How Not to Spend Your New Year’s Eve

If you’re planning on getting anything done on New Year’s Eve I recommend not having a son with an upset stomach, meaning you have to scrub three bathrooms from end to end.  I also recommend not trying to distract your children by throwing open the doors to the craft cupboard (argh! I was desperate) and dropping three paint boxes upside down on the hall floor, shattering most of the primary colours to dust all over the rug and skirting boards and floorboards.  After that just nixing the crafts altogether is a good idea unless you like scrubbing PVA glue mixed with feathers out of the grouting.

It has been an extraordinary long day, most of which I have spent staring at unidentified spatter patterns adorning various pieces of furniture and thinking: ‘This is the housework job I hate the most,’ until I move on to the next one, where I have a complete mental reassessment.  And so it goes.

We did take a break at the pub to have a late lunch, when I could not be bothered to shift enough of the feathers to prepare a lunch which would not contain 20% sequins and wool.  It was a disaster.  The children were allowed to order whatever they wanted.  Instead of ordering food that they actually liked, they decided to be experimental (which seems utterly insane to me).  This meant that the entire lunch was spent with them pullling faces, hiding bits of lettuce and generally acting up to the point where I threatened to have my lunch packed into a doggy bag and sit in the car with Tallulah as I couldn’t stand it any longer.

Tallulah has been spoiling for a fight all day.  She is having a badgering moment which involves her pecking away at everyone until they are tearing their hair out and ready to batter her. Then she cries.  It’s exhausting.  This morning it was all to do with her new computer thingy.  We fixed it.  Then it was to do with her new pink, voice activated safe.  We put batteries in it.  After that it was the fact that the battery on her camera had run out.  This did not get fixed as we were literally on our way out of the door when she started.  She has absolutely no sense of appropriate timing whatsoever. It is of course mandatory to interrupt you whilst you are on the toilet.  Or half way to your mouth with a spoonful of cereal, or banging your head repeatedly against the door for a bit of light relief.

In between she has staged a party for one of her bush baby toys. This involved asking everyone lots of questions about what they liked/wanted, and then doing the total opposite.  The crux came when she issued invitations, which her siblings bravely accepted.  She then spouted a ream of dos and donts that made the Nazi regime look positively flexible, to which they also meekly agreed.  After this she then announced that she thought Oscar would probably be uninvited because the bush baby in question wasn’t sure whether she liked him or not.  This said with a very beady eye and her head cocked on one side.  I shall use this in later years to illustrate the international language known as ‘how much trouble can I get you in now?’

Needless to say, the naughty step has been an ever present spectre at the feast all day, and I am on the verge of sitting on it myself, just for a bit of peace and quiet.

On the other hand, all of you who expressed horror at my taking down the Christmas tree early should rest easy. I have spent so long cleaning everything else and shouting at midgets, I haven’t had time.

Still we have a clean house.  I have cleaned all the old year’s filth to make a new and shiny path for the new year’s filth.  How appropriate and yet depressing.

We are not doing anything this evening.  New Year’s Eve is my least favourite event in the entire social calendar and always has been. I hate it.  I hate enforced recreation and nobody does enforced recreation as well as New Year’s Eve.  I do have a bottle of fizz chilling in the fridge, and I may be tempted to have a glass later. Not to celebrate the new year, but to celebrate the fact that the children are out for the count for another eight hours, which seems far more worthy of celebration to me.

This fizz is one of my great discoveries of the year.  It is sparkling red wine. Sounds vile I know.  But it is actually rather moreish.  We went round to some friends’ last week and she offered me a glass of ‘fizz’.  I accepted, as it is one of my life rules never to turn down champagne when offered, lest  it cause offence.  She waved a glass of what looked like aerated ribena under my nose and I had to accept it, lest it cause offence.  I was however, deeply sceptical.  It turned out to be quite delicious.  Rather like Corona Cherryade from when I was about eight and believed it to be the nectar of the gods.  In case you ever wish to try it, sparkling red, rather than Corona Cherryade which is sadly no longer with us, I recommend the Jacob’s Creek sparkling Shiraz. I mentioned it to my brother who was immediately indignant and said: ‘I told you that weeks ago.  It’s all the rage.’  So as usual, I am behind the times and in disgrace.  Still, after a couple of glasses I spect I shan’t mind at all.

And in the mean time, however you are spending your evening all the Boos proffer Oscar’s greeting: ‘Happy Pooh Year!’

Humbug

We are back from Brum. No snow, lots of rain, lots of freezing which I cannot recommend, but it was manageable and we didn’t have to book into a five star hotel (I admit I was a little disappointed).  It has been a long day. Nice, but long.

Jason decided after checking the weather forecast last night, that the last thing he wanted was to be trapped in Ascot thanks to snow, so he arrived home with a small, snoring boy riding shotgun at midnight last night. I have to say that I was relieved. Anxious while he drove home, but relieved that he wasn’t snowed in. I don’t know how relieved he was.  The house where he had been staying had its own indoor swimming pool and a cinema.  He came home to an overflowing kitchen bin, Pringles mashed into the carpet and toys strewn everywhere.  It isn’t even in the same league.

By the time he got home it was snowing, and settling, but some time in the wee small hours it all turned to rain and then kept raining.

Thankfully British trains can do rain and so both trains we took today actually ran on time.  This was somewhat amazing, and we got seats on both of them, which was even more amazing.

We got there early this morning just in case of emergencies.  As there were none it meant we could go shopping, which delighted my heart.  It also delighted the girls, as their aunt had given them some T.K. Maxx vouchers.  Tilly, who is now becoming a young woman, bought herself a handbag and a pair of tailored shorts in grey pinstripe. Very tasteful.  Tallulah, who only aspires to be a lady when there is no other choice, chose a computer thingy that beeps and whirs and allows you to look after virtual pets and organise your day and other things.  She was most pleased with it. 

I promised myself that if I did brave the sales that I would get myself two decent pair of jeans.  I Gokked my wardrobe over the holidays and finally said a sad goodbye to my favourite jeans, which were more hole than jean.  The second favourite pair I only kept because I had thrown away all the cheap jeans I bought in a misplaced attempt to save cash, and then never wore, but they are also on their last legs.  So today I bought two new pairs of jeans (Fatface and Bench) and then I was naughty and bought an Oilily handbag, which I tried to get Tilly to buy first, because it has shiny birds on it and is actually for children.  She chose something much more staid in a kind of Burberry check.  I couldn’t resist the birds, and so it had to be mine.  I will take photos later.

We met my friend for lunch in a tapas bar where we filled the table with small plates and grazed in a very satisfactory manner.  The play was better than last year, and the children loved it.  We went to see a musical version of A Christmas Carol at the Birmingham Rep.  My friend and I agreed that it was hideous, and that next year we would avoid all forms of musical, child based entertainment.  We consoled ourselves at the ice cream parlour afterwards, which made us feel much more jolly.

Considering I was planning for disaster recovery, formulating plan Z and panicking about today, it all went remarkably well.  I am very impressed.  With the last festive jaunt out the way I now consider Christmas well and truly over. I may even take the tree down tomorrow as a special treat.  Scrooge has inspired me.

To snow or not to snow

I had a particularly horrible migraine yesterday, allied to a trip to the hypnotherapist which left me in agony and in tears for most of the day.  Always a nice way to spend a freezing Monday in December.  We will draw a veil.

Today the weathermen threaten snow across the Midlands.  I do not believe them, and the children are so cynical they didn’t even bother to look out of the window when I announced it, but it is likely to happen because Oscar and Jason have gone on a road trip.  In the Floosy.  I am trying not to worry too much, but it is not going well.  The worrying, not the road trip.  Although by all accounts that isn’t going brilliantly either.  For some reason Oscar has decided that he does not want to go with Jason, he wants to stay with me.  This is the only time in living memory that he has ever decided that my company is preferable to that of his father, particularly when his time is spent zooming about in a fast car.   

 He cannot stay with me because I am going to the theatre with the girls tomorrow, in Birmingham, with a friend and her children, and it will take all day, and Oscar is too small.  Jason thought the road trip would be a brilliant treat for him, and distract him from something else he is missing out on.  Unfortunately it is not working.  They have only been gone an hour and they have called once already because Oscar wanted to tell me how sad he is. 

They are going to Ascot to visit a school friend of Jason’s who now lives in Thailand and who is only here for the holidays. It is Jason’s only chance to see him, so I should not be so grumpy that he is gone, but I am.  So there.

And I am now worrying about our trip to Brum tomorrow.  In theory all should be well.  In practice I dread the thought of being snowed in at Birmingham New Street, which is a hellish station of Dantean proportions and is cold, draughty and miserable at the best of times.  I am making sure I take my credit card, so if necessary I shall use it to scoop out a tunnel to the nearest five star hotel.

We have spent most of the day doing crafts.  I am so sick of crafts I cannot tell you.  I would like at least a week where I no longer have to scrub daubs of acrylic paint off of the kitchen table, and this afternoon, most memorably, out of my cup of tea.  I still haven’t managed to get round to threading all the salt dough decorations yet, and now I have four hundred small wooden Swedish people in red felt witches hats sitting around waiting their turn.  It’s bad when your craft items start forming an orderly queue.

I may have to go and eat more Quality Streets.  I have put on three pounds this week, all chocolate based.  Still, I am looking at it as adding a vital layer of fat should we actually be snowed in.  Those three pounds may make all the difference when I am living off it, waiting for the St. Bernard.

Wet Winter Sundays R Not Us

Did I mention how much I hate Sundays? Even now in modern times when things actually open on Sundays, there is still some pervasive miasma of doom which clings to Sundays, particularly ones in winter and ones where you are required to make an effort because of  small children.  Particularly ones where you are all experiencing a slight sense of ennui and post Christmas come down. 

We decided that we would go out for a walk to one of our favourite local beauty spots, Bradgate Park.  Unfortunately we seemed to be experiencing some kind of communal mind meld with the rest of the city, and by the time we got there the car parks were all full and the side streets were littered with Volvos out of which were spilling festively bejumpered families complete with ruddy cheeked labradors wearing tartan collars.  Then, as we were cruising about hopeful of finding a spare millimetre of parking space, the heavens opened.  End of walk. 

We are not hardened country dwellers.  I used to be.  Which is one of the reasons why I escaped into the city as soon as possible.  I do not find it a joyful experience to wander through the rain with the wind blowing it down my vest.  It is not bracing.  It is just crap.  It reminds me of getting chilblains, and cold sores, and never being able to feel my toes, and wearing wellingtons while my socks slithered down my feet and bunched up round my toes.  All feelings I hope never to have to repeat.  I do not think getting hot aches is fun.  Nor is slithering about in a load of sodden bracken shouting at the children while they dangle off sharp rocks trying to force feed each other rabbit shit in the pretence that they are chocolate covered raisins.

We drove about the county in the  drizzle, hoping that something lovely to do would smack us between the eyes.  Instead we ended up with severe house envy and rumbling stomachs and came back home as tetchy as when we set out. 

The children didn’t even want to go out in the first place.  Oscar wanted to watch Monsters Versus Aliens on an endless loop, Tilly wanted to play with her new DS games and Tallulah was being a radio DJ using her new ‘Barbie’ microphone (thanks mum and dad).

After lunch I gave up all pretense of being a good mother and let them do what they liked while I stared at the television wrapped in a blanket.  Occasionally I would unwrap myself to go and break up a fight, or they would come in and sit with me and ask difficult questions about what I was watching and then get bored and wander off half way through my answers. 

The rain pelted down. 

Jason escaped to play poker in the hope of winning us millions.  He came back within the hour.  The mind meld was still in place and it was so full there was no room at the inn. He is fed up because this means he still has to go to work next week.

The rain pelted down.

We have eaten every festive item of food in the house except for the EU sweet mountain which is threatening to slide off the side in the kitchen into the children’s gaping maws.  I checked in the fridge before tea.  We have a packet of sausages, some eggs, some cheddar, four tomatoes and two and a half jars of pickled onions.  Considering I had £200 worth of groceries delivered on Tuesday this is a very ‘cupboard is bare’ scenario.  Tomorrow we must venture out, if only to buy a loaf of bread to make sausage sandwiches.

I am feeling so lazy I cannot even turn the pages of my book anymore.  All my chutzpah has melted away. I just want to watch television and wear my pyjamas.  I may stagger wearily to the kettle every few hours, or gambol over to throw another Quality Street into my mouth, but that is all.  Luckily this is all the other members of the family ever want to do, so for once we are in perfect synchronicity.  I shall give in to my inner couch potato.

We Survive Boxing Day with Aplomb

Boxing day almost done and dusted. Check.

I have the full complement of children, one of whom (Oscar) has sung the word ‘Arse’ in varying volumes and tones all the way home from granny’s house, which was unfortunately so very funny that it reduced the entire family to hysterical giggles and only encouraged him.  Except when Jason tried to record him on the iPhone when he promptly announced that he was a broken robot and was too dead to say ‘arse’ any more. Tsk.

They are currently all squabbling in the shower about what they are going to play in the shower.  By the time they have decided this it will be time to get out of the shower, or blood will have been shed, in which case they will be frog marched out of the shower.  All is back to normal.

The day at granny’s was nice. This was despite  UE turning up with the children two hours late on his way to South Africa to help build a hospital.  I have no idea what has come over him.  Not the two hours late thing. This is totally normal (or indeed two hours early), the building the hospital thing is puzzling though.  He is not known for gestures of largesse or charitable works.  Nor is he known for his DIY skills.  In fact the only time I have ever known him attempt anything remotely handy was when he was persuaded into helping me paint the kitchen in our first house, thirteen years ago.  He chose a yellow which looked like it was freshly squeezed from a dog’s bladder and it took us all day to paint something so horrible we could no longer face entering the room and had to paint over it the following day.

After that he never did anything else he could pay someone else to do, which meant I ended up paying workmen £200 to build me Ikea furniture which he purchased but refused to put up.  I could not put it up I hasten to add, due to being heavily pregnant and crap.  He didn’t even really do lightbulbs.  So my advice would be to avoid all areas of obscure South African hospitals which look like they have been put up by my ex-husband should you ever had the misfortune to be admitted there if you are visiting.

While he wended his way to the land of good works, we have eaten large amounts of outstanding beef, rather good lamb and ‘meh’ ham.  We have  exchanged more presents.  My brother bought all the children those wheelie devices which you stick to your shoes which turn them into heelies.  When he eventually gets around to spawning children I will be buying them all full size drum kits and Fenders.  I have also promised him that he will be the first person I call on the way to A&E with the casualties.  He remains unconcerned.  He sees it as his duty to provide thoroughly unsuitable presents for all his nieces and nephews, a job he embraces with delight.  I will bide my time.  Revenge, as we all know, is a dish best eaten cold.

I got the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which I am very excited about, and one of my major projects for the new year is to master the Red Velvet cupcakes.  I also received the most gorgeous vintage Chinese ragdoll family, which I will take photos of later, and a Bridgewater Christmas mug.  Lovely.

Once Oscar is in bed we will gather for the most serious and important part of the Christmas festivities, watching Doctor Who.  We nearly cracked and watched it without the children last night, but some sense of solidarity prevented us and we have waited.  I am in two minds. I want to watch it, and yet I am convinced it is going to be heartrending, miserable and what’s more, it will be another week until I can watch the conclusion of the heart rending misery.  I am going to hunt down some tissues and prepare to watch through my fingers.

Christmas Cometh Once a Year

Couldn’t resist a Christmas blog.

All duty done.

The girls have been at UE’s since lunch time, Oscar is splashing in the bath with his new Buzz Light Year bubble and bath time extravaganza toy, Jason is downstairs thinking poker thoughts and I am half cut on large glasses of champagne stuffed full of frozen raspberries.  The dinner has been cooked and consumed with the minimum of fuss, and everyone is happy.

Everyone got what they asked for, and more, including yours truly, who was so overwhelmed by receiving three Paul Thurlby alphabet prints from her rather spectacular husband, that she broke down in tears.  Sad, I know, but there you go.  I have J is for Jazz, U is for Underground and F is for Fierce.  F is for Fierce is particularly special apparently, because it is me!

I also got the book; ‘Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry’ by Leanne Shapton, that I had asked for.  I read it this afternoon, curled up on the day bed in the study, snuggled under my vintage quilt with a hot water bottle. What joy.  It really was the most delightful Christmas afternoon I have ever spent.  If I hadn’t already done my top ten books of the year, it would be in there.  As it is, it is only a fiver on Amazon at the moment.  Well worth it.

And four, count them, four chocolate oranges.  Huzzah!

On top of that, I got £120 worth of Amazon vouchers.  All spent by me in a delightful hour of consumer madness on the internet this morning, and something guaranteed to make the next week feel like Christmas all over again, as my parcels fly in in dribs and drabs.

Jason also bought me a cat.  Unfortunately not a real one.  Even more unfortunately it is an animatronic, fur covered one called Smudge, which is quite the most evil thing I have ever owned.  It is enormous.  About the size of a small car and about as cuddly.  It purrs, it drinks milk out of a baby bottle and it meows whilst kneading its paws.  It is truly vile, but it was very, very funny and the children are exceedingly impressed. It is currently riding Oscar’s new rocking horse round the lounge.

A successful christmas, achieved with minimal shouting and maximum pleasure.  To be followed by a lovely day visiting mum and dad on Boxing day tomorrow, and the chance to consume half a cow. Not to be sniffed at.

I am about to ring my girls to make sure that the second half of their day was as lovely as the first, and I will leave you with the wish that you too had a wonderful day and that Santa bought you everything you wished for, and that whatever he did bring you made you as happy as me.

A Cheering Festive Verse by Tallulah

All spellings are the poet’s own.

Down in the dumps

Down in the dumps the betels crall

Down in the dumps the senterpeeds build houses out of coke botels and tins

Down in the dumps the lady birds have junk baths

Down in the dumps the magits cry

Down in the dumps catapilers snore

Down in the dumps the spiders spin

Down in the dumps the deetels say good buy

I have invented ‘Green’ my Lord

I have reached salt dough critical mass.  The problem, I have decided, apart from my ability to reach levels of impatience previously only recorded with finely tuned scientific instruments in laboratory conditions in under a nano-second, is that everything must be done in three batches.  It is no good whatsoever asking three small children to share if you wish to achieve any level of harmony whatsoever in the world of arts and crafts.  You might as well ask them to navigate the Limpopo using an A-Z and a limp sausage roll.

Now we have acres and acres of salt dough decorations.  If I were to hang them all on the tree I would need to use some kind of steel girders to prop up the branches.  The oven has been on for hours and we are all rolling with sweat, and we haven’t even painted them yet.

Every time I went to help one child with their proto-creations, another one would have some kind of craft based issue which was a crisis of monumental proportions and needed immediate aid.  The air was alive with motes of flour and we are now all the proud possessors of asthmatic wheezes and coughs.

I did as Grit, my virtual aide in this enterprise suggested.  I added glitter to the mixture.  We also did some experimenting with food dyes.  We have a lot of green things.  Enormous amounts of green things.  They are stupendously green.  It is very festive, but looking at it all en masse is making me feel rather bilious.  I am hoping that they will paint over some of the green in the next few days.  Knowing my lot, it will probably be with a different shade of green.

In the process of unleashing the creative floodgates I have covered the entire kitchen with flour, dough and glitter.  This has necessitated cleaning the floor twice, and washing all the chair covers.  I have also scrubbed three bathrooms, washed and bathed three children and one adult, and broken my favourite Moomin’s mug with Thingumy and Bob on it.  What’s more, it was my fault I broke it , so I had to seethe silently because there was nobody but myself to blame. Tsk.  So unfair!

In the midst of all this the bin men rumbled up and I realised that I had forgotten to put the bins out. Bad move two days before Christmas with the bins already heaving with refuse, particularly the one for paper and card.  I galloped outside in my floury pyjamas with green finger tips yelling ‘Stop!’ and ‘Wait for me!’ Very kindly they did.  If it had been me in charge of the bin lorry I’d have floored it and made for the hills.  I think they took pity on me because they thought I was mentally ill. Quite right too.

Just as I was in the middle of cleaning, my dad arrived.  He needed to collect something from me.  He stayed for lunch.  Sadly he didn’t take any of the salt dough decorations or leftover fairy cakes with him when he left.  Sigh.

Still, I have fulfilled the brief, grudgingly, messily and with bad grace, but nobody said it had to be perfect.

I have a doctor’s appointment to have my ears syringed in half an hour.  I must just go and check that my ears are not full of green flour first.

p.s. for those of you who are wondering about the title, it’s from Blackadder II when Percy dabbles in alchemy and invents the very valuable ‘green’ instead of that rubbishy ‘gold’.

Feeling Festive (probably fleetingly)

I have not forgotten that I need to announce who has won my Christmas prize draw, by the way. It’s just that I cannot make my mind up which one of you has won yet. I shall mull it over a little longer and send the prize after Christmas in order to cheer up the misery that is traditionally known as January.

Today has actually been rather nice, apart from swingeing stomach cramps which are still plagueing me and for which I am still nursing a hot water bottle against the swollen wreck of my belly. I have gone through three sets of clothes today and can’t do up my trousers properly I am so sore, although some of that is probably down to having stuffed my face like a pig all day. Our Christmas Ocado order arrived, and I have been testing (I recommend the olives stuffed with chillis best so far) just in case of poisons.  And then I went out for dinner.  Mmmmmm!

I have taken a picture of the huge pile of goodies we have accrued to show you, but I’m too tired to fiddle about with the camera now, plus Bev sent me some gorgeous chocolate which I have to add to it, and Andrea bought me a Chocolate Orange (my first of the season), so it is not a fair representation of the stash either.  Then my cousin arrived with the lark this morning to take the girls to Cadbury World for the day. Not that I have any chocolate to add to the pile from that particular outing.  Not unless I take a picture of the inside of the girls’ bellies anyway.

Cadbury World,  for the uninitated, is actually the Cadbury chocolate factory outside Birmingham, which is now open to the public, and sold as the Alton Towers of the chocolate world.  It is quite fun, but it is basically the back of the factory with the lights turned down and a few cocoa based fairground rides.  The redeeming feature is people thrusting chocolate bars into your face every five seconds, and access to the staff shop.  I remember the first time we took Tallulah.  She was riding the heights of an obsession with Willy Wonka and was absolutely disgusted upon arriving at Cadbury World to find that there was no river of chocolate and a distinct lack of small, orange Oompa Loompa’s galloping about.  Every photo we have of her on that day shows her scowling with disgust at another massive disappointment.  Bless her.

Today she was better prepared and was more excited about the free chocolate than anything else.  Which is just as it should be.

Oscar wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered about seeing them go as he had convinced himself that they were going to school and felt morally superior that he got to stay at home and watch Mr. Maker whilst still wearing his pyjamas.  No harm done there.

He was even more pleased when a) we took a trip to the Loros shop and he was allowed to buy a toy tractor and b) we got to make jelly when he got home.  He had been campaigning to make jelly since breakfast, and the fact that I gave in so easily was a great source of glee to him.  I’m just glad that the price of entertaining him was so small.  I was also happy because I got a Hobbs cashmere sweater, a Coast dress, and change from a tenner.  Happy as a lark.

This evening I went to Stratford with the girls and my mum and dad to see the RSC’s Christmas show, Arabian Nights.  It was a pain to get there, as Jason had to come home early to sit Oscar, and then drop me at my parents.  Then we had to drive to Coventry to pick up the girls from my cousin’s house and then on to Stratford.  I was really beginning to wonder if it was worth it by the time we  got there.  But a dinner at Carluccio’s started me down the path to festive well-being and the play finished the job beautifully.  We met Andrea and her mum and brother in law who were all going too, and it was just lovely.

I urge you to go if you live anywhere nearby.  It was a really magical experience.  We were all entranced, even my dad.  It was clever and funny and sad and utterly entertaining.  I found myself wishing that Oscar were just that bit bigger, because he would have loved it too.  There were wonderful tales of men doing apocalyptic farts, and of flesh eating ogres being turned into horses and princes with swords embarking on magical quests, as well as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Sinbad the Sailor.  The costumes were beautiful, the effects were amazing and the attention to detail was superb.  We all came away feeling much more Christmassy.  Tallulah, who has never experienced an RSC production before, cried and laughed and was totally entranced. As we left she pronounced it ‘awesome’ and asked if we could go again tomorrow. That’s a great endorsement.  It helped that she got a jelly baby from a magician in a street scene, and another actor gave her a satsuma as he was passing (no beard).

I am hoping to hold on to the feeling, although it is the day of making salt dough decorations tomorrow, so I am not sure it will last past the bottom of the first cafetiere of the day.  Still, at least I’ve felt it once this year.

The Meat Man Cometh

While I embrace Christmas by storing mouldy oranges and leafing endlessly through the Radio Times in the hope that the next time I look something wonderfully exciting will have appeared for my televisual pleasure, the rest of my family attempt to go gourmet.  I use the word ‘attempt’ advisedly, as the best laid plans of mice and Boo gang agley quite aft.

It used to be my father who would be seized by strange, food based whims during the festive season.  There was the year he decided to go foreign and cook lamb curry.  It took about four days to cook one curry and cost about £300.  He was an early fore runner of the Heston Blumenthal school of cookery, and we would not have been at all surprised to find our curry served from a pipette onto a crumpet.  Sadly this had nothing to do with his scientific or culinary prowess and everything to do with mild eccentricity and having used up every other pot and pan to cook the damn thing in, leaving nothing to serve it with or on.

Then there was the infamous pork pie year, when he made a beautiful pork pie from scratch, only to find that it was raw. Ho hum, pig’s bum.

My mother’s approach to festive cookery has always been rather erratic.  There were the early years where she felt obliged to go off piste, particularly on Christmas Eve.  I recall a disastrous attempt at beef casserole cooked with Guinness and oranges, which she swore up and down would be delicious, and which was hideous and tasted like warmed up Guinness with bits of cow and orange floating in it, and which made us all fart like billy goats for the duration of the festivities.  Then there were the years where she gave up entirely on the creativity front and just got on with the traditional Christmas offerings.  Then recently, in the last few years, spurred on by my brother, they have formed an unholy alliance and begun experimenting again.

My brother trained as a chef, way back in the olden days, and is actually rather good.  He is a very flamboyant chef and every recipe he embarks upon is a vast opera of flavours and requires the largest amounts of everything.  He does not do small.  He sneers at canapes, he jeers at petit fours. If he cooks meat it is the entire animal.  If he makes preserves (which he is strangely fond of) he makes metric tonnage.  It is all writ large.  I think this is why he ropes in the parents.  They have a big oven, and he needs assistants.

It was last year I believe that they created ‘the ginger pig’, a monstrous home cooked ham for which they got inspiration from Nigella of the luscious lips.  She, Nigella that is, cooked a ham in ginger beer, claiming that it was marvellous.  My parents were converted to the ways of the ginger pig, but in the time honoured tradition of the Boo family, refused to have anything to do with nonsense like following recipes.  There followed days of trauma where they couldn’t recall whether the pig should be cooked in ginger beer or ginger ale, or indeed how much beer/ale, or anything else for that matter.

Eventually they freestyled, radically altering, ignoring and embroidering upon the original, eventually glazing the ham with marmalade or some other random preserve, in the misguided belief that this might add to the gingeriness.  Of course it did nothing of the kind, and they then had the gall to complain that they were not very satisfied with Nigella and that the pig was not very gingery at all.

This year another ham has appeared and been cooked.  It has been low key, after the debacle of last year.  In fact my mother announced today that the ham was very good, but said scornfully that they had not bothered with all that ‘fancy pants stuff like cloves and the like,’ No. Who would do anything as foolish as that?

This year meat is the theme.  The ham is enormous.  I also accompanied my brother and dad last week to get half a sheep, which they will eat on Christmas day.  Apparently they are going somewhat medieval with this.  Instead of containing it in some kind of vesssel, they are going to pound it about a bit to loosen it up and weaken its resistance.  Then they are going to rub it with festive unguents (I know not), and then drape it about the interior of the oven where it will roast and drip and bubble and frisk about onto the veg and potatoes below.  When it is cooked they intend to throw it straight onto the table, open all the doors and windows and then attack it with just their hands and teeth, clad merely in furs and howling like cave dwellers at the last Christmas party before the sabre tooth tiger attacks.

If they survive this they are going to cook an enormous amount of dead cow on Boxing Day.  I also accompanied my brother, and this time my mum, to get this last Friday.  We got horribly lost on the way to the butchers, which was on a farm where they grew and picked their own meat, miles away from anywhere.  It was all very rural and feral.  We got there, with snow flurrying, to find that the butchers was a giant, refrigerated shed with a counter.  All the doors were open to the elements, which were behaving in a very brisk manner.  The solitary butcher was wearing a thin white coat, and no gloves and was skilfully hacking up large slabs of chilled meat with a seriously scary knife.  It was proper stuff.  They bought £50 worth of forerib, which weighed a ton, and which I am secretly worried they will never get in the oven.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would approve, and if consulted would probably advise digging some kind of pit in the garden and burning coals in it for twenty four hours before wrapping the beef in chestnut leaves and honey and burying it in the coals for a week.

I hope they don’t consult him.  My dad has weak ankles and a propensity for falling over, my mum has only just gotten over an ear infection and her balance isn’t the greatest, and my brother, although enthusiastic, is not always good with the technicalities, and likely to dig through a water main.  I’m visiting tomorrow and have no desire to get there to find them all upside down in three feet of icy water while the beef glares on the side lines.