Fragment #7 - Jingle Bells !

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I cannot help laughing while I’m doing this very joke for almost the thousandth time. The very few people who witnessed it all came to the conclusion that I was crazy. I remember very well their struggle to keep a straight face when I tried to explain the cultural reference to Batman Returns by Tim Burton. You know, when Michelle Pfeiffer comes back to her flat after having been thrown out of the window by Christopher Walken. The moment before she rips her leather coat apart and sew it up into the Catwoman outfit. Never mind... I have yelled this sentence in every place I have been living over the past fifteen years: my parent’s house in Limerick, my student room in Cork, and my two flats in Angoulême.
The holydays are over, and this is the first time I have been in this place for two weeks. Melaine’s parents live in a city in the north of Charente, called Ruffec, where I have spent most of the time from Christmas to New Year’s Eve. It is only half an hour away from here by car, and I have been going back and forth for the few training sessions we had.
It started snowing yesterday evening and it has not stopped since. The morning sky is a milky shade of white. The whole world seems frozen outside. The life is going on in slow motion. Cars are driving so slowly they are getting outsped by walkers. It feels a little unreal as if time turned back for a century or more during the night. I had to suppress the urge to build a snowman on the pavement and to take part in every snowball fight I’ve come across. I have even helped my step neighbour by pushing his car while I was picking up my mail. I kept smiling, thinking about the white world, when I came back to my place. It is funny to see how everyone awes under the falling snowflakes, and how unprepared they are to face the snow on the street.
The grin grows larger when I read the wish cards I received from the few French friends I have here. Then it slowly faded away when I took a look at the white envelopes I still had in my hands. My lessor raised the rent again. Though he said he wouldn’t, after the former increase in September. The gas and the electricity bill are quite spicy too. Lucky me, with the family I have, I am not inclined to blow up the telephone bill…
Well, I will worry about that later. Now, I feel like a long run in the snow is the right thing to do.