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Monday
At last. I have been waiting a year for this moment. I must apologise to you all. Twelve months ago, in this very organ, nay in this very diary, I noted that we were now in the hazy, lazy, crazy days between Boxing Day and New Year and thus wished you all a happy “Christmas perineum”. It should have been, of course, “Merryneum”. It has been bothering me ever since. I can only put it down to post-turkey malaise. If it helps, it is only while Googling around this subject to write this entry that I have realised that the nickname “taint” – for the fleshly rather than festive part under discussion – refers to the fact that “’t ain’t the front, ‘t ain’t the back.” I think perhaps I knew this at some level but hadn’t consciously made the connection. Anyway. I offer the knowledge to you here in some kind of twisted act of contrition.
And now that I have lost all linguistic authority, let me weigh in on this year’s vexed question: is it, in polite company at least, “Twixmas” or “Twixtmas”? Well, unless you have a sponsorship deal with Mars, it’s Twixtmas. It’s the “between time” and the fact that we’re all stuffing ourselves with chocolate during it is merely incidental. (‘T) ain’t no argument otherwise.
Tuesday
My greatest hope is on the cusp of being realised. Late last year, John Lewis officially became a members’ club. It always was, in essence: you spend years hoping that you can join (though it is in your disposable income’s gift, rather than requiring nomination by an already anointed individual); you have to pretend you are there to choose soft furnishings but you are really revelling in the safety offered by proximity to like-minded souls; you pay your fees in the guise of retail prices for kettles, new pillows or a rice cooker at the counter every visit instead of annually by direct debit; and instead of lingering for hours over claret and cigars, it’s coffee and cake, but aside from those peripheral differences, the place is a club.
But in November, a members’ lounge opened for a trial run in the flagship Oxford Street store. You could bring two friends, enjoy a complimentary drink, partake of Waitrose chocolates and Benugo nibbles and just rest easy knowing that, in some ineffable but deeply pleasing sense, you had made it.
My prayer is that this is the beginning of something big. A JL lounge in every high street, a place to go for those too old, tired and infuriated by ambient music to find the pub restorative any more. Please, please 2026 – let us have this.
Wednesday
New Year’s Eve! My favourite night of the year. No, really. It is when the ”jomo” – the joy of missing out – is at its strongest, its most restorative and delicious.
I cannot remember when I last left the house on NYE. I think it may have been for the advent of the new millennium, which if my calculations are correct is now a quarter of a century ago. So for 25 years now, I have waved off my more vibrant, sociable brethren – which is to say, all of them – enjoining them to drink deep of their own fountain of pleasure wheresoever they find it, while I have stayed in with a plate of smoked salmon, some champagne and all my books. May you all have as much fun. I charge my glass, raise it and wish you all an easily-found taxi home. You fools.
Thursday
New Year’s Day! Also a good time. Largely because I no longer make resolutions for myself (apart from this year, again, to start a Substack and to read Middlemarch). I make them for the rest of the world instead. Nothing absurd, like global peace or a return to democracy or anything like that. I keep it small and manageable. This year, I want sunken living rooms (“conversation pits” in the parlance of the 1970s, the last time they were fashionable) to make a comeback. So cosy! So civilised! So different without disturbing things too much! Let’s do this.
And I want “either” and “each” sorted out. I was taught that “either” means “one or the other” (“They walked either side of the road” – they were free to choose, neither side being pitted with obstacles or mantraps) and “each” means … well, each. “They walked on each side of the road” – one walked on one side, another walked on the other. So a sentence like what I have just read in a book, “There was a tree either side of the road” makes no real sense. There was a tree each side, sure. But unless it is an ambulant tree, or your character cannot remember which part of the road it was on, “either” has nothing to do with it. Let’s sort it. I know we can.
Friday
And now the best day of the year – World Introvert Day! Jan 2, we love you. You are so perfectly timed, after the near-unbearable business of the festive season. Just as humanity threatens to overwhelm, we can point to this date, this sacred date, and say, “No more.”
Quietly, separately and in our own different ways, those of us who prefer to stay in except under very few, very specific and highly controlled circumstances, celebrate. I plan to stay even more firmly in than I did on New Year’s Eve, and to increase the solitude by sending the husband and child out for the day.
“Do you not like us?” asks my son.
“I love you,” I explain. “I just can’t stand you.”
Happy 2026, everyone.
