“Did you have a merry Christmas?”

There are only so many ways you can defuse that question safely. It’s worse than the pointless “So… you got anything nice planned this weekend?” and its coda, “So… did you do anything nice this weekend?” I do rather suspect that if the conversation has become banal enough for these to be worthwhile gambits then it’s probably time to get back to work. What do people expect when they ask such questions? Platitudes. I’m no good at this level of small talk, it’s dangerously likely that I’ll tell the truth: “Welllll... since you ask, this weekend was really little more than a couple of empty, lonely days spent hunched over a keyboard destroying my eyes and wasting my life away, pausing only for brief sustenance”, which I don’t think would go down well. That’s not really what I did at the weekend, BTW. There have been weekends like that, but not recently. Honest! I’m now immersing myself in the Hairspray OST. Still fabulous. Still dancing in my chair, only at work now which causes a few askance glances. Who cares? Welcome to the Sixties!!