This one really will be short, because I am a) falling asleep, and b) drunk.
We have had visitors, which was magnificent, but the ultimate consequence was that I have drunk far too much gin cocktail and Prosecco, and also eaten half a tin of chocolates. Tomorrow I am going to be hungover and fat. I do wish I could agree with that model who famously said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, but as it is I beg to differ. Mince pies and chocolates and blackcurrant gin taste so lovely that you would happily request them for breakfast on your way out if you were in America’s horrid Death Row cells.
Anyway, we had a lovely time.
It was a very, very busy day. Mark went off to repair somebody’s trailer, and I stayed at home and decorated the Christmas tree. I love doing this. It is a perfect occupation for somebody who does not have the smallest sense of what might be good taste.
We have tried, over the years, to bring home a new Christmas decoration every time we have been somewhere memorable. This year I was pleased to discover a beautiful green one about which I had completely forgotten, but which proclaimed that it was purchased in Windsor Castle.
There were lots of other beautiful ones as well, although regrettably I had also completely forgotten where we had bought most of them, so clearly it is not the case that they act as a joyful trigger for happy memories. There were a couple that I was entirely certain I had never seen before at all, I will have to remember to ask Mark when we have sobered up a bit.
After the decorating and the subsequent hoovering up I made a start on the ironing. There is a lot of this. I spent half an hour doing it with no noticeable effect whatsoever. Fortunately Mark came home then, and I was able to desist.
After that we had some time before our visitors arrived, and so we thought that we would commence the annual project of making the mince pies.
This has been another job which has been hanging over me.
I will not go into details of mince pie manufacture, since presumably you know how it is done, but of course it took considerably longer than we had expected. We slowed down a bit in the middle anyway, because Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma turned up, bringing with her a beautiful plate that Number One Daughter had purchased for us on their holidays in Morocco. I was sorry to be late and rushing then, because she is always entertaining company, and I would have liked to sit about with my feet up drinking tea and sharing gossip, but of course I had underestimated the amount of time involved in preparing six dozen mince pies, and so had to get on with it.
Our friends were due to arrive at half past seven. We were still dashing round hurling things into the sink and swearing at twenty past, but somehow by half past we had managed to achieve something like respectability. They were a bit late as well, much to our colossal relief, which gave us time to consume a sausage roll, as a sort of pre-emptive mopping up of the gin that was to follow.
We may not have mopped up very well, because I am distinctly fuzzy headed now. We had the nicest evening, it is very splendid indeed to sit around a Christmas tree eating things and drinking gin.
It will be nicer still to be in bed, which is where my next steps will be taking me.
I have drunk a very lot.
