My apparently perfect life is a facade. I have been pulled up by my daughter T for writing my blog as if I have a perfect happy life, when actually it is all a tragic pantomime, a farce, full of arguments and misery and frustration. So just in case she is right and I am misleading, I have decided to share with you a fairly typical day, which just happens to be a couple of days before Christmas.
I shall begin with the Christmas tree, this drooping disgrace, which is a total enigma this year, and so very far from perfect. The needles stay on the branches, but sadly the branches are beginning to drop off - the whole tree is crispy (despite being well watered) and I am convinced that it must have been covered with extra firm hold hairspray or that the needles are glued on. There is no other explanation. It is a dead tree! We have toyed with the idea of replacing it but I am happy for it to stay drooping for a few days more. To be honest, at the moment we could stick a dead sheep in the corner and nobody would notice, as long as we covered it with enough lights and stuck a few candy canes on it.
Moving on.... My day (December 22nd) starts with a banging headache and the usual rummaging through my wardrobe in an attempt to find something I can still fit into. The options are now fairly limited, as I threw away all of my bigger sized clothes before Lockdown and swore that I would never again purchase anything above a size 16. So I am left with a few stretchy items - mainly leggings and jumpers or baggy tunics. I have included a photo from a couple of years ago and can still fit into the Christmas sweater I was wearing, although the jeans won't go above the knees! I have a few stretchy dresses I could still wear, but I am back to the point where tights are uncomfortable as they just roll down and make my middle look like a string of sausages. I take my time in selecting something special as I really want to look my best. I have two exciting outings today - one to see the physio at my doctor's surgery, and the other to Morrisons to stake out the turkeys, to see if there are any with a later use by date than Boxing Day. Most days I don't get to go out at all!
I finally settle on a jumper that is tunic shaped (double win) and leggings, dress and walk healthily down to the doctors. After having my temperature taken and doing the surgery equivalent of beating The Cube in an attempt to sanitise my hands, I eventually see the physio. He asks me how I am doing, repeating everything he told me last time, and refers me to a website. He asks me to show him the exercises I have been doing and then tells me I am doing them all wrong, which is perhaps why my Achilles tendons aren't healing. I listened really carefully at the previous appointment, when he also told me I was doing it all wrong, and I wonder whether he is doing what Mr C does at the dry cleaners where he always corrects the assistants no matter how they pronounce his surname, right or wrong, just for sport. By the time I leave, I definitely know what I am doing and I am clear that I must do the exercises three times a day or they won't work. If I do them correctly, I may be able to run by April. I really hope so! I am also setting April as the target for losing 3 of the stone I have gained in the last year. New year, old me hopefully. I don't like the current one - too fat and miserable. The setting of goals has not gone well this year, but I'm sure next year will be better, in every aspect.
I walk back home in the drizzling rain, and realise that the fresh air has cleared my headache. I drop T off at Morrisons, and join the long queue around the outside of the shop with my trolley. When I eventually make it inside, I fill the trolley with many bottles of fake Coke Zero and a few mixers (all of which will stay in the boot of my car, as the second they enter the house, the gannets descend and they all disappear). I buy strawberries for the Eton mess on Christmas Day (a little green, hoping that they will ripen in time). Branston pickle goes in the trolley, to accompany the pork pie for my Christmas breakfast - not for me the grandeur of smoked salmon or eggs Benedict. Pork Pie and Branston is a tradition I am happy to continue, much to the disgust of the rest of the family. My favourite part is the jelly, which makes them all retch. This makes me enjoy it even more.
Then I head to the turkeys and faff for 15 minutes or so, checking the dates on every single crown, even the really difficult to reach ones right at the back on the top shelf, and until I am satisfied that they all have the same use by date - Boxing Day. I have been playing a game of jeopardy, which is not exactly stressing me out, but is giving me a little poke during quiet times - what if they run out of turkeys, what if I buy too early and it is rotten by Christmas Day etc etc. Mr C is also determined that the bird should be brined, as he says it makes it so much more moist (so does a whole pack of butter I find), and tastier too. Bernard Matthews is alive and well and living in Moulton! I am not convinced that shoving the turkey into a bucket of salty water with a cinnamon stick and some juniper berries will improve it, but what do I know. The cinnamon sticks and the juniper berries incidentally are the same ones I pull out on demand each Christmas, as he stands poised with his freshly cleaned bucket in his excited little hand.
Mr C has said he wants a crown, and a good quality one, but I am much happier without cavities and also reluctant to spend fifty quid on a bird which only three of us will be eating. However, I decide to just go for it, and buy a big Turkey breast for twenty pounds, planning to cut it into slices after Christmas dinner, and freeze the leftovers in smaller quantities, to be used later in the holidays.
T has been making enquiries about puddings for the big day, and says that she might buy her own. I tell her what I am planning, but she pulls a face at all of my suggestions. I say I might make lemon posset (my favourite pud) and she asks if it is available in chocolate flavour. I say I think that's just chocolate mousse, and suggest that I might make a chocolate orange cheesecake for Boxing Day, and would that do. Apparently she doesn't like cheesecake, but when I say that it is really just mousse on a biscuit base, she declares that she doesn't like chocolate orange either, and I feel like I am stuck in an episode of Charlie and Lola, where Lola will never, not ever eat tomatoes. I think the problem is that T has seen a profiterole pudding that she really likes the look of, and only that will do.
The need for so many puddings will diminish over the course of the next 24 hours or so as things take a turn for the worst, and now as I write this a day later, I am at the point where even one might be too many....
On the way home from the shops, I receive a phone call from my son H, who tells me that his girlfriend has tested positive; she is a teacher and was contacted by track and trace. They last met up a few days ago, socially distanced but who knows, it might not have been enough. She is doing OK thankfully, but how typical to work so hard during term time, only to fall ill as soon as the holidays begin. So H is spending the next few days alone in his bedroom, with food delivered on a tray by a grumpy old shrew (me). He is devastated that he has to abandon plans to spend Christmas in his girlfriend's bubble in Corby, but I think he quite likes the thought of Christmas dinner in his bedroom, with Pokemon on tap. I will be spending the next few days furiously cleaning everything, walking up and down stairs with full and empty trays and monitoring everyone for coughs, temperatures or losses of taste or smell, hoping that we will all escape the virus.
Later, whilst delivering lunch to the sick bay, I see something purple on the floor of T's open bedroom door- the remnants of big box of Milk Tray. Dogs are not allowed upstairs, but they often manage to stealthily sneak upstairs when nobody is watching. The kids are told repeatedly not to ever leave food in their rooms, particularly not within a dog's reach. After all my hard work keeping advent calendars out of harm's way, all it takes is a wrapped box of Milk Tray, and a few seconds for Paddy the poochon to rip it open and devour the lot.
I check online, and consider a trip to the vet, but decide to wait and see. Paddy pants a lot, makes weird yowly noises and is obviously feeling uncomfortable. I keep sending him outside and encourage him to drink plenty of water, but other than that, there is little else I can do. I have almost finished making satay chicken for tea - lumpy chicken in a golden honey coloured sauce with stir fry vegetable and noodles, when L asks 'what is that on the sofa? It is the liquid sick equivalent of the Sargasso Sea, and has been delivered as stealthily as its contents were consumed. In the style of Nicky from Silent Witness, we liberally apply Vic Rub below our nostrils and run for the toilet roll and anti bac spray. There is too much effluent to soak up and the sofa is leather, so Mr C shouts for everyone to clear the deck, picks up the seat cushion and tries to keep it level as he heads for the French windows. I don't need a spirit level to predict what will happen next, but let's just say that nobody is in a rush to eat the chicken satay. I text T to let her know what has happened and she is very worried about Paddy and apologetic for the trouble. And when she gets home, we discover that he has also been very sick in his bed. We decide that the bed is beyond saving (it might have made it during the warmer summer months, but the thought of washing and trying to dry a vomit saturated bed in the tumble drier or on the radiator is a bit too much). So she quietly bags it up and takes it out to the dustbin, and on the way we bump into a neighbour who offers us an old dog bed that she doesn't want any more. We cover it in a blanket and after a few false starts and quite a lot of barking, the dogs eventually snuggle down in it and fall to sleep.
The only thing positive of the whole day was that I discover (and I take full credit for this) a lovely Christmas album by Jamie Cullum 'The Piano Man at Christmas'. I am not keen on his voice or his songs or even his style of music usually, but I heard him being interviewed a few days ago, and he said he had written or recorded (? should have listened more closely) during Lockdown, with the old crooners like Nat King Cole in mind, who released Christmas albums. It is really gorgeous,I can imagine sitting under a Christmas tree (not mine!) opening beautifully wrapped gifts beside a roaring fire with this on in the background.
Today (23rd December) should have been a better day. Who doesn't love Christmas Eve Eve? But it has rained non stop here, and I've heard on the news that many areas will be moving into Tier 4 on Boxing Day, and Northamptonshire will be in Tier 3. It doesn't look good. We were hoping to do some sort of an outdoor present exchange with our grandson and his parents just after Christmas, and another with stepdaughter F, but this will no longer be possible.
And then this afternoon, a call came from L's school with regard to track n trace. A girl in her class has tested positive and now L has to self isolate until 27th December. So now we are down to just three of us at the table on Christmas Day, it's certainly going to be a quiet one. I worried that L might be upset, but she cheered and said 'no washing up for me!" I suppose there's always a bright side, although sadly not for her sister T who will now have to wash, dry and put away single handedly for the next few days. She is not going to be happy. Even with two of them hidden away, there will no doubt be noisy rows and swearing. But they are my monkeys and it's my circus, so I mind less. And we are in a far better position than so many this Christmas.
Wishing you all the best (have I already done this bit?) and I hope that you can take a little comfort from my pantomime, and are consoled by the fact that everyone's life is shit at the moment.
Stay safe and well and have yourselves a merry little Christmas if you can.
And to start you off, here are a few pictures from Christmases past.
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