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First Christmas without her

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Have some Robert Fripp Christmas cheer:



And so ends my first Christmas without Sandra. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about her, unless this was playing. Which is what I was hoping for spending the holidays at my parents, away from everything that would’ve reminded me of her and celebrating Christmas with her. Instead I fell back in the old family patterns, which is just what I needed right now even if I dreaded it a bit beforehand. It’s been relaxed, with a nice proper dinner yesterday, turkey and all and not too many obligations other than playing Settlers of Catan.

Not quite looking forward to Christmas

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I may not look it on the outside, but I’m actually quite sentimental if I let myself, which is why Christmas and especially New Year’s Eve are always a bittersweet time of the year for me even in normal circumstances. Everything surrounding Christmas is drenched in sentimentality about the family and love for the family of course, which is nice if you have a family, not so much otherwise. And then there’s New Year’s Eve and the runup to that, as we all get to reflect on the year past and what went right and what we’d like a do-over on. I always hated that anyway — “another year of not achieving much” — but this is the year Sandra died.

And it’s only been slightly more than a month since she died and it’s been hard, but as long as I can keep up my routines I can cope: go to work, obsess about blogging or cataloging books and comics, don’t try to think too much. But I will be off work from Friday and going to see the family (taking the cats on the train too, which will be fun) and I’ll have two weeks without much distraction but everything reminding me. Not that I won’t have fun at Christmas or not look forward to be away from home for a while, but I think the wee small hours will be a little bit less comfortable…

More comix loot

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Another comics stack bought

Don’t see it as an opportunity for me to gloat, but for you to get to hear about great shopping opportunities. Which there are, as keen eyed viewers will have spotted the six Krazy Kat collections lurking in that shot, all bought at De Slegte for less than six euros each. Plenty are still available. Also gotten there, two issues of the Pontiac Review I didn’t have yet (Peter Pontiac being the closest Holland has to an underground legend like Crumb or Spain), plus perhaps the best catch of the lot, the new hardcover collection of Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese, which I actually did pay full price for because Dorkin is a god amongst cartoonists and deserves all the succes he can get.

Not pictured: two more Bob Morane issues and the 1986 The Art of George Herriman, as well as a collection of Rian Hughes’ stories that Image for some reason put out last year. Hughes being England’s answer to Yves Chaland or Serge Clerc, working in the same sort of retro-fifties/early sixties art style. You’ll know him, if you do, from being the artist on the early Grant Morrison Dan Dare revisionist series Dare. A brilliant little collection this which should be gotten just for that Dare series, but the rest looks swell as well.