I am very glad to announce that my children are not Christmas early risers.
We had already made coffee by the time Oliver emerged, at quarter to eleven. He resisted Lucy’s pleas to be left alone for just another few minutes, and dragged her downstairs to open their presents.
To their happiness, Father Christmas had been. “I told you he would come,” said Lucy, happily, with the air of one whose innocent trust in the universe has been justified. We had a very peaceful coffee by the fire whilst they investigated their stockings. Mostly the contents were books and sweets, but Lucy had some new inks and brushes, and Oliver had some soap. It was some special L’Occitane soap, which he has used on holiday and liked, so Father Christmas thought that he might support the Boy Polishing Project: if he were to use the soap, we explained, he could smell lovely like that the whole time.
He transported it up to his shower. I don’t think he has used it yet, but I have hopes.
We had just about managed to get dressed when Number One Daughter and her family arrived. They were not having Christmas dinner with us, because of joining all of Number One Son-In-Law’s family, but they came to see how we were getting on, to wish us a happy Christmas and eat all of our chocolates.
Ritalin Boy had brought an assortment of Christmas dragons to show us, because of course he is still a dragon himself, a red one. He went upstairs and hid my jewellery box, just as a dragon thing to do. I have not found it yet.
They had brought Christmas presents for the children. At my request they had given Lucy some cash, much to her relief, because she has got to fund her spending habits for the next term, and had unfortunately spent a very great deal of money on the Christmas markets.
Number One Son-In-Law gave Oliver a gun. It is an air pistol.
For the next half an hour our neighbours were treated to the sight of an excited boy, clad in a new dressing gown, leaning out of the first floor office window, shooting at targets in the garden.
I am pleased to say that it was raining, so there were no children in the alley trying out their new bicycles, and also fortunately, all our car windows seem to be intact. The pellets hammered rather startling holes in the target board, and we have decided not to use the gun in the house at all, ever. I agreed that we could make an exception if we had burglars, we must now be the only house on the street where somebody is now actually hoping for a robbery.
We don’t open our Christmas presents until after dinner, so after they had gone we wandered peaceably around the Library Gardens with the dogs and listened to the absolute quiet. I am looking forward to the day when everybody has got an electric car, it is lovely to live in a silent world.
Dinner was late, partly because of my lack of organisation. We made non-alcoholic cocktails for everybody. This is because I am still not feeling terribly attracted by alcohol. I had a glass of something lightweight and fizzy with Elspeth last night, but one was enough, and it took me all evening to finish it. This is partly due to the after effects of drinking too much in Manchester, but also it is a bit because I have got a horrible sore throat, and nothing tastes the way it is supposed to, especially, somehow, wine.
In consequence of this we had strawberry and apple cocktails, which went very nicely with the chicken, and soothed my throat on their way down. We were all too full for pudding, so we thought we would save that bit for breakfast, and collapsed in front of the fire to watch a film.
This is a special occasion, because we don’t watch nearly as many films as I would like to, and tonight the children were responsible for selection, being better informed about entertainment than I am.
We watched an entertaining, but utterly incomprehensible story about two policemen, one of whom was an Orc, being shot at during an inexplicable Elvish invasion of Los Angeles. I enjoyed it considerably, although I failed to work out the plot. There were some jolly good special effects, so it didn’t matter. There weren’t any imperilled little girls in it, so one policeman had to go back into the burning building to rescue the other one, I think this is what they call a plot twist.
We opened our presents then, and found that we had an extremely satisfactory collection of chocolates, which replaced the ones Number One Daughter had finished in the morning, and interesting alcohol and some wonderfully scented soap, not to mention lots of other rather nice things. There was a very splendid plant, and and a thick, soft scarf, some gorgeous incense, and the teapot, pictured above. I like this, although Mark says that it will need a coat of lacquer if I am going to use it. I probably won’t, it is too pretty, it can sit on the dresser and be admired.
It has been a lovely, gentle, mellow Christmas, and I am going to try my new soap out in the shower before bed.
I have had the nicest time.
Merry Christmas.
