We were going to do a Christmas riff, something to blow out the stale air of traffic jams and angry shoppers and looming deadlines and too much food and dysfunction ahead. The suspension of normal activity for enforced idleness. Fuck that. We were going to make a Christmas riff, THE Christmas riff. It would rock. It would quake. It would go on for hours.

Then Mr Nite got stuck in traffic and the thought of getting stuck in more traffic was too much and he called me to say that the riff was off. I could see out of my window that the cars were inching down the road like slugs, and I saw his point. Besides, he said, Old Man Gloom already did a Christmas riff. We can do a New Year riff.

But we had a practice room booked where we could make noise. I don’t know, there was a time when I quite liked having an excuse to get out of doing music, or anything creative for that matter. Oh you can’t make it? Oh well, never mind, I would say, and slope off, relieved, to do something a bit safer, like…I dunno now. What did I do? Read, probably. Hassle whichever boyfriend was handy. There’s such satisfaction sometimes in confirming your own suspicions that you’re a lazy loser, a drifter who never gets stuff done. There was, at any rate. But today, I weighed up the options and I thought, OK, it’s either stay in, clear up, drink port and wrap presents, like you’re supposed to. Or it’s get in that damn studio and make your own Christmas riff.

Obviously there was no question. Although I felt bereft without my partner in noise, I also felt intrepid and inspired. Shouldered the backpack that my synth lives in, wrapped in its William Morris print pillowcase; picked up the guitar.

The practice rooms were deserted and quiet, as if Christmas wasn’t the best time to play music ever. As if it wouldn’t be more fun to be in here. People are weird. I shut the door and plugged stuff in, and there I was, three hours on my own with only my own voice and noises for company. I realised I’d never done this before: you do solo stuff at home, in the bedroom, or in the front room when your wife goes out. You use headphones and stuff. You have little breaks to make tea. Now I felt like I was in an exam, and that someone would come and collect what I’d done afterwards. It was too weird.

But soon, all that was forgotten. Nothing special happened, just noises, some lyrics, some ideas. Not even a riff, more like a drift: a Christmas drift. Nothing that musicians don’t do all the time. All you need to know, though, is how very wonderful it felt, that strangely contradictory tiredness you get from playing and singing alone for a while: as if you ‘ve been unaware of your body for hours, while using it to its fullest. It beats me, how all this works, and the only reason I keep doing it is to find out.

Our ace photographer Cat Stevens sent us this card, which is really funny and really adorable both. It’s still Christmas, and the streets are still sluggish and filled with frantic people and I just went to Sainsbury’s and it was like a bright coloured, gorged to the hilt, gluttonous hell. And really, I don’t like Christmas. I’m listening to The Arcade Fire’s lovely bells and passion and exuberance and lyrics about living out in the snow to get me in the mood; I went to hear the Dufay Collective play medieval Christmas songs in a Hawksmoor church; I drank hot port and danced round the living room with my friends to the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and I made mix CDs and bought nice gifts from Stoke Newington. Lord help me, I tried. But god, this city, crawling towards its proscribed day of rest, is no place to be.

The bright sound of 2005 - it zings and rings like 2004 didn’t, and I only mean that aurally, by the way, 2004 was pretty ace in many ways - sounds good from where I’m sitting, watching more cars, more buses, and more cars again, inching and inching along. One year I said to a friend as we looked over Hackney marshes on a Christmas eve at the lights in people’s houses and flats strectching off into the distance, oh I do hope those all people are having a lovely Christmas. He laughed and told me off for being naive and twee. There was an edge to his voice; he was almost angry that I could be so dumb. He was so right, of course. But I can’t help still thinking that, dropping a blessing on all the cars – hoping that they’re going, well, at least somewhere OK.

Posted on Friday, December 24th, 2004by Frances May Morgan