Christmas Afternoon

[ailbhe]

We ate. We ate vast mountains of food, and small hillocks, and drank Amé and water and apple juice. We pulled crackers and wore silly hats, and eventually we gathered to open presents.

From our eldest sister, Niamh and I got mugs. They say "To the World's Greatest Auntie". Wow. The shock almost killed us.

Janice got a pair of purple dungarees from us.

Purple dungarees

When I was 15 and depressed and running away from home and refusing to go to school and being generally miserable, my sister Gráinne brought me out to Dublin's Temple Bar (a pedestrian area that used to be full of wonderful poor-student alternative-lifestyle places and is now yuppified) and told me solemnly: "There comes a time in every woman's life when she needs a pair of purple dungarees." Then she bought me some; I still have them.

When my sister Niamh was 16 or so and being horribly bullied at school and going through a similarly awful period of her life, I told her the same thing, and bought her a pair of purple dungarees. She got her life sorted out and stopped needing them, so I have them now.

A friend in New Zealand had a teenage daughter going through a tough time. I emailed her some sage advice, and her mother bought a pair of purple dungarees.

Janice is now officially a member of the Purple Dungarees Family. I think she was pleased. She's had a tough 18 months or so.

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So we opened the rest of our gifts, which took a while (one gift at a time is our tradition, so that everyone gets to see what everyone has). Rob got slippers and pyjamas, among other things. I got some lovely clothes, which I'm very pleased about, as I have been getting incredibly tired of the ones I have. My old clothes were all terribly respectable.