venta | Entries tagged with christmas eve

Aye up.

My visits to write LJ entries seem these days to be occasional, in every sense. But it's Christmas, and I know a couple of you look for me at Christmas, so here we are.

To cover the important traditional points: I'm at my parents' house, we've got the fire in, I've snuggled up the pigs in blankets, Dad and I have pints of beer. More to the point, it is proper brown beer that tastes brown, which is vanishingly hard to find these days. Rockin' Rudolph made by - of all people - Greene King. Who'd have thought it?

Today, we had a delightfully throwback experience: lift tree in from garden*, adorn tree with fairy lights, plug in fairy lights...

Nowt.

( Not a sausage. )

Also, as usual: I've written some Christmas puzzles. If you'd like them, drop me a line.

Um, hi. If you're here, you might know I've not been around much this year. Life has been getting in the way quite spectacularly, some of it good, some of it bad. I even managed to go to Glastonbury this year, but failed to write it up here (something future-me is going to be quite cross about).

But, you know, traditions is traditions. I am:
(a) at my parents' house
(b) in front of a real fire
(c) not with a pint of beer, because there was the end of a bottle of red wine that needed tidying up.

I have, of course, blanketed all the pigs for tomorrow's dinner. Mind you, the streaky bacon my mum had bought was the thickest thick-cut streaky bacon I have ever seen. And we have full-size pork sausages instead of chipolatas. So these are the most hench pigs in blankets you can imagine.

( Christmas Eve )

( Non-Christmassy General Update )

Hey. It's been a while. But it's Christmas, which is a time for traditions. So here we are.

Last year, there was a brief hiatus in the annual visitation to my family home. This year we're back for a Completely Normal Christmas. Definitely Normal. ChrisC and I have piled up the motorway[*], singing along to the Christmas compilation albums he made, and to the festive quick-fire found from Pappy's. We've collected the order from the butcher and I've made up the pigs in blankets and the stuffing for tomorrow; we've put the tree and the decorations up; we've got a fire going. Things are in their usual places. Dad and I have a pint each.

All sounding normal, no?

Sadly, some unexpected companions accompanied us this year. One is a sort of scientific angel, which sits on my shoulder. It says things like "you've been very careful in the run up to Christmas" and "you're doing daily lateral flow tests", and "all your relatives, however elderly and unwell, are extremely vaccinated (as are you)".

On the other shoulder, sits Little Devil Doubt. Little Devil Doubt likes to keep reminding me that I've come from London, where infection rates are currently through the roof. And that many of my friends who are also sensible, careful people have contracted Covid just the same. "Are you sure," it says, "that that little sniffle you have is just because you helped ChrisC's parents move a load of dusty boxes out of storage? Are you sure it's just an allergy? Do you maybe have a slight sore throat, too? You're still sneezing. You've been into shops this week. Can you trust lateral flow tests? Isn't your throat feeling a bit sore? Don't forget that Rach had Covid for a few days before she tested positive. And G caught Covid at a party where everyone had tested negative beforehand. And T had what he thought was a cold, tested negative twice, and infected three other people with Covid... Are you sure you don't have a sore throat?"

Little Devil Doubt is, of course, particularly fond of saying things like this to me in the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep. I'm not a fan but, sadly, LDD appears to have a rather louder and more insistent voice than Science Angel.

It is not, to be honest, the most restful approach to Christmas. But I am well aware that many people are having much worse Christmases, for all kinds of reasons. If some 3am panic is the worst that happens to me, I will have nothing to complain about.

Of course, an un-looked for benefit of travelling to the far north is that the chemists here actually have lateral flow tests in stock. I picked some up, which means we can now test profligately instead of worrying that we might run out. And I was here to explicate the now-slightly-bureaucratic process for acquiring same to my Dad.

I've spoken to my parents' very-vulnerable neighbour on the phone, rather than popping round. I've run some errands for my also-quite-unwell uncle (including posting a card... at least... I think I posted a card... I left his house with it, and wound up back at my parents' without it... but I have absolutely zero memory of putting it in a postbox... surely I posted it...). I've bumped into random neighbours and said 'hi' (including a hilarious pelican crossing experience where three people crossed from each side, and each one stopped briefly for a chat with the person coming towards them in the opposite direction).

Tomorrow, there's going to be a certain amount of driving people around, and generally trying to make sure everyone's OK. Due to a Covid-related care-mixup, my mum will be running a carefully-edited Christmas dinner round to the aforementioned vulnerable neighbour. But tomorrow, there will also be good cheer, company, a fire and, of course, pigs in blankets. We'll be OK.

Take care everyone. I hope you're warm, and safe, and that everyone you care about is healthy. Have a good day tomorrow.

[*] Ish. Owing to shocking traffic, we came up the A1 instead of the M1, which is only (M) for some of the way.

Crossposts: https://venta.livejournal.com/556268.html

Hey, LJ. I've been neglecting you dreadfully of late. But Christmas is a time of traditions, and so here we are.

( We must have our traditions )

But for now, Dad is fetching me a(nother) beer and all is well with the world. If you're celebrating Christmas, have a good'un.

Evening, DW/LJ. I've not been around here much of late; work has been eating my life somewhat and apparently writing (and, to a large extent, reading) blogs has been one of the things that went by the board.

But I'm home for Christmas, and one of the traditions of Christmas Eve is a post, so here I am doing it.

( This year... )

I hope, wherever you are, you're having a peaceful and happy one.

Crossposts: https://venta.livejournal.com/551719.html

I've made the pigs in blankets now, by the way. Christmas was nearly cancelled, as apparently some form of butchery-related mishap means we do not have the requisite 47cwt of Cumberland sausage. I mean, we've still got 47cwt of sausage, it's just that some of it is Lincolnshire.

Can you believe it?

I know.

I've wrapped all the Lincolnshire up in bacon and am hoping no one will notice.

Long-term readers will know that me being called upon to link un-linked Cumberland sausage and wrap some of it in bacon is a long-standing Christmas tradition, along with decorating the tree, having a nice fire, and not going out there because it's bloody windy.

This Christmas Eve has been all over the shop. ChrisC and I got to Darlington yesterday, but Christmas Eve being a Sunday has properly messed with everything. The parents have already done the butcher-run, because today is Sunday (butcher closed). Plus what do you have for Sunday dinner, when you know the next day is already going to contain the mother of all roasts? (ChrisC says "a roast anyway, you idiots", everyone else said "corned beef pie". At least, they did once the idea of a corned beef pie had been mooted.)

( So there was some going to church )

( Tradition! )

Crossposts: https://venta.livejournal.com/548065.html

Evening, all.

When I was little, Christmas Eve had a pretty well-established pattern. To be honest, it still does, although this year was a bit off-point as ChrisC and I only rolled into Darlington mid-afternoon. But one of the parts of the pattern when I was small was to go into town for the Crib Service and (either before or after) to potter across the market place to the town clock.

Grouped around the base of the town clock were the people the mother always referred to as "the holly men". They were not, in fact, some kind of sinister shadow force written into existence by Mr Gaiman, but a small group of guys selling holly. Not fancy wreaths, or arrangements, just holly. We'd buy a bundle and bring it home to tuck sprigs behind pictures and - if at all possible - for general decking of halls.

( The Problem of the Holly )

I have been a total posting failure of late, despite interesting things having happened. So instead I present three words:

Winter. Spiced. Ribena.

Spotted in the Co-op on Thursday. It's the Ribena version of mulled wine, and it is fabulous.

December 24th? Must be time for my annual Christmas bulletin.

( Christmas business as usual )

So, Christmas-time. It's pretty traditional round here, as you may recall. We have little in the way of innovation. However, in the course of decorating the house this afternoon, the mother requested I do something that (within my memory) has never been done...

( Hoop-la! )

So, decorations up, log fire burning, turkey giblets on the stove making stock for gravy tomorrow. Several yards of Cumberland sausage linked, some turned into pigs-in-blankets, stuffing made up, a bit of advanced vegetable peeling done. That's Christmas eve round these parts :)

Christmas Eve? It must be time for the annual bulletin from the north.

( Rain, baubles, sausages )

I briefly looked over recent Christmas write-ups to see what I said, and was gently boggled. Even by my standards of Christmas being the same each year, we seem to have excelled ourselves on similarity. Even down to the "famously loquacious" friend of the mother's whom we narrowly avoided as we left the butcher's on Christmas Eve last year.

(This year we did not avoid her. We left the butcher's, weighed down by giant turkey, and she caught us fair and square. I am now very well informed on the state of her largeish family.)

The tree? Well, that looks pretty much like it did last year. I have again shoe-horned all the baubles in the world onto it, including the costume-jewellery Maltese cross that used to be the "star" at the top of the tree when I was a kid. It's now been replaced by a silver snowflake, but I found it lurking at the bottom of a box and squeezed it onto a lower branch. ("Oh blimey," says the mother. "That was Ann's when she was a teenager". Ann is a schoolfriend of hers. Erm, so what is it doing in our Christmas decorations box? This seems unclear.)

ChrisC (bravely risking my family Christmas for the third year running) has mostly been looking about in confusion all day. Apparently he barely recognises Darlington without the festive snow, and has been asking rather anxiously when it's going to arrive. I considered explaining that Darlington isn't really that far north and the last two years have been aberrations, but it seemed safer just to assure him the snow would doubtless be along tomorrow. It'll be delivered by a magical polar bear just after midnight. Won't it?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all goodnight.

Gosh. It's snowy up here in Darlington. Apparently it wasn't particularly snowy up until we were about twenty minutes away last night, whereupon the sky threw snow around madly for around twenty five minutes. We arrived in appalling driving conditions, then the weather promptly settled down into a smug, festive, picturesque backdrop.

( Popping to the shops... )

( ... and putting up the tree )