Oh no it isn’t

Today I have learned that the Manchester pantomime and Christmas markets have been finally and irrevocably and officially cancelled.

We were not really cherishing hopes of being able to go, not really, not now. Even if everything had been all miraculously allowed at the eleventh hour we would be unlikely to raise enough money this year, unless we were to apply for a new credit card. 

I am feeling downcast about it all, and I jolly well hope that Boris is feeling guilty. Even the blackest of pantomime villains has never actually reached out and cancelled the whole pantomime season everywhere, and it had better be in a good cause. Just putting off catching bat flu until January does not seem to me to be a good enough excuse. It had jolly well better mean that lots of people live to a ripe old age who would otherwise have expired youthfully and unexpectedly this November, and even then I hope they are all grateful.

It is still a gloomy feeling, though. To have a few days in Manchester at Christmas has long been my favourite bright spot in our winter. I think it is probably our most exciting holiday, because when your income comes from tourism you do not jet off to Magaluf in August. It is something to which we can look forward as the days grow slowly darker, and a bright memory to sustain us through the icy drear until springtime. 

I have been scowling to myself about it all day, and in the end decided that one way or another we are going to make Christmas a bright time. 

I do not exactly know how we are going to manage this but I have become determined. We will make our house so warm and pleasing that we do not mind not strolling tipsily around the Christmas markets, mulled wine in our hands.  We will have fires and song and wine and good food.

After some consideration I thought I would start the process by making the mince for the mince pies. This is a happy seasonal thing to do, and actually I should have done it weeks ago. 

The most important ingredient of mince pies is the lavish quantity of once dried fruit which has become soaked-in-brandy fruit. 

Fortunately some thoughtful past version of myself had left half a bucketful of this, probably when I made the mince pies last year. This is my usual habit, although this year it might have to wait a while longer, because I did not have any brandy today.

It had been raided a bit, because brandy-impregnated fruit makes a pleasing addition to chocolate biscuits, but there was still quite a bit left.

I emptied the bucket into the mixing bowl and passed a contented quarter of an hour grating ginger and nutmegs into it. 

I added suet and a slosh of spiced rum, which was a happy discovery underneath the dresser. There is not really much point in adding fresh alcohol to mince pies as it only evaporates in the oven, but I did anyway, in the hope that some of it might have chance to soak in before Christmas.

I thought this year, as I always do, that perhaps I ought to add some sugar, but then didn’t. I quite like it without, although the resulting mince pies are not very much like the sort you get in the shops. They have a bite all of their own. 

I pressed it into the big storage jars and sealed the lids closed.

After that I was going to hang the curtains. We have decided for reasons of economy that we will hang the orange curtains for the time being, and just hope that somehow they blend in with the pink, yellow and blue on the walls and the green and red carpet.

I hung one, and then discovered that for some reason the second one had not been washed, and smelled of Roger Poopy.

I stuffed it in the washing machine, but it was not dry in time to be hung before I went to work, it will have to be tomorrow now.

I think I will buy some fairy lights to brighten it up a bit.