Sitting quietly this morning, having enjoyed a lovely day yesterday even if most of it was spent in the kitchen!

 

 

Our Christmas celebrations began with our usual Christmas Eve Fondue, of which there was plenty – we made a note to buy less cheese next year!  Delia’s Mulled Wine sorbet was a great way to follow and we spent the rest of the evening enjoying the usual old humbug on the TV.  However many times we watch the Morecambe and Wise sketch with “Andrew Preview” we still giggle all the way though and watching Edward’s reaction to Les Dawson proved how good those old comedians were at making us all laugh. 

 

 

Christmas morning, we were up and in the kitchen early.  My hero was i/c turkey and having discovered that our oven still isn’t firing on all cylinders (or heating on all elements, more accurately), he spent an anxious morning eyeing the temperature. 

 

 

As for the rest of the meal, well, never has there been such beautiful sprouts!  Perfectly coloured to match m-i-l Bettine’s outfit for the day, I was very tempted to get started on ebay

 

 

until I realised that every one of them had an angel inside!

 

 

Meanwhile, there were stockings to investigate, presents to open.  Oh my goodness, how generous Father Christmas had been and what clever insight he has into our hopes and needs!  As if to prove the no-Kindle-because-I-love-books gang wrong, here we were, three Kindle owners with heaps of books between us.  Every one a beauty, each of them drawing us inside the pages as soon as we unwrapped them until we were reminded that there was yet another parcel to open.

 

 

I had a particularly interesting pile which is going to keep me quiet for some time, I can tell you.  I’m especially looking forward to rereading the Hare with the Amber Eyes, this time with illustrations of the netsuke and we all agreed that, in spite of (or because of) the Kindle, real, live, paper books seem to be blossoming and many are incredibly well designed and very attractively produced.  Allegra McEvedy’s “Bought, Borrowed and Stolen” is gorgeous and I know it’s going to be hard to decide whether to read that or Indochine first.

Seated beside the books is another new member of the family – a gorgeous Merrythought bear with a Royal heritage named “Charles” of course.

 

 

The day was full of food and chatter and more food and a glass or two of this and that.  Eating Christmas lunch at the kitchen table this year seemed to bring a more casual mood to the event and we had fun recording the spirit of the occasion with the Incredibooth app, which produced enough material to bribe several members of the family for a few years yet!

 

 

After the washing up and the sorting out, the fridge is as full as when we began, we have enough food to keep us going for several days and we didn’t even manage a spoonful of Christmas pudding.

 

 

How happy we were to sit back and relax then, take off new Christmas slippers (thank you, Father Christmas!)  and curl up on the sofa to watch Doctor Who, Strictly and the Christmas Downton.  I know Mary will be reading this so won’t offer any spoilers at all, but say only that the ending rounded off the day very well indeed!