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Somehow it’s boxing day. I’m not quite sure why or how we got here so soon, but there you go.

The sun is doing its best to blind me thorough the window, but outside it’s still so cold that the little puddles left in the unfinished road in front of the house have frozen over, and created tiny pools of pure lethal potential.

So, rewinding… Somehow I’d signed everyone off for Thursday - except me - so if it was a choice of being alone in the office, or taking off an extra day myself. It wasn’t a hard choice; I didn’t have much on, anyway.

Thursday, then, was spent in the kitchen, baking yummy cheese and onion bread, and far too many Christmas cookies to eat this side of Easter. Cranberries, raisins, nuts and spice: 57 in total. I didn’t want to be left with random ingredients, so upped the bits I knew and guessed on the rest, and they seem to have turned out very well. Kedgerie for dinner, which was an exceptionall easy, if smelly make. It’s going to have a week to get the smoky fish smell out of the kitchen.

Dad arrived mid-afternoon, and I picked him up from the station: late. He’d only been waiting there a couple of minutes, but it’s turned cold, and they had been talking about snow on the way. In fact, they’d been promising a white Christmas but, as usual, it didn’t happen. Not around here, anyway.

Friday, we braved the town. Unwise, I would have though, but actually it was OK. I suppose everyone had finished their shopping. We had made vague plane for going out in the evening, too, but somehow ended up flopping around on the settee all night, watching the Bourne Identity again at some obscene volume and then falling into bed full, fuzzy and far too late. That put paid to arriving at mum’s on time yesterday morning.

I was supposed to be there at 10h15, but we didn’t leave home until a minute before that. It was very cold out, but nothing like today, and certainly not icy, so in spite of the fact the bridge across the railway line is closed it didn’t take too long to do the round trip, and I was there about 45 minutes late. I had called ahead, but they never found the message until a minute before I walked through the door.

Christmas day always follows a set routine. Cheese on toast in the conservatory, then crosswords and games and cooking for most of the morning. Sal and Dan arrive some time around lunchtime (3ish this year) and then we eat far too much and sit it off in front of the telly.

No sign of any trend bucking this time around, then. And in keeping with tradition I also won every game of Rummikub.

We barely watched any telly, fortunately, but what we did see was fairly dire. The Vicar of Dibley was the high point, after which it plummeted quite alarmingly. Absolutely Fabulous was funny about one time - at the most - after which it was plain embarassing. So much so that we switched off the sound and played games while it flickered away in the background. It would have gone off entirely if we hadn’t been waiting for Angus Deaton and the next disappointment.

Telly aside, though, a fab day. Much too much to eat, much too much sitting down, but a top way to spend a day off.

I left at midnight and drove slowly through the frozen lanes back to Ingatestone to pick up dad. We may not have got the promised snow, but we did get a thick, hard frost that took a lot of scraping and left the world looking sparkly and white. Perfect Christmas weather.

So today it starts all over again. Sal and Dan should be around any time now. In fact, they should have been here half an hour ago. I’m kitchen-bound for the first hour or so doing lunch, but after that there’s nothing but games, films and nibbles planned for the rest of the day.

By tomorrow I will be the size of the Hindenberg.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 26th, 2004 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.