According to Taste ... or Need?

When someone learned last Sunday that - church attendance apart - I'd spent Christmas and Boxing Day on my own, she was aghast.  But I live alone, I'm not a 'party animal', I have lots of 'stuff' to occupy my time, and I had celebrated the One Important Thing about Christmas ... what actually did I miss?  Nothing.

That's not to say that, by Saturday evening I wasn't ready for my 100-mile trip the next morning.  I was.  I'd got myself all prepared in advance and, after what was termed by one person a 'love breakfast' at church following the early service, I was on my way.  I then spent five days at the home of my cousin and her husband.  It's the longest time we've spent together for some while, and I think we all learned something from it ... probably me the most, since it was their home, after all.

Although we share the same country, language and culture, there are inevitably differences in attitude, opinion, habit and preference, which all add to the richness of the experience of sharing time with each other. Certain aspects of life, however, always have to change on these occasions.

To take one example, I tend to live with my doors open;  there's no point in closing them for privacy.  I mean ... privacy from whom?  And one door has to remain open because of an essential cable that passes through the doorway.  But in my cousin's house doors are usually kept firmly closed ... for one specific fur-coated, four-legged reason!!

There are other easily imagined considerations too; considerations, for instance, like kitchen routines, catering for more mouths, with greater cooking and domestic expertise, and with a different range and arrangement of the fittings and equipment.  And then there's always the need for me to think of others when using the bathroom!

As we agreed in conversation during the week, each of us - indeed every family, I expect - has developed a way of living that suits our own situation; our individual needs and circumstances.  It's rather like driving in a different country.  Because driving on the left suits us in England, that doesn't mean that it would be a good way for us to drive in America.  Apart from the distinct and dangerous possibility of meeting traffic coming in the opposite direction, the detail of road junctions and layouts would make that difficult, not to mention the problems of the vehicles having the controls on the opposite side.  Either the whole system has to change ... or nothing.

I returned home - driving on the left! - to one or two changes here.  I've acquired a curtain to isolate the warmth of my lounge from the cool of the kitchen, and I'm amazed at the temperature difference when moving between the two.  I've also jettisoned the fitted sheets on my bed, which were becoming over-worn, and replaced them with flat ones.  The exercise of changing the bed linen probably still takes me about the same time, but different techniques are of course involved.  I've dredged up from the depths of my memory the skill of 'hospital corners', which I acquired about fifty years ago as a fully-mobile but undischarged recoverer from facial surgery, when my boredom was relieved by helping the nurses with simple tasks about the ward ... something that would be unheard of in these days of health and safety regulations!