I had a wonderful Christmas with my family. It was everything Christmas is supposed to be: all the family together, exchanging gossip with my brother’s wife until we were both weeping with laughter; excellent food cooked by my mother (and too much of it) eaten with everyone talking at once; warm cosy house while the wild wind whipped the trees outside; happy overfed dogs lying in a pile in front of the open fire and sleepy cats curled up in the lap; I am ridiculously overdressed wearing a whole Valentino ensemble that a certain Englishman who edits the Samizdata sent to me for Christmas…and there is cat hair all over it now. Bliss.
A couple days of feeling good, I go upstairs to my old room and plug my PowerBook into the phone and decide to post to Samizdata… oh. I cannot get into blogger.com. Oh well, must be these miserable Croatian phone lines. I try again later…still no luck. Go back downstairs, drink some loza. Try again…and again…
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk!!!!!!!!!
Feelings of panic! Suddenly I am no longer in my comfortable home…now I am just an isolated nervous woman in the middle of nowhere in rural Croatia, cut off from the invigorating, cosmopolitan rush of the Internet. Gasp! Instapundit looks… dead… Mind over what matters? Silence. I check out Dawson to see if he has finally writen this “sort of ‘love post’ to Natalija at Samizdata” he said he was going to write…but all I see is eerie stillness. I look out of the window and the trees look back, gaunt and threatening. Beyond the gloom, is the rest of the world still there? The wind shakes the house. I close my PowerBook and stumble downstairs, stepping over the dogs. Even they are looking uneasy now. The fireplace is making the air seems oppressive, close, almost imprisoning. I drink more strong loza until I pass out.
And then I log on today, nervous, fearful, hung-over…
Ah! Phew! A tingle runs up my spine. I am back in contact with the world! The dogs are chasing each other around the house, the cats are hissing at them; mother is walking around with steaming pots of wonderful smelling…something; father is happily discussing the merits of his new Christmas rifle with my brother (who is pretending to be interested); my sister-in-law has remembered a prime piece of gossip she forgot to mention before and I see my lovely Valentino dress on a hanger… someone has removed all traces of cat hair from it.
Tomorrow I drive to Vienna to stay with friends.
The world is back running in well oiled grooves.
