Christmas Cheer

“The best way to spread Christmas Cheer is singing loud for all to hear” as Buddy the Elf says in James’ favourite Christmas film, which we watched on Christmas Eve with Alasdair. Well, our Christmas has been filled with cheer and we had a lovely day yesterday. Santa visited Ally during the night and filled his stocking with gifts, which showed that Ally must have made it onto the “nice” list. In the morning we went round to visit Marjory and Forrest and had a convivial time with them and Jenny, Neil and Lucy, enjoying their generous amounts of champagne, mince pies and stollen cake. Back at home we checked on the turkey, which was cooking nicely, and then opened our presents in the lounge. We felt very lucky at the thoughtful presents that we received from friends and family. We were very surprised to receive an extra special present from Ally and Cat as a thank you for hosting them during all of the lockdowns; a trip to Dubai in February! Ally seemed very happy with his gifts too. At 3 p.m. we watched the Queen’s speech, as is traditional at Casa Anderson. Having lost her husband this year, the Queen seemed older and more vulnerable than usual, and her speech paid tribute to Prince Philip and was very touching.

A flurry of kitchen activity led up to Christmas dinner being served at 4, and all went very well. The only thing was that the turkey was far too big for two, no matter how valiantly Ally and James munched away at it. Tom appeared at the table, and had to be told off several times for climbing on to the table, such was his enthusiasm for the turkey. He was delighted to be given some scraps of turkey. James told him that he should hunt 6 kg birds for us rather than the unfortunate tiny feathered creatures that he sometimes brings into the house. Strangely enough Flora is not interested in the food we eat, she never begs at the table like Tom does. I’m intending to freeze the remainder of the cooked turkey in small portions to make soups, sandwiches, risotto etc. so it won’t go to waste. 

Replete, we staggered through to the front room for a rest, because we couldn’t face Christmas pudding or trifle just yet. We decided to watch that most hotly-debated Christmas movie *, Die Hard. By Jove it was excellent; it really hasn’t dated at all, and Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman were both tremendous.

At this point we decided to tackle the trifle, lovingly made by James to Grandma’s recipe. It was very, very good. Too good as it turned out, because my second helping was my downfall. After a University Challenge contest with Ally, which he won hands down, I went to bed with an overly full tummy and had a terrible night’s sleep. Nothing was wrong apart from my intestines’ struggle to process the huge amount of rich food that I had guzzled. 

And so Christmas is over. Of course we missed Jamie and Davie, but spoke with both of them during the day, and we had a really lovely time with Ally who was on very good form. It has been an excellent Christmas. To quote Bruce Willis in Die Hard, Yippee-ki-yay! 

* the debate is whether it’s a Christmas movie at all, or just an action movie which happens to be set at Christmas time. My opinion is that of course it’s a Christmas movie!