Rolled over

Probably a short entry, because it is the middle of the night, and my eyes are closing sleepily already, and I am only on the first line.

I am in the throes of a migraine, kept at bay by a very lot of drugs, but its claws are clutching at my neck, and it is making the world a bit fuzzy and peculiar. Everything has become unaccountably difficult, as if I were trying to knit a jersey whilst swimming underwater.

Despite this, it is not the season for sloping off back to bed and wallowing in self-pity, and so we have carried on, and in fact we have achieved lots of things today, not least being the completion, and posting, of the Christmas cards.

That was a colossal task.

There was a very lot of tiddling about involved. We were pleased with the result when they were finished, although less pleased when the lady at the post office told us that they were too big to go as normal letters, and that we had to take them home, steam them open and try again.

We discussed the cost of just sending them as they were, but such is the rascally profiteering of the Royal Mail these days, we decided that we would take them home and try again.

We were allowed to post them on the second go. The lady posted every single one through her measuring slot just to make sure, and they all fitted, so that was all right, except there was a lot of them and a massive, sulky queue formed behind us whilst we faffed about.

We smiled at them all on our way out, and they glared back, which is what I would have done, so it did not matter.

We were very relieved to have finished, I can tell you, that is another Christmas task crossed off my list.

There is still quite a lot on the list, the ironing is beginning to loom impossibly large.

I contemplated starting on it this afternoon, but didn’t. We have got some friends coming around for the evening tomorrow, and so I thought I might make sausage rolls. They are not eating with us, but it is always sensible to have something with which to blot up gin cocktails. In any case, sausage rolls are an important Christmas staple, and expensive to purchase in Marks and Spencer, where they are called things like Roast Hog With Maple Bacon. Mine are called Cheap Sausagemeat Filled Out With Cheddar And An Onion I Had Left Over At The Bottom Of The Fridge.

I have been saving goose fat from last year’s Christmas goose for this very purpose, and it has been occupying space at the back of the fridge since last Christmas. We are not having a goose this year, because nobody is really that interested in them anyway, and you have got to be better at cooking than I am to get them right.

Goose fat makes divine pastry. I can’t eat very much of it for exactly that reason, but when it got to eleven o’clock tonight I realised that I had forgotten to eat anything, and so I tried one, and it was splendid. One was quite enough for dinner, although Mark had two, and he had had his dinner already.

By the time he came in from work I was collapsing in a state of advanced migraine amongst a horrible mess of flour and sausage meat, and he very kindly made me a cup of tea and cleared it all up. I was very relieved about this, I can tell you.

I am going to take my migraine off to bed, and hope that it gets better before the drugs wear off, or at least before our friends turn up tomorrow night. I think that gin cocktails might not be a very good mix with a migraine.

We have posted the Christmas cards and we have got a fridge full of sausage rolls.

It is really beginning to feel like Christmas.