Yesterday, I self-soothed by buying ribbon. Went out to the post office and found myself in the haberdashers, picking colours and thicknesses behind a woman talking, at great length, about how she would not be rushed. The plastic reels clattered lightly on the counter. One began its own wobbling, independent venture off and away. Three metres of each, please, and the haberdasher raised her eyebrows. In this room of fluorescent strip lighting and neat rolls of fabric and elderly ladies pocking around in the fill-your-cup-for-50p button box, I had marked myself out as a Big Spender. While the haberdasher - a kind-faced lady in dungarees - unspooled the metres, a chic woman dressed head-to-toe in beige came and picked up a zip, popped a pound on the til, and dashed out again, wishing us all Feliz Navidad. 

Technically, I’d gone in for ribbon - to tie around presents, I suppose. But it was the ritual I was after. The shop reminds me of one my mother has taken me to since I was small, for dress fabric and hair ribbon and curtain hooks and, when we were older, denim patches and dye. These places, crucially, are not John Lewis. They are workmanlike and full of wonder; they hold the thrill of the hunt, that somewhere beneath the gleaming curtain net might lie some damask. You overhear conversations there, and see the small-ads pinned up on the noticeboard. I find them comforting. 

Comfort feels in short supply at the moment. Another December without the sparkle to distract from the fact the days shift from dark into grey and back again. Certainty only lies, it seems, in statisticians’ graphs and cancelling plans. We stare at plastic rectangles for the appearance of little lines.

I shuffle between exhaustion and boredom, listlessness and irritation, emptying out a diary as if it were a pocket full of old receipts. The space we are left with is not the one we had bargained for; it’s difficult to cultivate a sense of rest or peace when you’re constantly awaiting bad news. 

When I have managed to work out what it is that I would like to do to feel better, those things have sometimes surprised me. A long, uphill cycle through a city shorn of its festive revellers. The soft flump with which seasons’ worth of compost becomes unstuck from the bin and lands disgustingly in my lap. Changing the plastic food waste tub on the kitchen side for a glass jar, so I can see the shapes banana skins and carrot tops make all piled up. Sitting between the forelegs and backlegs of a long dog, as if he were a bolster cushion. Visiting a friend, and realising that we both wake up early to sit and watch the light shift out of darkness, making that particular part of the day feel less alone. 

I have found outside - and the garden - less tempting. It is a place I go because I know it is good for me, and I don’t want the garden to become a place of should. Instead, it carries on: poppy seedlings pushing up, silhouettes of fennel skeletons, one brave hollyhock flower hanging on in a strange lilac. The last of the bulbs sit in a box by the back door. Sweet pea and cornflower seedlings leaf up happily without my assistance. I left it too late to order mulch to be delivered. When I went out a few days ago, a wren had taken shelter in the unruly, leafless clematis. Singing his little heart out. 

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