Bash

I am taking five minutes to write to you before our Christmas Eve guests arrive. It is our annual Christmas Eve Bash.

There will be twelve of us.

That is a jolly lot of people in a very small space, and our house is a small space. It is a big space really, except only in an upwards direction. The sort of outwards space that you need when you have got lots of visitors is regrettably small.

We have been organising it for two whole days.

We have cooked and faffed about and tidied up and faffed about a bit more. Actually I do not quite know what has taken us so long now, except I can assure you that it has taken all five of us two whole days, stopping only for us to go out to hang around the taxi rank for a rest.

We have been so busy that we had to wrap our Christmas presents when we finished work last night. It was half past six when we collapsed into bed, and we got up again at eleven. I am feeling a little vague and woolly now. This might be because of all the excitement.

I am pleased to announce that I have finally made our mince pies. They are Eleventh Hour mince pies. I made them when I got up this morning. Actually I didn’t do very much making. I had already made the pastry and the mince, all that remained was to roll it out and glue it together, and in any case, Oliver’s very helpful girlfriend did most of it. This was a jolly good thing, because it left me free to flap about squeaking frantic instructions to the other children.

In fact the children have been splendid. They have all done so much cooking that I can hardly imagine that I could possibly have managed without them. We cooked a goose and a chicken, some thick sausages and some bacon-clad sausages. Lucy made stuffing and Elise made apple sauce, we filled eclairs with chocolate and whipped cream and some more with blackcurrant jam, and Oliver washed up and up and up and up.

It is now half past two in the morning, and we are all bashed out.

It has been absolutely brilliant.

We have had a splendid evening. We ate so much that I am still feeling mildly uncomfortable, and I am not even wearing trousers any more. I am wearing my dressing gown because of going to bed.

Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law had done a Christmas quiz. It was a brilliant quiz, it must have taken them ages. We divided into two teams for it, a Youthful team and an Alzheimer’s team. It was a quiz all about Christmas-related things, and readers, I realised just how completely dim I am. I talk with an authoritative air on almost every subject under the sun, but when it comes to being pinned down to actual hard facts, it appears that I am a complete ignoramus.

I did not mind this in the least, probably because of the gin cocktails and the magnum of very splendid red wine that Number-One Son-In-Law presented me with on their arrival. It is a good job I did not bother applying for University Challenge this year, because I occupied the entire quiz grinning inanely and staring into the middle distance trying vainly to remember the name of something that was just on the tip of my tongue. If I can’t reliably remember a single detail of the plot of It’s A Wonderful Life then I am unlikely to be able to discuss historical impacts of the foreign policies of rogue states with Bamber Gascoigne.

Anyway, we ate and drank far more than was good for us, scowled as we stretched our rubbery old brains into unfamiliar shapes, and I thought how very splendid it is to have such a nice family. Of course Elspeth is not actually family in the technical sort of sense, but she has been around for long enough for the distinction to have faded.

The Youthful team won the quiz. Our combined couple of hundred years of learning were not sufficient to match their mental agility.

I poured myself another gin cocktail by means of consolation.

It is Christmas. When we wake up tomorrow, probably in the afternoon, it will be the Day Itself.

We are going to drink cups of tea and speak gently to one another.

Merry Christmas.