Tis the season to be jolly

My sense of time has abandoned me. The other day I wrote July 07 on a cheque - and it occurred to me that that is the moment when my clock stopped. And yet here I am looking at another Christmas tree and handing out Vitamin C. If the doctor is right, I had breast cancer last Christmas and the one before that but those were normal Christmases where my biggest worry was whether I'd get it all done in time. This year I know that it doesn't really matter. Christmas will happen anyway - but knowing now what I didn't know then changes the shape of it.

Just as I start to emerge from the fog and the cold and various other ailments too revolting to relate, I find myself nursing a boy who stuck his Nintendo pen in his ear and a husband who has collapsed in a heap with the flu after a gruelling few weeks. Even the au pair is ill. I have made no Xmas pudding, no Xmas Cake and haven't been near a supermarket in weeks. Luckily parents are arriving on Sunday with a food parcel or we may well end up eating more of the pasta from the bottomless 5kg bag I mistakenly bought on the internet.

My loathing of supermarkets and general inability to get all the way round the big Sainsbury's is turning me into a whizz at storecupboard cookery and the children have learned not to comment on sardine pasta with black olives or tinned pears with walnuts. They are positively thrilled with my Fridge dregs curry or tuna 'surprise' and if nothing else this is turning them into even more adventurous eaters - though Emily says she will never eat brocolli again and Luc won't touch a frozen pea.

Francois is moaning as usual about having Turkey for Christmas dinner - saying how boring it is and how we'll have to eat it for a week - which of course in my view just adds to its attraction.

A strange thing happened the other day. I was in Woolworth's and saw someone I knew. She pretended she hadn't seen me and as I approached she turned the other way. I hesitated for a minute, wondering whether I should just bite the bullet and say hello. She obviously felt incredibly awkward and didn't know what to say to me and my instinct to put her at her ease suddenly felt as if it would waste more energy than I could afford to spend. I wonder whether she would have done the same if I had a more acceptable illness or operation - and I wonder whether I might have done the same if I found myself in her position.

In fact I'm no better at handling these things either really. Walking around Stoke Newington poses continual problems as I know so many people here to say hello to - but if I don't want to get to the 'how are you?' part I have to develop avoidance strategies. Sometimes it's because I really don't feel I know them well enough to explain why I am wearing a flowery headscarf in December and sometimes it's because it seems so unfair to tell them the truth and watch them struggle to find a response.

It's a lesson in vulnerability on so many levels. I think the worst thing is knowing that people feel sorry for me - seeing the pity in their eyes makes me feel so useless - and caterpults me into upbeat overdrive assuring them I am fine - assuring myself I am fine. And of course I know this is unreasonable of me - that I would do exactly the same - but somehow it serves to accentuate the great divide - the one in which I am on the other side.

But as fluff starts to appear on top of my head (hurrah!!) and the nausea subsides (hurrah hurrah!) I realise that I will soon have no time to dwell on these things - and about bloody time too.

In any event - I will definitely be raising that glass of Champagne I've been on about for 6 months to you and wishing all my fantastic friends and family a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year. I couldn't have got through 2007 without you. Thank you.