M J James The Ink Weaver

  Where the compass spins and the North Winds meet, Exists a palace of the sleet. No brick or mortar, wood or clay, But diamond walls that catch the day. And there, upon a throne of glaze, The Ice Maiden counts the holiday days. Her hair is spun from platinum light, Reaching her waist in a flow of white, Ice-blonde tresses, smooth and shear, Like frozen waterfalls, crystal clear. A crown of snowflakes rests on high, Reflecting the depth of the polar sky. She needs no hearth with a crackling fire, For the cold is her joy and her heart’s desire. She decks her halls in a different way, With garlands of frost for the holiday. She reaches up where the night gets thin, And pulls the Aurora Borealis in. Green and violet, sweeping and bright, She drapes the ribbons of Northern Light Across the pillars of carved glacier ice, A decoration of exorbitant price. The chandeliers are icicles long, That tinkle a delicate, glass-like song. The polar bears dance on the marble floor, While arctic fox...

  Title: The Empty Chairs At Christmas It’s mid-November, and already the John Lewis advert is trying to emotionally manipulate me into buying a soft toy, and the supermarket aisles are an assault course of Quality Street tins. I’m a bloke in my mid-fifties. I should have a handle on this by now. I’m supposed to be the sturdy oak of the family, the designated turkey carver, the one who groans when the heating gets turned up. And mostly, I play the part. But if I’m honest—and it’s getting harder to lie to myself at 3am—Christmas has become a complicated beast. It’s the time of year when my mental health, usually ticking over like an old Ford Cortina, starts to misfire. It isn't just the commercialism or the expense. It’s the crushing weight of nostalgia and the profound silence of the empty chairs at the table. If you grew up in the UK during the seventies or eighties, you know what I mean. Our Christmases weren’t curated for Instagram. They were chaotic, overheated, and gloriously ...