I had a great Christmas Day this year, spent with my missus and friends at my favorite third second space (retired, remember): good food that I didn’t have to cook myself, good beer courtesy of Old Glenham, good friends, and good vibes, good British vibes.

I even had a long-running remote conversation with my two oldest friends back home in the UK, thanks to WhatsApp.

Maybe that’s why I have the hump, homesickness.

But it can’t be that.

I haven’t called the UK home in 46 years, and in all of that time I have never once returned for Christmas Day, or New Year’s Day, or this period in between.

And to be honest, I haven’t really missed it.

NYC is my home, so how could I be homesick?

Maybe it is timesickness?

A yearning to replicate great times that I experienced in my younger years?

Nope, that doesn’t sound like it either; as far as I am concerned, I am still in my younger years.

Sure I look back fondly on those times, but I wouldn’t want to repeat them even if that were possible, and it isn’t possible.

Even if I hadn’t moved on, everybody else has certainly moved on, physically, emotionally and geographically; well, most of them.

And the physical framework has long since crumbled.

The majority of the places that I remember from those distant days no longer exist in the same form, and most no longer exist at all.

Do you know how many pubs remain in Strood?

You can pretty much count them on the fingers of one hand.

But I no longer live in Strood, or London, or Bedford, or Edinburgh, or Lerwick, so why the grumblies?

It has nothing to do with the Ghosts of Christmas Past; those were all happy times, and I am fortunate to still have good friends from those times to share memories with.

And we can cross off the Ghost of Christmas Present as well; this year was one of the best in recent memory.

So that leaves the Ghost of Christmas Still To Come.

But we do not know what that ghost looks like yet, and maybe that is the concern.

I worry about NYC.

I worry that it has been coming under attack from all quarters.

I worry that in 2026 it will come under attack from within.

Jeez, maybe I worry too much, and that just doesn’t sound like me at all.

Perhaps it is time for me to get off of the couch and go out for a beer.

[Checks conditions outside – driving rain, crusty slush on streets and sidewalks, freezing cold and biting wind predicted]

Damn!

That would give anybody the blahs.

Maybe tomorrow.