 | Nik Rawlinson is the editor of MacUser magazine. He lives in the UK, has three chickens and a cat, grows his own fruit and vegetables, brews his own beer and wine and uses his bike ten times more often than his car. Check out his professional portfolio. |
Oscar loves to help with wrapping presents. Particularly if there are bows and ribbons involved. He particularly likes sitting on the paper when you’re trying to fold it around a present.
Hadn’t occurred to me that he might stand for as much as this cat does, though.
Somehow it’s a month since Christmas. I know it doesn’t look like that, but I’m writing this at the end of January and backdating.
Christmas was busy, you see. Too much to eat, too much to do, too much snow (although not actually on Christmas Day) and plenty of people to see. We decamped to Galleywood on Christmas Eve for the traditional pheasant casserole (vegetable pie for some of us) and stayed over so we didn’t have to drive home. Oscar and the chickens spent Christmas Day alone with a feeding/watering visit from next door to keep them entertained.
Christmas Day itself was the usual carnival of food: cheesy toast for breakfast, a late lunch when everyone had assembled and a buffet we didn’t need but all enjoyed in the evening. I do think the telly went on once. In fact I’m sure it didn’t, and I’m glad Christmases are like that now. Years ago we would have had it on from the end of lunch until bed, but now we play games or cards and talk about how we’ve all eaten too much.
Oh, and Viv told us about the time she sat on a jellyfish. I don’t think either of them particularly enjoyed the experience.
We toyed with the idea of staying over on Christmas night, too, but in the end came home to a very grateful cat. It was ultimately the thought of all the preparations would have to do the next morning – Boxing Day – that brought us back. Sue and Bart were coming down, dad was coming over, and Sal and Dan were coming with Will, all in time for lunch.
It’s a frightening thought that this is already the third Boxing Day lunch we’ve cooked in this house.
This year it was lasagne, but I think we would all have been happy with a snack. Still, all but a couple of spoonfuls were eaten and the chickens polished off the end of it.
Sue and Bart stayed for two days; dad popped in and out over the Christmas period, and on Monday we drove up to Lowestoft to see Ean and Vikki and the ever elusive Boo, who did us the honour of staying in and letting us tickle her.
It was a good Christmas. We have a few programmes stacked up to watch, and now have plenty of books to read and DVDs to enjoy throughout the year, but much though we enjoyed ourselves I think we’re all glad to get back to normality after the busy festive season.
The snow is going, slowly. Unfortunately it’s turning to ice – thick ice, sitting an inch deep on the road. The council doesn’t come down this far with grit.
We snuck out early while the neighbours’ curtains were still closed and left our home-made hampers on their doorsteps. Biscuits, marmalade and beer, all home made. We could easily have skated across to them, and even my shoes, which have little rubber nobbles on the bottom, offered no stability.
It makes for good front-window viewing, of course. So far one woman with a dog and an old lady on a bike, but flat on their faces.
Merry Christmas.
This year’s Christmas preparations have been busier, longer and more involved than I can ever remember. Why? I don’t know.
In the last two days I’ve cooked lasagne for 11 (three portions will stay in the freezer), 11 pots of marmalade (the number is a coincidence), 130 biscuits for the neighbours (they’re getting the marmalade, too, along with home made wine and beer), 25 rum truffles and a second batch of yoghurt, to replace the disaster that was our first attempt.
We’ve been over to the nature reserve to find our Christmas branch, put up decorations, hung the cards on strings, finished our shopping and done most of our wrapping, although we’ve both run out of paper. Now all we want to do is sit down and relax.
This morning’s trip to Sainsbury’s, to get last minute forgotten supplies, wasn’t entirely pleasant. We’d tried going last night but gave up a quarter of a mile from home, having sat in the car for 25 minutes. This morning it took almost that long to get to the front of the queue at the tills, but at least we now have two nets of lemons and some eggs (the shame of having to buy such things when you have uncooperative chickens in the garden is hard to explain).
But the world still looks pretty in the snow, even if it is turning to slush and ice in some places, the festive TV is generally excellent so far, with a whole night of Victoria Wood last night, and an excellent biog on Oliver Postgate on BBC4 tonight (must pay more attention to what they show).
Neither of us has had time to do any of our personal things so far, like blogging on Rich’s part, or editing the book on mine, but despite the busy-ness I’m enjoying the run-up, well aware that Christmas does indeed only happen once a year and is always well worth the effort.
Wow – that fortnight went in a flash. And now I’m back to work. Well, riding back to work, to be precise. I’m on the train, which is usually rammed, and I have three whole carriages to myself. Very strange. It’s even running on time.
So, Christmas and New Year. Christmas was the usual carnival of over-eating and feeling very fat in return. Rich and I were both getting over colds on the day itself, and I popped cough sweets as fast as everyone else did turkey. An excellent day, though: the morning spent sitting around drinking gin and eating olives; the afternoon spent playing games and quizzes. No TV apart from the news and the Queen, looking from the smock she was wearing like she was half way through painting the Sandringham ceilings.
Boxing day, we hot-footed it home to be greeted by a miowy cat and three very excited chickens who had got a taste for being out all night. They’ve been almost uncontrollable ever since and now when we try and close their door at night they block it. Gerry is particularly adept – she put a foot on the runner the other night and actually held it back as I tried to pull it across. The night after, she bit me.
Anyhow, boxing day we were entertaining Bart, Sue and dad. We’d already cooked a lasagne as big as a bed and frozen it two days before, so baked that for lunch. Cheese and port then more games ensued and then we skipped dinner on account of our spacehopper waistlines.
By the start of this week, when everyone had gone home and things had calmed down again we were starting to crave fresh air, so we headed out to Thorndon Park where I haven’t been in a decade, most likely, but was a monthly weekend rendezvous for years as a kid. This time of year, of course, most of the leaves are off the trees, so it’s not nearly as beautiful as it is when the canopy is full and it feels like a big, dense forest.
No matter: we were there for geocaching, and the terracotta carpet we kicked through was as beautiful as anything you could hope for in winter. It was a successful outing – we found three caches, and although there was little in the way of treasure worth having, it made for a fun afternoon, and a welcome break in the cake eating.
We spent new year as we did last year – on a rug in the lounge with a bottle of champagne, a baguette, some camembert hot from the oven and the cat. Not long after midnight he started yowling that we should come to bed. By half past he was striding purposefully in and out of the room looking back over his shoulders. By 01h he was pawing at our jumpers and by 02h he had given up and flopped down on the rug on his side, no longer pulling up the edges in the search for monsters that might lurk beneath. We crept up at 02h30, leaving him where he was.
The cat wants to go to bed. Rich wants to watch Olivia Newton John.
It’s become a bit of a tradition that we should start the new year with a long walk, and so next afternoon – yesterday – we drove out to Highwood to find deer. There’s a circular route out there through the woods that we’ve walked many times before, and always seen one or two of them running through the trees. This time we hit jackpot and counted 46. We stepped out from the treeline and no more than 10 metres away the whole pack (herd / family / group / flock?) bounced across the field, almost silent as their feet sunk into the soft ground, squashing the sprouting crops into the mud.
An excellent start to the year.
And then today it was work. First day back, first day on a new season ticket, and a deserted train to boot. If things carry on like this, it could be a good year indeed.
Christmas week is suddenly here. Look – I’m at home, watching the chickens scratching around in the mud outside the window and pecking at the rain. On a work day.
So we’re getting ready for the festivities. The presents haven’t been wrapped (yet), but the freezer and cupboards are filled with home-cooked food. We’ve made enough lasagne to feed 11, vegetable strudel for six, rum truffles for everyone, 30 cinnamon biscuits, 30 ginger biscuits, plus the extra biscuits made from the off-cuts, lemon curd for spreading on toast and two dozen mince pies for dessert on Boxing day.
Still to make are Sylvia’s biscuits, toffee and the veg and side dishes to go with the meals.
And you know what? It’s actually all very enjoyable. Even the chickens seem to be getting in the festive spirit, and have upped the egg production. We’re now getting a regular supply of pink eggs, presumably from Gerry, to supplement the brown and cream ones we’ve been getting from Margot and Barbara.
She was a late starter, poor girl.
Enduring image of the night: a dalek dancing to a-ha.
It was fancy dress.
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