Christmas is coming

 

I used to be a weeny bit grumpy about Christmas: the excess consumption, the tired rituals, the profligate and unnecessary spending...

But not any more! I gave all that up some time around 2017, when I realised that whatever Christmas costs I'm not going to end up in debt, and if the rest of it is fun for someone then it's worth doing.

So C has already booked a click-and-collect at MandS Simply Food on Christmas Eve and I've scored the chocolate Christmas tree danglies from Asda.

Yesterday I steamed our Christmas pudding for 8 hours. (Well we weren't going anywhere: our little grandson had a positive Covid test on Wednesday so we're isolating for 2 weeks!) I worked out that this is probably my 30th year of making the Delia Smith Traditional Christmas Pudding. Yeah, yeah - but tired rituals are OK if they taste so good you have to have seconds. And today C is making a Christmas cake.

I just hope there are some people here to eat all this baked alcohol-soaked dried fruit. This is the first year since 2010 that our older son will be here on Christmas Day but England is going into a full  4-week lock-down for on Thursday. C can barely contain her excitement, which will now be tempered by anxiety that it isn't going to happen after all. 

God help Boris Johnson if he extends the lockdown and A's family can't come...