Don't mug yourself
Dec. 27th, 2004 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaChristmas Day, according to just about everyone I know, has one besetting problem. You get up, you open your presents, you eat Christmas dinner - and then what do you do with the rest of the day? Various strategies exist involving alcohol, telly, screaming rows, etc.
Being a like minded bunch, the four of us seem to have arrived at the mutual compromise of becoming individually engrossed in readable presents. I don't believe the crisis has ever arised whereby someone wasn't given at least one readable present. So, Christmas afternoon passed pleasantly. Mum vanished into Accomodating Broccoli in the Cemetary, Dad slowly munched his way through a copy of The Chap (whose inner pages are incidentally graced by a photo of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mr_flay). I trundled through a short book about how to rescue cooking disasters (bought, the mother assures me, for entertainment value rather than because she believes I have frequent culinary crises). The uncle seemed to be multitasking, and was alternating between chapters of Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, and a biography of Warwick the Kingmaker.
We're not completely antisocial, of course, and people sporadically break off to read bits out, argue about whose turn it is to get up and throw anotherpeasant log on the fire, or (heaven forbid) talk to each other.
Not a Christmas day to everyone's tastes, I realise, but it's worked for us for over twenty years.
As readers of this journal may have discerned, my Christmas is very much founded on habit, custom and tradition. In many cases, I'm not even sure whether it's deliberate or accidental. Consider, for example, coffee.
If my parents make coffee in the ordinary run of things, it gets made in a cafetiere. If there are enough visitors to make it worthwhile, the filter coffee machine is set going. At Christmas, however, the coffee gets made in the percolator, a slim, silver electric jug-like thing which is older than I am, and sits in the hearth making appealing bubbling noises. I'm sure someone will read this and tell me that actually the perc gets used all year round, but certainly I only remember seeing it at Christmas.
The coffee, once made, goes into the Poison Mugs. The Poison Mugs are a strange halfway house between the ordinary, ill-assorted but much-loved mugs which are used all the time, and the posh tea-service china which comes out when posh tea requires it. I'm sure the Poison Mugs come out at other times of year, a matched set to look smart while holding more than a teacup, but I always associate them with Christmas. One of my earliest memories of Christmas is sitting with my Grandad, drinking coffee (which I didn't really like, but wanted because the gownups drank it) out of a Poison Mug.
Each Poison Mug is a dark, glossy blue. Each has a gold apothecary's label, bearing the name of a poison (or drug, depending on how you choose to look at it). I remember seeing the jars in the chemist at Beamish (a museum which has a recreation 1920s street) years ago, and being surprised because they looked just like the Poison Mugs. The set of six is Belladonna, Heroin, Opium, Arsenic, Strychnine and Cyanide, though I have a nasty feeling that Strychnine is either badly chipped or even broken.
It is only recently that I've managed to work out why, when wrapping paper and decorations are almost entirely themed on red and green, to me Christmas will always be dark blue and gold.
On the second day of Christmas, my Darlington-godparents always come round. I often don't see them much throughout the year, so it's rather nice to have a lazy afternoon chatting. Incidentally, my mother tells me that this year the 26th was not in fact Boxing Day - Boxing Day is historically the first working day after Christmas, so this year is the 27th. Try telling that to the Radio Times.
The day, on the whole, featured eating, sitting about, and the distressing realisation that my mother is still very much better at crosswords than I am.
I've also finally finished reading Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, a delightful volume of rather tongue-in-cheek tales of Kai Lung, the story teller. The over-elaborate writing style is intended to reproduce (and, indeed, take the mickey out of) the more flowery and enigmatic nature of Chinese story telling, but remains wonderfully dry. I think this is technically the third book about Kai Lung, but thanks to a happy find in a second hand bookshop, I have another couple of tomes waiting for me in Oxford.
The only downward slant to the otherwise meritous reading of these enlightening tales is that this worthless one has found that it has a most unexpected and amplifying effect on this one's second-rate writing style, causing the addition of ill-chosen adjectives into even the most unassuming and threadbare of sentences.
Being a like minded bunch, the four of us seem to have arrived at the mutual compromise of becoming individually engrossed in readable presents. I don't believe the crisis has ever arised whereby someone wasn't given at least one readable present. So, Christmas afternoon passed pleasantly. Mum vanished into Accomodating Broccoli in the Cemetary, Dad slowly munched his way through a copy of The Chap (whose inner pages are incidentally graced by a photo of
mr_flay). I trundled through a short book about how to rescue cooking disasters (bought, the mother assures me, for entertainment value rather than because she believes I have frequent culinary crises). The uncle seemed to be multitasking, and was alternating between chapters of Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, and a biography of Warwick the Kingmaker. We're not completely antisocial, of course, and people sporadically break off to read bits out, argue about whose turn it is to get up and throw another
Not a Christmas day to everyone's tastes, I realise, but it's worked for us for over twenty years.
As readers of this journal may have discerned, my Christmas is very much founded on habit, custom and tradition. In many cases, I'm not even sure whether it's deliberate or accidental. Consider, for example, coffee.
If my parents make coffee in the ordinary run of things, it gets made in a cafetiere. If there are enough visitors to make it worthwhile, the filter coffee machine is set going. At Christmas, however, the coffee gets made in the percolator, a slim, silver electric jug-like thing which is older than I am, and sits in the hearth making appealing bubbling noises. I'm sure someone will read this and tell me that actually the perc gets used all year round, but certainly I only remember seeing it at Christmas.
The coffee, once made, goes into the Poison Mugs. The Poison Mugs are a strange halfway house between the ordinary, ill-assorted but much-loved mugs which are used all the time, and the posh tea-service china which comes out when posh tea requires it. I'm sure the Poison Mugs come out at other times of year, a matched set to look smart while holding more than a teacup, but I always associate them with Christmas. One of my earliest memories of Christmas is sitting with my Grandad, drinking coffee (which I didn't really like, but wanted because the gownups drank it) out of a Poison Mug.
Each Poison Mug is a dark, glossy blue. Each has a gold apothecary's label, bearing the name of a poison (or drug, depending on how you choose to look at it). I remember seeing the jars in the chemist at Beamish (a museum which has a recreation 1920s street) years ago, and being surprised because they looked just like the Poison Mugs. The set of six is Belladonna, Heroin, Opium, Arsenic, Strychnine and Cyanide, though I have a nasty feeling that Strychnine is either badly chipped or even broken.
It is only recently that I've managed to work out why, when wrapping paper and decorations are almost entirely themed on red and green, to me Christmas will always be dark blue and gold.
On the second day of Christmas, my Darlington-godparents always come round. I often don't see them much throughout the year, so it's rather nice to have a lazy afternoon chatting. Incidentally, my mother tells me that this year the 26th was not in fact Boxing Day - Boxing Day is historically the first working day after Christmas, so this year is the 27th. Try telling that to the Radio Times.
The day, on the whole, featured eating, sitting about, and the distressing realisation that my mother is still very much better at crosswords than I am.
I've also finally finished reading Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, a delightful volume of rather tongue-in-cheek tales of Kai Lung, the story teller. The over-elaborate writing style is intended to reproduce (and, indeed, take the mickey out of) the more flowery and enigmatic nature of Chinese story telling, but remains wonderfully dry. I think this is technically the third book about Kai Lung, but thanks to a happy find in a second hand bookshop, I have another couple of tomes waiting for me in Oxford.
The only downward slant to the otherwise meritous reading of these enlightening tales is that this worthless one has found that it has a most unexpected and amplifying effect on this one's second-rate writing style, causing the addition of ill-chosen adjectives into even the most unassuming and threadbare of sentences.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 05:09 pm (UTC)During a quiet moment over Christmas I made the mistake of picking up a copy of the Independent's cryptic crossword. I thereby discovered that the entire world is better at crosswords than I am as I solved a total of zero clues in almost fifteen minutes.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:06 pm (UTC)Indeed, this unfortunate and entirely incapable person has himself discovered that if an admittedly inadequate and unworthy attempt is made to portray a character based upon the esteemed Kai Lung in the context of a game based upon the art of storytelling, many of the other characters represented there by other more worthy individuals appear to encounter some minor difficulties upon hearing even the most clear and succinct of statements which the person referred to may utter...
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:54 pm (UTC)(And it's contagious! Once you've started it's really hard to stop!)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:25 pm (UTC)Judge for yourself.
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
Have you read Bridge of Birds? I'm sure I must have at least recommended it to you already.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:53 pm (UTC)I haven't, and I don't believe I've heard you mention it ?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:58 pm (UTC)Amazon have some of the text online if you fancy a look. It's set in a slightly bogus mediaeval China. Quite delightful.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 06:27 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I believe that it's theoretically possible to get copies of the entire trilogy if you look hard enough.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-28 06:38 pm (UTC)Excellent. Best news I've had today.
it's theoretically possible to get copies of the entire trilogy if you look hard enough.
I did so a couple of years ago. It involved a lot of secondhand bookstalls, but was well worth it. Of course, these days the miraculous interweb means you can find, pay for and lose books without leaving your seat. Fantastic!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 10:05 am (UTC)Isn't it ?
no subject
Date: 2005-01-04 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 07:49 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, on the subject of drinking vessels, I alsogot her a matched pair of medieval style pewter style wine goblets, which have already enhanced our wine drinking habit. Drop crystal glasses and you're stuffed, but metal goblets will still be usable (if a little dented).
no subject
Date: 2004-12-29 11:47 am (UTC)