“It must be surreal for you,” wrote a friend in a recent email, “spending Christmas out there in the tropics.”

“Not really,” I replied, “this is the fourth year running that we’ve had a hot one.”

That’s odd, chimed in one of my many internal voices (the one in the elf suit). For a homebird like you who, apart from the last four years, has only spent a few Christmases away from Cornwall (London, Marlow and once, randomly, Portugal) – that is a very odd statement indeed.

He had a point, my elf-voice. Our Christmases were always spent in Cornwall at the cottage, where the only other location decision we had to make was whether to spend it with one set of grandparents on the south coast, or with the other set on the north and then in whose house. Stockings were dragged into Mum and Dad’s bed, and then we’d meet with cousins for the big lunch.

We kids always had to wait until after the meal to open the big presents under the tree (yawn). The youngest child was postman, and went around the room lobbing gifts onto people’s laps, often without really reading the label, so that Granny was often in danger of unwrapping a wrench set or HMV voucher. Sometimes we’d play a game. We always watched a Christmas film. There was always Quality Street, and we always had a walk on the beach at some point. Our best set of crackers was bought by Mum and contained frilly knickers; there’s a photo of me, my sister, cousin and aunt having a race to jump into the pants over our tights: good, clean family fun. We always had a banquet, and I would count the separate dishes: turkey or goose, a big juicy ham, sausages tucked up in bacon, both mash and roasties, parsnips, sprouts, peas and carrots, swede (not the pop group, the vegetable), two types of gravy, a nut roast, stuffing, cranberry sauce and bread sauce, then Christmas pud, Christmas cake and mince pies. Sausage rolls, often, for later on. We had an adults’ and a kids’ table: Schloer for us, bubbles for them. I can smell the log fires crackling. Yep, I suppose in my heart Christmas will always be about Cornwall.

Yet here I am again in the tropics, and as I just don’t seem to be able to get myself back to the UK for the festivities these days, I adopt a tropical enthusiasm for Dec 25 and I’m perfectly fine about dollops of melting whipped cream on the mince pies, Santa hat selfies on white beaches and ice cool beer replacing mulled wine (although I do still stubbornly make my mulled wine, and why ever not). Doesn’t really sound too bad, does it?

What matters most is who we spend the day with, and for me there should always be either a crowd or family – preferably both, but I’ll take them separately if I have to. This year we’ve a small group, just the three PCs and my sister, who is sledding into Changi just in time for lunch on the big day. Our Dads won’t be there but they’ve both got the next trips already in their sights, and just knowing that makes it OK. I’ve already got the crackers and Quality Street; we’re ready.

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be spent just how and where you want them.

Mum’s popped up again. I don’t write about her much, in the same way that I don’t talk about my breakfasts or my shoe size, but she appears now and then as I may have mentioned briefly before. Like I said, it’s never in a haunting way – she’s not in the wardrobe or sitting next to me on the bus. In a weird reflection of the real-life Mum, our meetings are ad-hoc and surprisingly intense. Last month, having not swung by for ages, she was suddenly filtering down through my self-tour headphones at the Changi War Museum, making me sit on a bench to catch my breath with the immediacy of her arrival. As emotional as that museum was, I’m not sure the sudden sensation of her presence (or memory of her, whatever you want to call it) was entirely down to the harrowing prisoner stories and sad sepia photos. I reckon it was because of the beautiful hymns being sung into my ears – although she was by no means madly religious, Mum loved a hymn or two, and that’s for sure what caused her to pop up then. Well, she’s back again, and this time I blame the carols – and the baubles.

Mum had an interesting approach to Christmas. With her it began in August, and an out-of-the-cornflower-blue-sky email to each family member asking where we thought we might be many miles ahead, on Dec 25. We would then all be required to engage in a series of slightly bad-tempered messages until we ended up in Cornwall, or London, or wherever, and then there’d be nothing, nothing at all, in fact if you mentioned it again she’d sound harassed.

As with most people it would be about now, mid to late November, that my sister and I would begin to email each other again about the festivities. We would share lists, float ideas, place Amazon orders, email the folks and the cousins and get the whole thing going. With carols in the shops and the first light flurry of party bookings falling onto our diaries, the mighty cogs of Christmas would start to turn.

What about Mum? Stuck in the office, glued to the phone, totally ignoring the jolly hollies in an effort to shove the latest deadline out of the way.

Then the Amazon orders would start to arrive and my sister and I would confirm what we’d got, and add to or subtract from our lists, and while we were at it we’d put in some last-minute warnings about being overhung on this, or this, or this date.

Mum? Off to Bognor to meet a man about a statue, then tea with the girls the next day, a PMSA meeting or two, all the while doggedly dealing with the same tortuous deadline.

First person to mention the C word, last one to do anything about it, Mum always managed to somehow be utterly late to the party yet was still one of the best gift-buyers I’ve ever known. The choices were at times random, unusual, but almost always spot-on, an impressive fact when you knew that she did absolutely all her shopping at breakneck speed somewhere between the 20 and 23 of December. When all our gifts were serenely wrapped, stacked and ready to go, we’d get a bossy email fired into the inbox, lit up with a red ‘URGENT’ flag, full of bold text, shouty underlines and panicky jokes. There’d be far-out ideas for Dad that we’d already nixed several weeks before during a rushed cup of tea. There’d be a blindingly clever way of doing absolutely all of the cousins’ kids, late but perfect ideas for close friends and other rellies, and at the same time she and Dad would rattle off 142 Christmas cards, machine-gunned through every letter-box on the block at the speed of light, while attending roughly three drinks parties a day in that last crazy festive week.

Usually on around 23 December the hire car would heave onto the M40 and limp towards Cornwall, where the gifts would be dragged through the inky rain into the upstairs bedroom until the next night, when wrapping would finally commence in earnest with a glass of something strong at about 7pm on Christmas Eve. At least one present a year was left in London. A little something for later on, we’d all agree, kindly.

Back to now, and another Christmas in the tropics. Orchard Road lights are pink this year, with glorious unicorns and strange pyramids stacking slightly athletic Santas under puce stars swinging in the warm rain. It’s a confectioner’s dream, with absolutely no link to the baby Jesus or any little donkeys, pine trees or puddings, and Mum would have absolutely loved it all, especially the huge golden hanging globes. Every year part of her amazing speed-of-light shopping would include a new bauble for each family member: beautiful glass creations, hand-blown and webbed with delicate colours in just the right shade for each of us. How she picked them all out in time, got them so beautifully right, I’ll never know.

Nowadays, I do the same for her. This year’s choice is a little hanging horse for the lunar zodiac, made by hand-knitted Cambodians, purple with pretty silver detail.

Photo of pink unicorn by TheThompsons

Merry baubles, Mum. Hope you like it.