Christmas Time is Here!

I am getting excited. Only 15 days to go until Chrimbo (as us Scousers call it) and I have now spent a small fortune of money which I don't really have. Therefore, I will probably have to go cleaning posh people's houses, write a book or prostitute myself to pay off the credit card bill which will land with an almighty thump on 2 January 2009. That day when you feel a hell of a lot better than the day before when your head is pounding with ten elephant ballerinas and somebody has emptied a cannister of CO2 into your guts...You wake up realising that you haven't died. You got through New Year's Day and only had to spend 2.5 hours in the bathroom, which wasn't that bad as they were showing Only Fools & Horses: that episode where Rodney 'hilariously' (and I use that term very, very loosely and if it drips with much more sarcasm, it is liable to wash away...) gets called a plonker for the millionth time by Del Boy, and The Wizard of Oz on the telly. Again.

Then the postman arrives and your world caves in. Ah me...Why do I like this time of year so very much?

Well, I shall let you into a secret. I love giving presents to people. I get much more of a kick out of giving them than receiving them, (Mr P, please don't take this statement too much to heart. Eternity Rings are an exception to this rule...) and I am like a cat on a hot tin roof, desperate for the recipients to play my guessing games as to what they are about to receive (and for that they should be truly thankful...Amen). For example, I have bought Mr P a *******/****/********** for Christmas and I cannot wait to give it to him. So I pester him to play the guessing game with him, promising him that if he does guess it, I won't tell him if he's right or not. He doesn't like this game, and refuses to play for some considerable time until I have made his ears bleed with my incessant nagging.

So, this morning, he wearily acquiesced, I promised faithfully not to give anything away and he asked, Is it anything to do with photography?

YES!

Oops...

 I clapped my hand over my mouth in shock at my utterance, blushed unbearably red at my error and then squawked at myself, loudly, for being completely incapable of keeping a secret. I couldn't believe that my mouth was in Top Gear when my brain was still strolling down a pretty country lane...

Last year, whilst very distracted by a telephone conversation at work, I noticed, vaguely, that my colleagues were whispering amongst themselves. As soon as I put the phone down, one of them asked, Who did you get for Secret Santa, then? I automatically told them and was screeched out of the department for being a 'gob-sh*te' and incapable of holding my water.

This year, I thought I was being slightly more clever in ordering everything on-line and adjusting delivery dates to just before Christmas. So I wouldn't be tempted to hand everything out, you understand? I ordered this digital tablet thingummy for Charles, about which I knew nothing and then fretted. Was this what he wanted? It looked more like a hot-plate for warming pans than something with which you could do whizzy digital photography things. By 10pm, I had showed him the reviews, the tech specs, and groaned because he didn't think he had the USB port it required. 

Two weeks ago, I bought him three photography books. One evening, he was a bit down in the dumps, so I gave them to him to cheer him up.

So that's now four presents of which he has knowledge.

(Aside: I keep smelling blue cheese in here...I wonder what's wrong with my nose?)

He's got to have some surprises for Christmas Day, so yesterday, I returned to eBay, armed with my Flexible Friend and, eyes shut very tightly, heart beating wildly, I hit the 'Buy This Now!' button. I do hate being bossed around by an e-commerce site, but they are bullies and I am a weakling at times...

I also had a winning bid on the most amazing, brand new, Nicole Farhi silk and cashmere jumper for him. Every hour, I checked 'My eBay', just in case, and with only 23 minutes to go until the bid ended, I got up to prepare dinner for my beloved family. And lost the bloody jumper. I was spitting hell, fire and brimstone. They can buy their own chips next time...

Despite what he says, Mr P finds it very difficult to hold his water, too. By 2pm yesterday, two of my presents were in my grubby hands and that was without a single, ingle word of cajoling or nagging. I hadn't even mentioned his shopping trip to him - and 'trip' is the operative word by all accounts, when the girls got to him about going within a five mile radius of Anne Summers. (Actually, as another aside, I have a blog to write about the Anne Summers' catalogue. To say I was lost for words and almost hysterical is NOT an understatement...then again, perhaps Mr P should write this for a change...hint, hint) Not once. I am actually really good like that. I don't root in hiding places, I don't ask what I am getting, I just stay very quiet and wish, with everything crossed, that I am getting an Eternity Ring, with dirty big, square-cut diamonds. If I stay really, really still and don't breathe for about 45 seconds, it might just come true...

So, 15 days to go. Actually, Mr P and I are spending Christmas alone this year. #s 1 and 2 daughters are off to the ex's house for six days. Although he has magnanimously allowed them to come here for a 'few hours' on Christmas Day itself. And I wouldn't mind betting it will be either over the lunchtime, so I have to get cooking as from first light, or when the Christmas Rugby Special is showing over on BBC2 wherein the Barbarians drub the living daylights out of England. As usual...

We will be celebrating Christmas for the girls on New Year's Day. A sort of BOGOF deal (Buy One, Get One Free) for them. So, Mr P has agreed to eat salmon with me on 25th December - no petrified turkeys in this house, this year. And we shall probably open a nice bottle of vin rouge or two, maybe stroll down to the local to walk off the mince pies and enjoy the ambience of the Hanging Gate's two bar electric fire.

I simply cannot wait!!

 

A Real Christmas Cracker

I'd love to actually tell you that Christmas in the Mildew Household, with the addition of Charles Parnsip, was a total disaster, but, actually, it went fairly well.

Mr Parsnip is more excitable about Christmas than a bag full of monkeys on Ecstasy and so went around jumping out on me and daughters #1 and #2 shouting maniacally, 'It's Christmas Eve!!' until #1 turned to him with such disdain that he visibly withered. #2 entered into the general theme of things, though, and carried on where Mr P had left off. It became a bit of white noise to me in the end...

Christmas Eve was a family oriented evening. Mr P had devised a game of charades for us which included such beauties as 'The Muppets' Christmas Carol' [mine]; 'The Nine O'Clock News' [#2's, who suffers with mild dyslexia] and 'If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body (Would You Hold it Against Me)', [put back in the hat by #1 who was suddenly stricken with an abnormal attack of embarrassment).

We then sat down to a game of Buzz. Buzz is a family quiz game for the PS2 which has hand held buzzers, coloured option buttons and it's a game of knowledge and speed. I suffer with an excellent general knowledge of trivial facts which is a sign of a mis-spent youth in pub quizzes, playing strip Trivial Pursuit, and devising Rugby Club Charity Quizzes in my capacity as Social Secretary during my Muscat days. So, no matter how hard I try to NOT win, in order to let aforesaid daughters win, my natural instinct to get it right takes over, and +300 points comes my way...

Unfortunately, this is where the fun ends...#2 is the most competitive creature I have ever come across and takes the hump immediately, berating us vehemently if we press the right answer one millisecond before her and thus get awarded the points. It got to the point where she was so angry with me (in the lead by a long chalk, even after the other contestants were allowed to take pot-shots at me and take my hard-eared winnings) that she stalked off to her bedroom with her thumb in her mouth and hid behind my old skanky double mattress which is waiting for the Local Council to take it away...

It took cajoling and then threats from #1 for her to remove herself. And believe me, when #1 starts threatening, you don't want to be around for the fall-out.

We debated whether to walk to church for Midnight Mass, but we were all dropping, and added to this, it was heaving down with rain outside, so we decided to hit the sack fairly early...

After repeated warnings to the girls NOT to wake us before 6am, as there was NO SANTA CLAUS, I woke up at 6.30am to a quiet household. OK, I thought, I shall go and have a cuppa, see if Sir Matt Chingduvé is online and shoot the breeze with him - after all, I had prepared everything for the day: all the veggies were sorted out; the chicken was oiled and stuffed; the crap had been cleared from the dining table and the plethora of presents I had received from work had been opened so as not to cause presentism between the daughters.

Sir Matt was not around. I sat there, staring at the fairy lights around the French doors, the lights on the tree and the presents under it.

Nothing was happening.

So, I decided to clatter about a bit and turned the radio on - low, mind you - in the hope that the murmering, dulcit tones of Aled Jones would rouse somebody.

Nothing. Still.

I was starting to feel a bit like a brass knocker on a lavatory door. Where was everyone? Where was the excitement of Christmas Day?

At 8.30am, #2 daughter sleepily roused herself and plodded downstairs, thumb still in mouth, wondering what on earth was going on. 'Happy Christmas!!' I exclaimed, excitedly...'Mphmphm Harumphem,' she replied...

After ten minutes, Mr P surfaced, also bleary-eyed and tousled. #2 yelled, 'Guess What?' 'What?' we both chorused. 'It's Christmas Day!!' She had woken up, and with that yell, so did Mr P.

Well, we had to wait and wait and wait for almost teenage #1 daughter to surface from her pit. By ten o'clock, #2 was like a cat on a hot tin roof, desperate to open her presents. At this point, to stop her brains exploding from her ears and her head spinning round reminiscent of The Exorcist, I allowed her to disturb #1. This was probably a very bad move, in retrospect, as #2 returned, limping and in the wars. #1 was not a happy person being woken up from her reverie, Christmas Day or no.

And so the present unwrapping ensued. #2, who can be quite anal like my good self, put all the presents into individual piles and enforced the rule that we had to open a present in turn. It was taking forever. #1 suggested that we just get stuck in and open our gifts there and then. We agreed and a flurry of torn wrapping paper, bows, tags and ribbons quickly filled my once clean carpet.

The rest of the daylight hours were spent mainly in the kitchen for me, preparing an enormous roast dinner. I am not an especial dab hand at this meal, much preferring to do something exotic to a dead fish (as opposed to a live one), but I feel I excelled myself, particularly as #2 actually had seconds.

There was only one interlude where it all felt a bit too much for me. Whirling and dancing my way around the kitchen, bumping drawers shut, sharpening knives, regulating heat settings, I heard #1 shout me from the bathroom. 'Muuuuuum!' I heard. 'Can you come here please?' Oh flippin' 'eck, I thought, What does she want now?

She had the grace to look very sheepish...She had blocked the upstairs lavatory. With something not very pleasant, and not something one wished to see or smell prior to eating. The water was up to the rim of the bowl, and I stared in dismay, wondering how on earth I was going to sort this out, not possessing a plunger of any description. After repeatedly leaving it to settle and having another flush, and noticing an enormous lack of Mr P who had hidden in a neighbour's outhouse, I attacked the S-bend with the loo brush and plunged. My beautiful velvet dress suddenly felt wet as a sloosh of icky water shot up my arm and between my fingers. I retched uncontrollably as #1 got a fit of the giggles in between profuse apologies...

It quite put me off my dinner...

There were further, minor incidents, such as #1 troughing out on chocolate cake which, due to its ingredient of palm oil, caused her to blow up and her face to resemble a Red Snapper, and the vintage port whose cork had rotted and which had to be seived through my brand new stockings in order to remove the sediment and cork bits which were simply not palatable. A somewhat pointed question regarding my sex life which left me gasping for breath and which I refuse to divulge here, and there was also the visit from the ex who was graciously allowed into the living room to see the girls and who resembled, on Christmas Day, a tramp going to a funeral. Nice to see him make the effort for a change. Normally he just looks like a tramp in every day garb.

So, a success all round I would say! I am quite looking forward to New Year's Eve when it will all start again and by Wednesday, when I return to work proper, I shall, no doubt, be glad of the rest.

I hope your Christmasses were as uneventful as mine...

PS. I have been told to inform you all that Mr P's Yorkshire Puddings were fantastic.

"CHARLES' YORKSHIRES WERE FANTASTIC..."

Happy?