Finding it hard to describe the in-between time of Christmas and New Year - Ian McMillan

How do I describe this time, though? How do I get it down in the pages of this magazine? How do I convert this idea of time into an idea of space? It’s like those areas you sometimes get in a hotel when you get out of the lift and there’s a carpeted bit of floor with a couple of old chairs in it.

Nobody ever sits in these chairs, ever; they have gathered a patina of passing years and occasionally a hotel cup sits on one of the chairs, exuding the feeling that it’s been there for decades.

You step out of the life and you walk towards your room and you don’t give the chairs another thought and in that way they are like this time of year, something to pass by on your way to something more interesting.

This time of year is like the space between carriages on a train, or like the twisty bit on a tram where not many people stand; these are functional spaces but in no way are they romantic or dynamic. They’re just there, gazing jealously at the real spaces, the ones full of passengers.

This time of year is like the bit at the side of your plate that hasn’t got any food on; there are pea-hills and mountain ranges of mashed potato and there’s a tiny area of white that’s empty of meat and veg that represents the void at this empty end of December.

This time of year is like Free Parking in Monopoly and it’s like a blank square in Scrabble. It’s like the unused space in a top hat and the vast uninhabited light years between galaxies.

Tomorrow it will be New Year’s Eve and it will feel like the days have some kind of purpose again; yesterday we were still in the afterglow of Christmas, eating turkey curry and wearing that new shirt (always an accident waiting to happen) that Auntie Eileen got for you, but today? The 30th of December may as well not exist. You’ve heard of blind dates: this is a bland date.

Forgive me, by the way, if your birthday is on December 30th; for you the day is the opposite of dull. It sparkles and shines and there’s a party and a cake and perhaps singing and dancing. Forgive me, but let’s face it: it’s a pretty average day for the rest of the world, and I’m putting a kind spin on that word average. Sorry, though.

Back to the empty shelf of the 30th December. The tree with no leaves on. The tide of time that is well out. The Christmas card that never got delivered and the New Year’s party invitation that never got sent. The sentence with no full stop. The book with no last page. The song with no final chorus.

Yes, there are so many way to describe this unremarkable day that maybe the day itself is starting to take on a kind of glow. Perhaps its growing in confidence because of my efforts to put it down on paper. It could be that today is more interesting than I thought.

After all, today is New Year’s Eve Eve…