Grumpy Christmas

Term has just finished and we have a good few days of undergraduate admissions interviews ahead of us. These are hard work and involve some difficult decisions. It's a serious business and so it has to be done properly. I also have some supervisions hanging over from term and two MPhil students in the last throes of their first assessed essay and then a PhD to examine.

So I'm not in the mood for Christmas at all. But when you have young kids it all seems to start very early and positively demand your interest and excitement. Sigh. So this afternoon is the great-if-you-are-6 Fitzwilliam college children's Christmas party. This is an excellent institution, I hasten to add, but I can't help thinking it would be better if we could wait to have it some time in February when there's not so much else going on.

Then there are the eye-achingly sweet but dreadful Christmas 'performances' at school (a play -- the amusingly named propaganda-vehicle 'Rock around the Flock' -- and a concert) and the increasingly frequent rehearsals for the ballet school production. I'm sure these will all be terribly lovely and camcordered with much affection by parents but I just don't enjoy them. I know I should , probably, and I like it that they matter so much to the kids (though I am not sure I like the fact they give over most of this half-term in rehearsals) but I just don't. So there. I'm a bad un-Chrismassy person but there's really not much I can do about it.