The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Carols from King’s will evoke memories for many readers here but these two albums always take me back to my 1960’s childhood Christmasses.  After my parents divorced I hung on to the two vinyl LP’s and my own daughters were then subjected to a musical Christmas of Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams.  They still love it to this very day.

 Merry Christmas everyone!

The Dinner Party

It was bucketing down with rain as we huddled under our umbrellas but fortunately out hosts’ home was only five minutes’ walk away.  Ian and Lynn live in a big house and their spacious lounge was warm and inviting with a real log fire burning away.  Paul and I were relieved to see the other guests were all friends that we had recently made in the village and the evening soon became merry with lots of easy banter.  We were a party of ten in total.

Lynn is one of those rare ladies that actually enjoy cooking and entertaining guests.  She is a talented cook and the food was delicious – we had a quiche starter, fillet of beef wrapped in prosciutto for main and an orange sponge dessert with custard. Ian was an attentive host and kept our glasses topped up throughout the evening.

Perhaps it was the abundance of rich food and wine, or the warm atmosphere of the dining room, but towards the end of the evening I started to feel slightly unwell.  I excused myself and went to the bathroom and ran my hands under some cold water to cool down.  Feeling slightly revived I returned to the dining room but within minutes I felt faint again.  I left the table and headed into the adjoining conservatory, collapsed into a chair and completely blacked out. 

Several minutes later I eventually regained consciousness with Maureen, a retired A&E nurse, and Paul standing over me.  Without warning I started being sick and Maureen reacted incredibly quickly and grabbed an empty decorative fruit bowl which worked wonderfully well.  I recovered quickly and, as the evening had seemed to have come to a natural end, we made our farewells and headed home.  I was feeling absolutely mortified.

This morning we received a message from my daughter in Australia.  “How was the dinner party?”  Paul replied, “Hell of a party, mum threw up in the fruit bowl.”

Christmas is coming...

Jeremiah getting into the Christmas spirit

Christmas is coming and I’m getting fat!  I blame the mince pies and afternoon slices of Whisky Dundee cake but I thought I could keep the extra pounds at bay with all my dancing and dog walking.  Apparently not, according to the bathroom scales I have gained a whole kilogram in a week.

This morning I have been stumbling around the garden room trying to keep up with the steps to the 1960’s hit Runaround Sue.  I have to keep repeating the routine again and again in order to remember the sequence and now, of course, I can’t get the ruddy tune out of my head.

We have a busy week ahead with the Xmas quiz night at the village hall on Thursday and a dinner party to attend on Saturday evening.  The dinner party is a bit of a mystery as, apart from our hosts, the other guests are a secret.  Apparently this is to stop uninvited villagers from getting upset.  Bizarre.

This will be Rick’s third Christmas with us.  Doesn’t time fly?

Yee Ha

Rick watched me with a canine look of disbelief as I galloped around the garden room, first one way and then the other.  I think he would have liked to join me but he was peering through the glass doors from the other room.  “No Rick, this is not a game,” I told him, “I really need to master the steps to the Grundy Gallop.”

Yes, I have finally succumbed to the cajoling of my neighbours and joined the Line Dancing club at the village hall. 

I have been twice so far and I think a headless chicken with two left feet would be a fair description of me trying to dance.  I think my feet are dyslexic when it comes to picking up step sequences. 

“This is an easy one for you Sue, one foot forward and two steps back.”  Nothing is easy for me.  My feet interpreted that as two steps forward and one step back.

There are some good demo dances on YouTube but the best ones seem to be from Germany.  Unfortunately I don’t understand German so my dancing has not improved but I have learnt to count to ten.  Eins, Zwei, Drei …

Handyman

I am a great fan of Escape to the Chateau and love watching the creative and eccentric antics of Dick Strawbridge and his wife Angel at their chateau in France.  It seems that Dick can’t resist his winsome wife and Angel just has to smile and giggle and he will do the impossible for her.  It probably helps that he is a skilled engineer.

I am very fortunate that I have my own Dick in the form of my husband.  Paul doesn’t have any engineering credentials but he will have a go at most things.  He  doesn’t always agree with my design ideas and my smiles and giggles have no effect but he eventually he gives in.

I’ve just had new curtains made for the large bay window in my bedroom and I wanted a matching upholstered pelmet to give it a sort of boutique hotel look.

“It has to go right to the ceiling.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, that’s far too big.”
“No, that is part of the design.”
“It will be too heavy, I won’t be able to fix it.”
“You can do anything,” (flattery works well)
“It’s too big.”

Paul spent a few hours in his garage and built me a pelmet.  It was very big, over three metres long.  With the help of a staple gun we covered it with wadding and fabric.  I am delighted with the result.  Who needs a Dick when you can have a Paul!