Mistress Flirt-A-Lot

These are the in-between days. Those odd, scruffy days that fall between Christmas and New Year. 
The air of celebration lingers like the last drunk at the party. The Christmas tree ever so slightly drooping. The cat having way too much fun with all the baubles she has dragged off each branch, and the recycling bin stuffed to the gills with the inordinate amount of wine bottles that seem to have been emptied during the week gone by.
Your appetite has gone. You nibble at hard-boiled eggs dressed in turmeric and black pepper and recognise this as a good sign, listening to Gene Kelly reading The Pied Piper of Hamelin and visiting far away continents whenever you can spare a moment in each busy day.
The house has never, ever been quite such a mess. You drift through it, blind. There seems little point in going into battle until tomorrow when you will tidy from to bottom, your very own New Years ritual destined never to see you going into a New Year with a single item of laundry unwashed, or a speck of dust left unchallenged. Then you will join your family and take part in the elaborate Murder Mystery your (mad) sister has devised, you playing Mistress-Flirt-A-Lot complete with feather boa and the rest of the family assuming equally preposterous, but thoroughly fabulous parts, sure to bring mayhem and much laughter to the last evening of 2013.
2013. You have treaded water all year.  But Christmas has been different. Something odd has consumed you. It may or may not be fleeting but it doesn’t matter. You, Mistress Flirt-A-Lot, are enjoying yourself right now. Laughing. Out. Loud. Lying awake. Reading this and singing along to Just Haven’t Met You Yet in the kind of screechy voice sure to scare passing kids, while doing ballet pirouettes around the kitchen. And yep that probably is quite as comical as it sounds when you have a bum that could rival Kim Kardashians…
You may have gone quite daft. Lost your marbles or seen the light. Who knows? You only know that the house could fall down and you probably wouldn’t notice. And now you are skipping back to your Mum’s to smother kisses on a boy who is twelve today. To drink yet more wine and eat birthday cake…
Yes. These are the blessed, scruffy,  in-between days. Long may they last.