Month: December 2019

I’ve left this a bit late, as anybody with any sense will of course already be in bed. I must admit I never entirely understood the logic of ‘getting to bed early otherwise Santa won’t come’ – and, call me a daredevil risk taker if you like, but I’m still awake and not worried about it at all!

Much to my surprise, this Christmas has been largely worry-free and in fact pleasingly low key. We’ve not gone mad with present or food buying, and even at work today there was a ‘just another day at the office’ feel to proceedings (even allowing for the appearance and subsequent rapid disappearance of a pile of Quality Street).

Christmas Eve is often a mad domesticated dash to the finish line – and while it’s true that this evening has seen the vegetables peeled and the stuffing alchemised into existence, the usual frantic cleaning regime has simply not materialised. Usually I have an unavoidable urge to hoover and scrub everything as though we’re going on parade – but this year that urgency has simply not arrived, despite the fact that… well, I wouldn’t say Curnow Towers is a mess exactly, but nor would I say it was especially tidy.

And yet, a little Christmas Miracle if you will, it’s not niggling at me at all. I hope somebody appreciates the extraordinary theological pun that ends this sentence, when I say that this casual attitude to the usual frenetic cleaning might be me wishing upon myself a ‘Mary Christmas’, as opposed to a Martha one.

Clearly, now I’ve resorted to puns like that, it’s way past time for me to sign off and shut up. Thankfully, there’s just time, and word count, enough to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Now, quick, off to bed with you…

For many years my grandparents opened their presents on a Christmas Eve.

In hindsight it was rather reckless telling us that, because as children we might well have thought they were onto a good thing and started nagging to be allowed to do the same. In their case, I don’t think it was unbearable excitement, it was more likely pragmatism – Grandpa might well have had a sermon to deliver in the morning (or, in a previous life, a reindeer in need of emergency shoeing) and Gran would certainly have had some cooking to do. So getting the tedious chore of unwrapping done and out the way early was probably a good move.

Certainly, it gives you something to do on Christmas Eve rather than hanging around all a-jitter like an expectant parent in the delivery suite. As a kid it seemed an unbearably slow drag of a day, although “luckily” adult life has saved us from the misery of a Christmas Eve just waiting for things to get started, by giving us jobs to go to. I’ve one day left, after which as far as I’m concerned that’ll be work finished for the year.

Of course, some sisters-in-law (and other people probably) have to work over Christmas. It looks lovely on TV, manning a hotel reception desk with a plate of mince pies and a sherry-induced glow; or cheery nurses, a stick of holly jauntily hanging from their non-regulation santa hats, joining the patients for impromptu carol singing amid cries of ‘mince pie, stat’ – but in the real world I suspect that, frankly, it’s a pain in the butt.

So to all those working over Christmas, good on you, I hope that it’s really appreciated. And to the rest of us, who AREN’T:  Brace yourselves, here we go!  

We’ve been tucking into a box of Celebrations at work this week, donated by a grateful customer; and although not exactly a rigorous scientific study, it’s nevertheless interesting that we all to a man dislike the Bounty. Which means of course that we now have a Celebrations tub containing eleven Bounties and a solitary Snickers that won’t make it past first break on Monday.

Obviously we’ve asked the question (not of the Mars Incorporated organisation, more in a rhetorical sense of a cold unfeeling universe) why they bother putting Bounties in there at all. It’s the same dilemma that I remember with Quality Street from the Christmasses of my youth – given that there is going to be a sad collection of blue ones left all alone in the bottom of the tin come New Year, why include them in the first place?

Thankfully this is the 21^st Century, and society has arrived at a solution. Namely, buy Heroes instead. Granted they’re not ideal for Mrs C (them being all milk chocolate, and her being all lactose intolerant) but between my daughter (Dairy Milk, Fudge and Creme Egg Twisted) and me (all those, and all the others as well) we can manage to empty the entire tub without leaving any embarrassingly unloved also-rans.

As luck would have it, there is a large tub of Heroes in the kitchen cupboard not twelve feet from where I’m currently sat – albeit with an implicit ‘not to be opened until Christmas Day’ warning applied to it. So come Christmas afternoon, Miss Curnow and I, and if they’re quick off the mark our houseguests too, will likely make short work of them and eat the lot!

Living the dream, my friends. Living the dream.  

Christmas is supposed to be a time for family, so I was shocked yesterday to discover that my wife’s Auntie Bessie has turned against her, and now puts lactose in her frozen Yorkshire Puddings. I’m not sure what’s prompted this falling-out (unless she spotted us buying McCain oven chips that time) but it means we’ll have to resort to cooking Yorkshires from scratch on Wednesday.

In all honesty, I like to ‘cook my own’ at Christmas anyway, not just YPs but roast potatoes too. I use the “brief parboil/shake to roush up the edges/put ‘em in” method, and the duck fat generally crisps them up well – although no matter how diligently I place them on their edges, there’s always some that feel the need to cling protectively to the baking tray when it comes time to get them out. I of course cover up this fact by eating the ones with torn undercarriages myself.

As for the Yorkshires, I get the fat really hot and all looks well going in… but as the Puddings rise up and emerge from their recesses it always reminds me of those horror films where some hideous,  unstoppable blob just keeps on coming. It may also be true (possibly a hangover from my bachelor days when the best way to make sure something was cooked was to leave it in the oven until it starts to burn) that they often stay in a little longer, and come out a little darker, than is strictly necessary.

Despite all that, though, there’s something about making the extra effort which seems entirely appropriate for the season. And I’ve not had any complaints so far. Well, not many. Well, nobody has offered to cook instead – so I’m going to take that as a win!

I don’t want to set myself up as some sort of guru (unless there are any tax breaks for doing so). I’ve only passed on two pieces of wisdom to my daughter in her twenty-two-and-a-half years: how to blow bubbles with a straw, and always to give a straight answer to the question “tea or coffee?”. And I’ve probably taught my wife even less.

Yet by osmosis if nothing else, some small degree of tact has been passed on. I appreciate that may sound improbable (especially to anybody who knows her) and in fact I hadn’t quite realised it myself until a few years ago.

I bought her the DVD of Pan’s Labyrinth for Christmas, and all seemed fine until several months later when I discovered it hidden away in a cupboard. I was baffled, and may even have done that double-take thing that people do on TV, because I could also see the same DVD still out on the shelf!

I had, of course, bought something she already had – and she had declined to tell me, actually hidden the duplicate away. So as to spare my feelings!

It works both ways, mind you. An earlier Christmas, Mrs C bought me the complete Rising Damp on DVD – having mixed up Leonard Rossiter in Reggie Perrin (which I love) with Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp (which I cannot stand). I was not only similarly tactful, I actually worked my way through several episodes before finally giving up.

We’ve all had presents we weren’t all that enamoured of – and, logically speaking we must also all have given presents that the recipient didn’t like. Thankfully society has provided us with a solution. So, while tact and good manners get us through Christmas, eBay and the Charity Shop help us get through the New Year. 

For those of you watching Box of Delights, today it’s episode five. 

For everybody else: The Box of Delights was a nineteen-eighties BBC children’s serial, based on a book nobody had ever heard of. It has a Christmas vibe, which becomes very clear very quickly – even if you don’t pick up on the theme tune being ‘The First Nowell’ the story starts with boy hero Kay Harker coming home for the Christmas hols… and thereafter it’s snow, cathedrals and kidnapped clergy all the way.

For some it’s become a tradition to rewatch the serial on the same dates that it originally went out, so that they finish, as the story does, on Christmas Eve. I’ve not seen it since the repeat in 1986 and, curiously for a man regularly driven by little more than nostalgia and potatoes, I’ve no great wish to. Part one is fine, but my recollection from the time is of feeling increasingly short-changed, that each week the episodes got cheaper and the story got ramblier.

I can forgive the odd bit of OTT child acting; but the unconvincing cartoon animation used for the animals is much more difficult to accept – and by episode six, when Kay’s journey back to Ancient Greece appears to have been filmed in an over-lit sandpit in a tiny corner of TC3, it all starts to feel very amateur hour.

But then, we all have our own little Christmas traditions – to the outsider they may seem ridiculous and pointless and even a bit silly, but to us they’re warm and comforting and an absolutely vital part of the Christmas period.

So for those sticking with it, through dodgy effect, cartoon phoenix, and purple pim, today is episode FIVE. Enjoy.

After the peeling, the cooking, the eating and the napping, comes the washing up.

In the past, whenever Mum and Dad came up to ours at Christmas, Mum would offer to do the washing up; whereupon we of course would say there was no need, we’d do it later, and make some token gesture at stopping her before then letting her carry right on and do it.  (It’s very different when we go down to Mum and Dad’s of course – there WE offer to do the washing up. (And then let Dad do it.))

Not anymore though because, at least at our place, the whole ‘offering/token gesture/rings off & marigolds on’ business has been done away with. That is to say, we have a dishwasher.

For many years after we were married my wife said we should get one; and I would always insist that there was no way a machine could achieve the same effect simply by sloshing a bit of water around and making ‘judder judder’ noises, as I could by wielding a brillo pad like Thor’s hammer and making ‘sweary sweary’ noises.

It remained a slight bone of contention for some time (although not too much because, frankly, I always did the dishes anyway) and even when she told me she’d got my favourite sort of dishwasher (that is, a free one) I wasn’t convinced.

But I must admit I’ve been converted. I wouldn’t go quite as far as one of my wife’s customers, who said she’d like the sound of the dishwasher played at her funeral, but it IS a tremendously comforting sound. And now, of course, we no longer have any disagreements at Christmas over who gets to do the washing up.

Arguments about who’s going to load the dishwasher, on the other hand…

Sunday wouldn’t be the same without a bit of Bully, and Christmas wouldn’t be the same without a bit of turkey.  Even though Sir Bernard of Matthews has gifted it to us all year round, still the turkey in its full, roasted, ‘all the trimmings’ form only appears as a special treat at Christmas.  All in all, it’s not bad going for a bird whose best possible review seems to be “not too dry.”

I like turkey, but there are those that don’t – and since two of them live at Curnow Towers that puts me in the minority so we usually have Duck instead.  The first year, we ordered the bird from a local farmer, and Christmas Eve there came a knock on the door.  “I’ve two ducks in the back of the car,” he said, “do you want to come and choose one?” 

In what seemed a very long 30 seconds as I walked from our house to his car all I could think was: are they still alive?  (And if so, what are we going to have for dinner tomorrow and how am I going to tell my Mum we’ve now got a pet duck?)

Fortunately for all concerned (well, except perhaps the ducks) their quacking days were already over by the time I saw them.  And, at the risk of being disrespectful to the dear departed, our duck tasted bootiful.

There used to be a show called Press Gang (written by some bloke called Steven Moffat, I wonder whatever happened to him?) and in one episode, token nice guy Kenny observed, “I get socks for Christmas – and I like it.” Well… Me too!

I wouldn’t describe myself as fashionable  (no, no, settle down, it’s true) but secretly, I rather enjoy waking up on Boxing Day with a selection of new garments to choose from. Including socks. At Christmas, there’s often an abundance of slightly-novelty socks available. Not full-on novelty, not bright red with Santa and a button that you press for a quick kazoo-interpretation of Silent Night – although I’ve had my share of those too (thanks Mum).

No, by slightly-novelty I mean an otherwise normal, plain black sock (or at a reckless push, navy) but with some motif tastefully embroidered on. Days of the week is a common one, or moods (happy, playful, etc), or animals, or perhaps stylised heads of the various Doctor Whos.

My fondness for these isn’t simply a version of the old ‘novelty tie’ syndrome which late-90s executives mistakenly thought would fool people into believing they had a personality; as chief launder(er?) at Curnow Towers, there’s a great practical advantage when pairing up clean socks, if they aren’t just one huge phalanx of plain black. 

My daughter often throws a spanner in the works, by intentionally wearing mismatched socks – not completely odd, but not an actual pair either, they’re usually a themed coupling (two different shades of blue, say, or a Jon Pertwee and a Jodie Whittaker) which makes it difficult to determine if it’s two odd socks, or just one odd pair.

Useful, stylish, and tapping straight into my love of laundry – it’s no wonder that, when I get socks for Christmas, I like it. 

Every year, around the middle of December, I get fed up with Christmas.

The weight of it presses down, the things to be done, the co-ordination, the organisation, the budgeting, the planning, and the sense of a deadline looming closer and closer. It drains the colour from it all just for a little while, and I know that with it I get irritable and grumpy (well, -er and -er).

Maybe everybody feels the same – and yet, this year especially, people around and about seem to be, for example, flinging their outside lights up with an enthusiasm and energy that escapes me, so maybe they don’t. I enjoy seeing all the lights as I drive home from work in the evening, but still my initial thought is of that gloomy damp January weekend to come, when they’ve all got to be taken down again.

I get the sense, quite inaccurately I’m sure, that everyone else seems to have got a handle on their Christmas, and that with it all in hand they are able to kick back and enjoy the ride. In comparison, here it always feels like a desperate sprint for the finishing line, with too little time to appreciate the scenery as it blurs by.

It doesn’t last. Sooner or later the tree goes up, or I’ll catch a bit of My Fair Lady, or I’ll overhear some old bloke enthusiastically lying about Santa to an excited youngster. Like a festive Mr Micawber, something always turns up, the mood lifts, and off we go. From somewhere, ‘a little bit of Christmas’ gets things going again.

That may of course just be simple self-delusion but whatever it is, that ‘little bit of Christmas’ stuff goes a long way. If only I could find some way to bottle it!