Sea!"

"Yes!" I put the card down and kept going. We managed to get three right before the timer ran out, which wasn't bad considering my particularly awful geography knowledge.

As dad picked up the cards, we all turned to face him in anticipation.

"Any reason they're all staring at me like that...?" Dad muttered to mum next to him.

She laughed and patted his shoulder. "Let's say you have a rather... unusual... way of thinking, dear. It's fine though, I've not been with you over 25 years without learning how your brain works! Let's thrash them!"

They were also on places, so shaking my head at my mum's competitive spirit, I turned the timer over and set dad off.

"OK, it's a place." He paused and looked at mum expectantly.

"Yes, I get that, keep going!"

"We've been there." He paused again, whilst mum stared back in frustration. "Go on, guess!"

"You've not exactly narrowed it down! Scotland? England? France? Italy? Australia?"

Dad was shaking his head. "No, no, you're miles off. I had them in the World Cup sweepstake we did."

"What, the one we did six months ago where you had six different countries?!"

At this point all three of us kids were in hysterics.

"Dad - what even...?" gasped Alyssa before the laughter took over again.

"Shhh, you're wasting our time! Jamaica?"

Dad nodded energetically. "Closer! What's next to Jamaica? Big country!"

Mum stilled and looked at him in disbelief. "Please tell me you've not been trying to describe America." Peter and I looked at each other and crumpled against the sofa, almost in tears from laughing so hard.

"Yes!" Dad grinned and threw the card down as the timer ran out.

"Dad - literally anything - stars and stripes, Obama as president, Washington as capital? Next to Canada? Anything!" I wiped the tears from my eyes, my full stomach hurting from all the laughter.

At that point the dog, woken up by all the hilarity, ran over to dad and jumped up to lick his face. He put an arm around her and tickled her ears, pulling her close. "You appreciate me and my logical thinking, don't you Isla? Even if that lot don't!"

I leaned back against the sofa and smiled as the teasing continued. This is why I loved my birthday being where it was - I had my family, my dog, and my home, still filled with the smells of the Christmas tree, the wood burning in the fireplace and the lingering aroma of gorgeously cooked food. How could any birthday be better than this?