In my 24 years, yesterday was the first Christmas I’d ever spent on my own. I’d always had family or friends around, if not both; and I guess a part of me always took it for granted that it would be the case year on year.

I feared I would be terribly lonely this year, what with London shut down around me, trapped indoors with nowhere to go, no one to talk to. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it all and claim that it wasn’t actually lonely at all, that it was perfectly fine, that at no point did I fleetingly wish someone else was around. But you know – with the texts that I started getting on Christmas Eve, and my mom’s phone call in the morning, and the emails/Facebook messages that trickled in – I didn’t really have all that much time, or inclination, to feel sorry for myself.

I had a blissfully warm lie-in after hanging up with my mom, and after finally (reluctantly) rolling out of bed around 10:30, put on my Spotify Christmas playlist and started the day with “All I Want for Christmas is You”, which is probably still my favourite Christmas song – if only, in large part, thanks to Love Actually. It was cold, but not the frightful, bone-chilling frost of the cold snap that had ravaged England and the continent for the past week; instead it was more of a calm, settled crisp cold. Listening to Mariah, I couldn’t help smiling to myself and singing along as I made my morning coffee. Oh I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow – how true, that.

So the day passed uneventfully and in supremely restful manner. I threw myself gleefully into playing more of Dragon Age (woefully behind many of my friends, I think, because I don’t usually have time or energy to play after work!) and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time. Christmas movies at Christmastime are something of a tradition; had we all been home together, I would probably have been watching Home Alone 2 with my siblings. But this year we are all scattered across continents: my sister and brother in Singapore, my mom and dad in Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains for a 3-day outdoorsy walking holiday, and me here in winter with my endless mugs of hot tea and honey.

This morning, I woke late revelling in the fact that I was not caught up in a crazy Boxing Day sale crowd, and put on some unabashedly cheesy 80s pop to twirl round my room to, starting with Bananarama’s “Love in the First Degree”. It’s been a good holiday season, so far. I miss people – but then again, when have I not? And as for being on my own, it was far less devastatingly depressing than I had been led to believe, for the most part. I felt warm, and I felt loved, and what more could I want at Christmastime?

Long, long overdue update! No I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth though it feels some days like I have… it’s been a weird Christmas, though, what with an uber-frantic last week at work, the visa disaster (still in limbo – probably won’t know how it turns out until I actually submit the application and hear from the home office, which may take months), the frantic scrambling rush of card-mailing which I got so lazy with that I still haven’t sent a little pile of them, the absence of any big dinner on Christmas day itself. Thinking back, for the first time it dawned on me that for the past four years, my Christmas day has always been spent in a big way – in Spain, in Oxford, in York, in Germany – though Christmas eve this year with Jake,Wee Zi and Eleena was lovely in its own quiet, cosy way.

I like the little reunions that mark each holiday season, I like the catching up and the greetings and the fact that at some point of time over these two weeks from Christmas to New Year everyone always thinks of someone else, old friends, distant family, whom they wouldn’t have thought of for a while. I like Covent Garden at this time of year, I like the lights and the mulled wine tea in Whittards, I like the tinsel round my computer at work. I got to speak to my family on the phone, see many muchly beloved Yorkies and spend New Year’s Eve counting down to the truly spectacular midnight fireworks at the banks of the Thames with Nic and Weez :) which was really the pinnacle of the whole break for me. Walking an hour and a half from Westminster to Pimlico after it all, armed with a tiny and largely unhelpful map from TFL, through crowded celebrating streets which eventually thinned out as we neared Victoria – random strangers tapping me on the shoulder to say happy new year with a smile and dancing drunkards taking their turns on the tarmac – we were all so cold that freezing would probably have been an understatement, we couldn’t feel our toes, we’d been standing for hours in an insane crowd, but ah the atmosphere!

On top of that I was also sick in a big way from Christmas day itself, on and off (still coughing a little), which has contributed to the past week feeling like a great big daze; I spent hours and hours of it sleeping off fevers and medication and sniffles and general malaise. Though I can’t say being sick for Christmas is very much fun, on hindsight it was probably good for me to have been forced into bed for long periods of time, and not be up stressing over my visa or jostling with crowds at Boxing Day sales or spending hours trying to get anywhere when half the transport network is shut down.

It is back to work and nose to the grindstone for me tomorrow, but it’s been a good rest. :) If only it were warmer… the weather, as always, has been abysmal. At least one thing here is constant.

The lights on Sloane Square were beautiful today. I thought I’d become jaded towards London after nearly two months, but as I turned a corner on King’s Road this evening, Christmas shopping bags in hand and feeling completely exhausted from what has been a very, very tiring week at work (plus an all-nighter looming tomorrow – don’t think I’ll leave before 11pm), this ethereal, otherworldly blue mist of lights suddenly unfolded before me. I felt the old enchantment rushing back, I found myself putting everything down and whipping out my camera like a tourist all over again.

London still has its magical pockets, after all.