What a week!

A week in the life of Network Publications’ features editor Zillah Bugeja, who discovers how to beat the stresses of next year’s festive season

Next year’s Christmas cards are already written. All that’s left is to stick on the stamps.

Yes, on Boxing Day, finally finding a moment to sit down and organise my thoughts and desk, I had this incredible idea. Why not write out next year’s cards, buy wrapping paper and gift tags, and do all the little things that tend to get left till the last minute and frazzle my nerves? How about that for an antidote to procrastination? After all, there shouldn’t be major changes to my friends and family, maybe an increase in the postal charges, so why not? It took me all of half an hour, and left me feeling quite smug.

As I was going through my new 2002 diary, it’s an Impressionist art one from Imagina, I enjoyed jotting down all the birthdays I’ll need to remember. Maybe I could go out and buy all the cards in one go too? But I just don’t think I can afford it right now… I also flicked through my millennium diary, and was glad that I had made notes of what I’d done during the year because all these happy memories came flooding back.

I’ve just come back from a too-short trip to Courmayeur and Cervinia in Italy. It was an educational visit with P&A Sullivan which I thoroughly enjoyed. While my colleagues and family must have imagined that I was gallivanting everywhere, making the most of aprés ski moments and having the time of my life, let me remind all and sundry that on these educational trips not a moment is wasted. You’re whisked everywhere to see as much as you can in a few days, to cathedrals, nearby hotels, up cable car after cable car to mountain tops, then off to a typical local restaurant, walks through the village, a couple of hours transfer to the next village and so on. We did manage to fit in a bit of skiing, even though snow was scarce. I must say that we were treated extremely well by all the representatives of the various tourist boards, and I’d do it all again, even though I now can’t bare to go on the scales to see how much weight I’ve gained. The crespelle with ham and Fontina cheese were too divine to resist…

Being up in the mountains after an absence of a three years, I was reminded of what it is I enjoy about skiing holidays. It’s not so much the skiing itself but being up in that high alpine sunshine, carried above the glistening white slopes on a chair lift, and not a sound to be heard. It reminds me of lazing on a beach in September all on my own. It’s a totally different world to our sea-bound island, and a balm to the soul.

On the other hand, I really thought I was going to suffer from frostbite at one point! Being ever so slightly vain, I hadn’t taken my woolly hat up the mountain with me, and the headband I had on couldn’t cope with the minus 15 degree winds. My left ear got the brunt of it and felt just like a piece of frozen pork!

I came back a couple of days before Christmas, missed the staff party due to asthma and still had to face the shops. I changed my usual routine: normally I go round all the shops in all the major centres, (and I mean ‘all’), and choose my pressies from the goodies on offer. Not this year. I left the car at home, picked up my trusty rucksack and legged it, feeling more fit than usual after my mountain sojourn, yet unwilling to face the parking circuit. I regretfully gave Valletta a miss this year. While I love the atmosphere there, you do need to be emotionally up to it to survive the crowds and above all, the noise.

I actually got round to putting the Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve, German style. And the Christmas cake was triumphantly made on Boxing Day. It was a Saint Delia recipe, the Last Minute Mincemeat Cake that ended up very last minute due to the fact that the ingredients like ‘luxury mincemeat’ weren’t available in my friendly neighbourhood corner shoppe. Finding the time to make it was important to me. This is what freaks me out about the world of work (and some jobs are more demanding than others) – you’ve got to prioritise your every move because there just aren’t enough free hours available to do it all. Even taking a few days holiday means staying at work late for an equal amount of days just to prepare things before you leave. I even had to finish off writing an interview on the morning of my flight, something I never dreamed I’d end up doing. So that’s why finding time to bake a cake meant that all was not lost. My life isn’t totally out of control…

And why I want to be better prepared for next year’s Christmas, just to make it all run a bit more smoothly. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s only at this time of year that the shops are full of goodies either, when you’re close to being broke. You can’t be totally sensible and buy all your presents now, or heaven forbid, in the January sales.

We had Christmas Lunch at my boyfriend’s parents’ house. It went really well, so well that I had to have a nap to recover from all that food, and unfortunately ended up at my parents’ house much later than I would have liked. Still, it was a peaceful day, all smiles and no tears, and that’s what counts in the end. Roll on next Christmas, my favourite time of year.