Christmas. Bah Humbug. Every year I get a Christmas tree, decorate it, and beg it not to die until New Years Eve (when it is ruthlessly despatched). I play Bing Crosby, bake biscuits for the kids in the shapes of reindeers and stars, involve the little blighters in decorating them, traipse about buying presents I can ill afford and tolerating the passing stream of relatives. On paper, it all looks proper. In reality, my life is more Partridge in a pear shaped tree.
When it comes to presents for myself, I am hard to buy for. I struggle to tell people what I'd like, because I have expensive tastes, and actually I don't really care about 'stuff'. 'Stuff', I have found, is to no avail.
This Christmas, however, I know what I want. Roller boots.
Having gone on and on about a roller skating revival for the past two years, being mercilessly mocked by my dearest friends, Vogue trumpeted the return of the craze in the December issue with the words "roller skates are back". So then, it is official. Super smug that the powers that be at Vogue had finally tuned their fashion tom-toms to the same frequency as mine; I have decided it is high time to get my skates on.
The choice of roller boots for me is either classic 70s roller disco style, blue nylon with yellow stripes and wheels, or a classy white leather figure skating style with white wheels. I have chosen the latter of course, but don't think I'm going be able to resist pimping them up with pink light up wheels. Whilst I'm thinking Central Park and roller discos, the reality is going to be me being pulled along, or most likely over, by my two young sons and my very old Labrador. Not quite as glamourous, but still. That's my reality and I love it.
The next requirement is someone to foot the bill for my latest craze. That would be my Mum. Being the Queen of Bad Timing, I mentioned this exciting development to her when she had the right hump about someone knocking the wing mirror off her car. 'Oh Anaïs' she huffed, 'you're thirty-five years old and a mother of two. You'll break your bloody wrist and then we're all in the shit'. Oh. Good point. So I have ordered black skate pads too (The wrist pads are actually strangely sexy, which means I should probably never have read 'Crash') And a helmet, which isn't quite the image I had in mind, though probably eminently sensible given that although as a young girl I could skate, I never really got the hang of stopping.
But here is my question: What use is protecting our knees, elbows, wrists and heads when our hearts can be so easily broken?
Whose journey through life wouldn't have been made safer if only we could strap our hearts up in protective shells? We think Accident and Emergency departments are overcrowded now; imagine the waiting time if they could fix emotional fractures as well. And if they could patch us up and send us off with our broken hearts in a plaster cast, who would sign their name on yours?