Having dozed through a couple of hours of afternoon, I felt compelled to return downstairs.
Yep, it was excruciatingly dull.
Conversation had dried up completely, Mother's Mother was repeatedly scouring the TV listings (not that she wanted to watch anything... more that she'd normally just have the TV on and wanted to know what might have been on), and everyone had commenced the cold meat and pickles phase of Christmas fodder.
It's times like this that I wonder why we bother with a Family Christmas. We're not that big a family, nor are we especially close. What little news there is gets quickly disseminated throughout the year, so there's nothing new to discuss. and what little there is to talk about generally gets repeated three or four times for the benefit of Mother's Mother, who won't remember any of it anyway.
A short while earlier, I noticed she was using the bathroom without the light on. The light switch is hard to miss - half the time, it'd smack you on the head as you walk in (not hers though, obviously, because she's too small). The pull-cord is easily within reach, and doesn't require much strength to operate - she has exactly the same arrangement in her flat... It's all rather depressing.
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