To my huge surprise and satisfaction, my Christmas To Do List has finally shrunk down to manageable proportions.
It has still got things on it like ‘clean entire house’ but apart from that so many things are crossed off that the rest is going to be an absolute breeze.
Today I emptied all of Oliver’s luggage and washed it all. I scrubbed horrible thick mud off his rugby boots and wiped more off his wellies. I washed dressing gowns and underwear and jerseys.
Some of it has already been dried and put away.
Some of it has even been ironed.
Oliver came downstairs from his bedroom to help me decorate the Christmas tree.
He remarked that some boys at his school have themed Christmas trees at home.
We thought that if we had a theme, it would be ‘how much stuff can we cram on to this?’ and it would be the same theme every year. By the time we had finished there was not a single empty branch, and most branches had two or even three things hanging on them.
The Christmas tree is stuffed with memories, rather like the sort of cupboard where you know that opening the door is going to involve a lot of picking things up off the floor afterwards. We buy decorations whenever we have adventures, and so decorating it involves endless saying things like: ‘do you remember Edinburgh? Do you remember Paris?’ There are decorations from my own childhood, and things made by the children, and we top it off with as many lollies and chocolate Freddo bars as we can possibly cram on to it.
We bought a three kilo bag of lollies this year, because they were really cheap in big bags: but it turns out that three kilos is an awful lot of lollies. I am never too sure about metric. I know how you work it out, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. I know what six ounces looks like, or half a stone, but tell me that something weighs a kilo and I have got no idea. In consequence I was rather surprised when the sack of lollies turned up on the doorstep, they will last easily until next Christmas.
The whole tree is so overstocked with confectionery that bits of it keep falling off, much to the delight of the dogs. We usually have a broad agreement with them that anything which is on the floor is legitimately theirs. This is all right when it is bits of dropped biscuit. To my certain knowledge this evening Roger Poopy has had at least six lollies and four chocolate Freddos.
They remind me very much of the bit we have heard in the Nine Lessons, several times this week. There is a bit where God points at the Tree in the corner, and says sternly to Adam and Eve: “Don’t eat anything off here.” We tried this with the dogs, and have had about as much success as God did. Roger Poopy can’t even blame a serpent.
I know that dogs are not supposed to eat chocolate, but do not really believe it. This is because last year they ate tons and tons of it and neither of them died. Also they know that being sick in the house is a terrible crime, so if they do make themselves unwell they go belting out of the back door as fast as they can.
Tiresomely, now that we have got as much confectionery in the house as we could ever wish for, neither Mark nor I want to eat it at all.
We spent the evening making the Christmas chocolates.
It was a massive job, and took ages.
We rolled and sprinkled sugar and sticky things, blended different sorts of chocolate and mixed in fudge and fondant. By the time we had finished the entire kitchen was covered in a thin film of chocolate and sugar, apart from the bits that were covered in a thick film of chocolate and sugar.
The fridge is full of chocolates. There is no room for anything else at all.
When we had finished we were so sick of chocolate that we could not even bear to lick out the bowl.
I still feel sticky even now.
We don’t even know if the last ones were nice, because we couldn’t bring ourselves to sample them.
I do hope it wears off.
