venta

It's been the usual round, you know all about it after years of Christmas posts. Pick the order up from the butcher, decorate the house, Cullen Skink for lunch, take the presents round to the godparents, take the presents to the nextdoor neighbours, blanket the pigs and peel the veg. for tomorrow.

Though come to think of it, my write up from last year implies I was offered biscuits by the various people to whom I distributed presents. Clearly standards are slipping. On the plus side, both the godmother's newish-but-oldish cats have decided that we are to be tolerated in the house and snoozed vaguely at us. I spent sufficiently long chatting to the nextdoor neighbours that I got a text messages from ChrisC telling me that my dad had eaten my share of the tea-time pork pie. Fortunately it was untrue, thus avoiding potential bloodshed.

Of course, I say that it's the same round. It's not actually the same round as when I started writing in this journal, when I was still singing in the church choir at Christmas. Or later, when I went out drinking with the choir, but skipped on the singing. Or other years, when I went out drinking with old school friends. Christmas Eve is much more at home, these days. Without even the drinking this year, due to some antisocially-timed tablets I'm taking. I don't really mind the not-drinking, but I shall miss the companionable beer comparison sessions with Dad. (He's drinking beer anyway, the mother and I are sharing the inexplicably giant can of cream soda I inexplicably bought in Whitby's American-import sweet shop.)

Plus, of course, ChrisC comes up north with me these days and very generously tolerates all my family's peculiar festive foibles. Even he's nudged our traditions along a bit, causing the introduction of custard onto the menu of things available to pour onto Christmas pudding. Also cranberry sauce, previously unseen in this house because both my parents are violently allergic to cranberries. However, the mother apparently donned a Hazmat suit and went to purchase some.

However, in keeping with a tradition that I don't really understand, it has been incredibly windy here today. It is alwayswindy on Christmas eve. Still, at least the forecast from a week or so back which threatened us with 18 degrees on 25th doesn't look likely - it's not freezing out there, but it felt respectably snappy when I went to put various things into the fridge-overflow region (aka the shed). Apparently we have the first Christmas full moon since 1977.

Shock news on the deviations from tradition this year in the decor department include new fairy lights on the tree. Aren't LED fairy lights brilliant? They come out a bit weird in photos, but they're much light-ier and twinklier than their counterparts (you may remember the counterparts were playing up last year).

Despite the mother's vague hankering for a sophisticated, colour-themed tree she has bowed to popular opinion and the new fairy lights are again coloured. Our tree is as rakish and ridiculous as ever.

We are trying for a slightly more sophisticated vibe in the other room.

The little wooden dudes are up on their spray-painted silver twig on top of the hall robe.

The mother tells me that they thought themselves frightfully extravagant for paying £5 (pre-decimal!) for the little wooden dudes. But they've been giving Christmas pleasure for about 45 years, so we will consider it money well spent. They are, it turns out, really quite hard to photograph once they're in situ. (The weird bit of curvy wood on the right is a rather put-out stylised stork, who gets to sit in the middle of the hall robe the rest of the year.)

And now, owing to something which I'm going to blame on Matt Parker, ChrisC and I have just spent a considerable amount of time cudgelling our rusty brains to prove that the square of any prime number (greater than 3) is one larger than a multiple of 24. I don't think we managed it to exam standard, but we managed it to our own satisfaction and can move on with our lives.

However, it has also just dawned on me that I do not know where my stocking is. My stocking is nothing footwear-related, but is in fact a string bag my Dad made when I was a baby. But I don't know where it is and I haven't hung it up! Scuse me while I go and start hunting...

If you're celebrating Christmas, merry Christmas. If you're not, then enjoy whatever you're doing.