what if...

Have a look at your diary.  Are there many (any!) days in December that aren't filled already?

School events, work and club Christmas parties,  shopping, family functions, a bit more Christmas shopping, possibly a trip to the hairdresser, the car needs a service, need to sort the mortgage, get a school pool key, start stocking the pantry for christmas day, organise the summer holiday....I'm getting tired just thinking about it all!

My editorial from the latest issue of the Village Voice....

It's a been a busy year - busier that most I am sure - with irregular school terms, national tragedies and celebrations punctuating our seasons, and a higher than normal incidence of bugs and germs ''doing the rounds''.

So as you read through this Village Voice - and marvel at just how busy our town is - I would like you to consider a challenge.  what if, just for a a few hours (or longer if you dare), you cancelled all those urgent, and important, and also the urgent and important  engagements, and just stopped.   Stayed home.  Kept the television, computer and telephone turned off.  Or went for a walk, leaving the mobile phone at home.  Or chose to turn down yet another party invitation? Or made just one less trip to the shop for an émergency'' ?  It's possible no-one else would even notice, or if they did, they could well be wistfully imagining it was them who had not raced to get to the party on time.

Imagine what you could do with the three extra hours that a Christmas party comes in.  Or the hour circling the car park at the shopping mall.  Or the 45 minutes in the queue at the supermarket checkout.

Consider what you might do to make life just a little simpler, a little easier this christmas.  It might be as simple as saying ''no''.