Hogmanay

Here we are, another year gone, and in my case another year older since today has been my birthday. And a very good birthday it has been - lunch at Five March with Davie and Chanel was followed by the new Mary Poppins film at the Grosvenor. I thoroughly enjoyed it, with my one objection being that it is practically identical to the original. It would have been nice if it had branched out in some way.
I don’t have time to write a proper round up of the year because we received a last minute invitation yesterday to celebrate New Year with Steven and Hilary this evening and we will be setting off shortly. I was looking through my blog this morning and it certainly has been a fantastic year for travel; James and I have been on some great holidays and weekends away staring with skiing in gorgeous Arabba in January. All of our trips have been fun but one of the highlights had to be our Oregon and California holiday in the summer when we met up with Jamie and Aisling and Margaret. Since that holiday Jamie and Aisling have broken up. It’s not my place to comment, however I think it’s fair to say that it had become very clear that she was not the right girl for our Jamie. Another highlight was our France and Belgium holiday in October to visit James’ Great Uncle Hugh’s grave at the centenary of the end of the First World War. We were very glad to share this experience with our dear friends Heather and Ewan, and also to visit memorials for two of Heather’s relatives and to lay a wreath for all three young men at the Menin Gate in Ypres. My two weekends staying with Ally and Cat in their London flat were absolutely wonderful too. They used their local knowledge to take me to really cool places in London such as rooftop bars and dining in Paradise Pods by the Thames and to visit the Supreme Court. They even insisted on giving up their bed for me! And we have had some great weekends in beautiful Boat of Garten with Alison and Hugh. I can still hardly believe that I climbed Ben Nevis in July, a proud and happy achievement, enhanced by meeting up with Davie, Ally and James at the summit. All of this was set against the backdrop of a long and gloriously hot summer.
I retired in June and so the second half of the year has been a big change for me - in a very good way! New adventures await us in 2019 with more changes in the offing. James and I are appreciative of all of our family and friends, we know how lucky we are to know such good people. The year has had many ups but of course also some downs, mainly regarding the health of friends and relatives. I always look on the New Year as an opportunity for a fresh start, and in 2019 I am hoping to improve my diet and fitness. James doesn’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions but has agreed with me that we both want to work on this. Roll on 2019! 

The Mystery of the Missing Cook Book

Well, James has just solved a mystery that has been bamboozling me for nearly a week. He asked me for my Gammon in Red Wine recipe, one of the Anderson family favourites for New Year’s dinner. I was given this recipe many years ago by Grandma, who had found it on a recipe card in the Danish Food Centre back in the 1970s. The Danish Food Centre used to be a very trendy eating establishment in St Vincent Street, very modern and unusual in the days when most Glasgow restaurants were very traditional Scottish, or sometimes traditional Italian. There were Indian restaurants too, but James’ and my parents would never have tried anything so spicy, they preferred the relative familiarity of Chinese food. So the Danish Food Centre was a bit different, with open sandwiches and fresh, tasty ingredients. It’s long gone, I’m sad to say, I think it must have closed by the end of the 1980s.
However the tasty Gammon in Red Wine recipe lived on in Casa Anderson. I carefully copied the recipe into a little floral recipe book that I bought when I got married. This was in the days when, if I cooked something delicious, James would be so delighted that he would take a photo of it!
However, when I looked for it this week I couldn’t find it at all. I grew increasingly perturbed, because it had many of my favourite recipes in it, some given to me from friends and family so not easily replaceable. James and I hunted high and low with no luck.
Until this evening that is. James took a look inside a folder where I keep other recipes, just in case I had inadvertently tucked the recipe book inside it. And he immediately noticed a page from the recipe book, carefully cut out and filed in the folder.  Further investigation produced the rest of the pages, including our beloved gammon recipe. Only at this point did I remember that some time in the past few years I decided to cut out the pages and discard the book, in order to put all of my recipes together in the folder. Although I was a bit annoyed with myself for forgetting that the recipe book itself no longer exists, I was delighted that all my recipes are safe.
In other news we went to Oran Mor this afternoon where we saw the fabulous “Doris, Dolly and the Dressing Room Divas” with Steven and Hilary.  Originally a hit at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2016, this upbeat and fun trip into nostalgia was perfect for lovers of musicals like me and Hilary. I have a feeling that James and Steven were somewhat less entertained. Afterwards we wandered along Byres Road and had coffee and a chat in Nardini’s. 

Free Solo climbing

The holidays continue in a festive manner. It’s nice to have James at home, and it’s also pleasant to have a house full of young ones coming and going. Yesterday James and I went for a 10 km walk along the Fife Coastal Path from Kincardine to Torryburn. It was rainy in the west, but as Marjory says, “It’s always sunny in Fife even when it’s raining!” and by the time we started our walk it was indeed sunny with blue skies. At Kincardine we popped in to see Forrest in his shop; we said hello but he looked extremely busy so we didn’t linger. We skirted inland round the imposing landmark of Longannet Power Station before returning to the coast and continuing east. We found the village of Culross to be very pretty with old traditional buildings, and the final part of our walk was around the salt marshes of the Torry Bay Nature Reserve. We saw geese by the shore, as well as a buzzard and some curlews. It was an easy walk in glorious weather.
Later on we went to the GFT to see the documentary “Free Solo” with Ally, Cat and Davie. The cinema was packed. It was James’ idea to see it and I must admit that I thought it would be a bit boring. How wrong I was, it was fascinating. It’s about an amazing free climber called Alex Honnold as he prepares to attempt the first free solo ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Just in case any reader doesn’t know what that means, free climbers don’t use any ropes at all. It’s such an extreme and, sadly, usually very life shortening sport. I admire his skill but the fatal consequences for even the tiniest mistake seem too reckless for me. The side that he climbed was a sheer cliff and it was absolutely terrifying to watch even though we knew that he made it because we saw him being interviewed on the One Show last week! I don’t know how he does it; he was using the tiniest of cracks or dimples in the rock, and if he had lost his grip he would have fallen thousands of feet. Honnold is a very interesting and quite eccentric character; I’m pretty sure that he has ASD, in many ways very high functioning. I think that everyone in the cinema held their breath until he got to the top, and the whole audience applauded at the end. 

And a Happy Christmas for Grandma

As is usual Christmas has been very traditional and family-centred at Casa Anderson, and I’m glad of it. At the centre of the family is of course Grandma, and I think that she enjoyed Christmas very much. We took her to Marjory and Forrest’s in the morning where we all had a pleasant and festive time. Then she had a wee nap at home before coming to us for Christmas dinner. The dinner went extremely well and we ate our fill - even Grandma, who usually has the appetite of a very small bird, ate quite a lot. She told us that when she was a little girl they had chicken for Christmas dinner rather than turkey. At 3 p.m. before our desserts, we watched the Queen give her annual speech, and then we played Trivial Pursuit, which was of course won by Ally. Although she dozed off a bit (resulting in a red wine spillage that looked like a murder scene worthy of Hercules Poirot) Grandma was very chatty and when we took her back home she said that she had enjoyed the day. She also mentioned that I am the best person at helping her into and out of her chair because I am the most gentle! I was well pleased with this compliment.
Boxing Day has been much quieter. Jamie FaceTimed us in the morning (his evening) and we had a good chat (he had been working on Christmas Day so had only phoned briefly). At 8 a.m. on Boxing Day morning, which should have been his day off, he was asked to fly in the helicopter to Queenstown to attend to wee twin premature babies. With assistance from Jamie they are now doing well. I am so proud of him. He was back in time to have a barbecue on the beach with his friends in the afternoon.
Davie was working on his dissertation all day, and Ally, James and I went for a walk along Troon Beach, which was surprisingly mild. Ally and James were running about on the sand throwing the frisbee to each other. We then had lunch in Scott’s which was delicious and we had a lovely view over the harbour with all the sailing ships.
After a relaxing afternoon, it was time for the highlight of Boxing Day; the leftovers! We all made ourselves a plate of turkey and all the trimmings and it tasted oh so good. 

Happy Christmas Santa

Recently there has been controversy about the lyrics of the old Christmas song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in the light of the #MeToo movement. Some people think that the man in the song is pressuring the woman too much and too creepily to stay with him. In response, others are outraged that a well-loved song, which has until now been seen as light-hearted, is being unfavourably reinterpreted in a modern context. Personally I have always liked the song and it never occurred to me that it was in any way intended to portray date rape, and I’m not going to change my mind now.
Meanwhile, according to some nonsensical survey, there is a desire for Santa Claus to become gender neutral as part of an attempt to politically correct Christmas. So this week I found myself browsing the news websites too see how poor old Santa is bearing up under the pressures of 2018.
It’s not encouraging. An angry (and disgusting) woman spat in the face of an elf in a shopping centre in Stockton-on-Tees because she did not have a booking so could not take her child into Santa’s grotto. In another example of a lack of Christmas spirit, an irate Santa Claus shouted and swore at children in St Ives during a fire evacuation while tearing off his hat and beard. He also shouted at them to “get the fuck out.” I suspect that this may have been a false Santa like the one in James’ favourite film Elf.
It’s even worse in the USA. In Texas, a man wearing a Santa costume, referred to by police as "Santa," and his wife – referred to by police as "Mrs. Claus" – were driving home when a man in a red car kept blocking them and then began shooting at Santa’s car. Although luckily Santa and his wife were not injured, their assailant must surely be on the naughty list!
Santa did get a bit of revenge though, when a giant inflatable Father Christmas broke free of its moorings and landed on a busy road in Cambridgeshire, causing what the BBC referred to as a “ho-ho-hold up!” And he has his supporters - well wishers rallied round Santa after he was given a ticket for parking in the wrong space in County Durham. People on Facebook even called for the attendant to get a lump of coal for Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone. 

The Lying Bitch and the Wardrobe

Today we had our traditional Christmas lunch with Heather and Ewan at the excellent Italian Kitchen, followed by drinks at the Metropolitan. We were joined there by several of our progeny and girlfriends. We all chatted non stop and I couldn’t believe how the afternoon just went by in the blink of an eye. I really enjoy this celebration on the last Sunday before Christmas, and I love that whichever young family members are available usually turn up to join us. Merchant Square looked very pretty with its fairy lights and craft stalls. By about 7 pm the “older generation” (us!) decided to call it a day and we bade our farewells to the young folk and headed home.
In other festive activities, James and I popped into Oran Mor yesterday lunchtime on the spur of the moment, to see if we could obtain return tickets for their sold out pantomime “The Lying Bitch and the Wardrobe”. We were directed to wait at a nearby table, so we ordered food and drinks, and were delighted when we did manage to get two tickets. The pantomime was great fun and very Scottish, with lots of singing, dancing and jokes. There were only four actors but they did a great job, and it was only about an hour and a quarter long, which I liked - some pantomimes can go on too long I think. A clever device was used; the villain “Evilyin” had at her command an invisible army, which arrived with loud tramping noises to drag away anyone who broke her laws. The actors pointed out how this suited their small budget! It was hilarious to see Dame Beanie Bumpherton wrestling against invisible assailants while shouting “Let go of me you bastards!”
And then we went down to Dunlop yesterday evening where we were treated to a delicious dinner and convivial evening by Christine and Gerry; we all ended up playing the “National Trust Board Game” which was not only fun but full of interesting facts. The dream team of Gerry and James triumphed over the rest of us!
James is slumbering gently beside me as I write this. There is no sign of Ally, Cat, Davie or Chanel, who are presumably still out partying with Andrew! 

Winter Solstice

Well here we are on the shortest day of the year. In fact we heard on the radio today that the exact time of the winter solstice would be at 10.23 p.m. We were not able to raise a toast to the solstice at that precise moment though, because we were at the GFT watching one of James’ favourite films, Elf. It is a feel-good Christmas film that we both (but especially James!) find very funny. Some of its scenes are priceless. James particularly enjoys Buddy’s excitement when he hears that Santa will be coming to the department store; “I KNOW him!” and I love it when Buddy sees a sign outside a café in New York advertising the “World’s Best Coffee” and he rushes inside to congratulate the bemused staff on their achievement! It was all good fun and I felt quite moved at the end.
In other news, I took Grandma Christmas shopping this week. She has delegated some of her shopping but was understandably keen to do some herself, and we had a very pleasant time together. All of our own Christmas shopping has been purchased, wrapped, and where required, posted. The turkey and trimmings have been ordered from the butcher and will be collected by Ally and Davie on Christmas Eve. A massive Sainsbury’s delivery of all the rest of the festive food will be delivered tomorrow morning. In other words, a very traditional Anderson Christmas, and I’m looking forward to it.