I sort of wish I hadn't started the 'about me' thing. I meant it to be a sweeping and generalised background to explain 'where my head is at', but the memories it has generated over the last couple of days could turn into a whole flaming book and I don't like the way my ego perks up and looks ready for action, like a dog that vaguely heard the word 'lead' or 'park' being mentioned, when I consider writing some more.

So this isn't that.

Generally speaking I like blue cheese. Mid summer, finding an exotic sandwich shop down some tourist-free backstreet or other, the idea of a baguette containing Stilton along with its other burgeoning, glistening fillings is enough to make me, well quite happy. Content.

Now, with the kids back at school and husband back at work, it has somehow lost its glamour. The first two weeks of January are traditionally, in our house at least, the time when the fridge has to be slowly relieved of all the still fresh foods that weren't completely consumed over the holidays and to that end (also because its a slightly tight month for cash) we buy only the basics; bread, milk and ingredients for 'proper dinners' such as mince.

So how exactly is this stuff supposed to get eaten? These dregs that no-one fancied enough to polish them off in the first place?

Here I am then, facing a near empty fridge, wondering whether to try and force down blue cheese on toast or a stilton and mayonnaise sandwich, or whether to go without altogether. Somehow, with a sliced loaf at my disposal instead of a warm, scented crusty baguette; with no grapes or bacon to soften the flavour, this is beginning to feel like purgatory. Even with all those things I doubt I could face it - Christmas, in this case, seems to have amounted to aversion therapy.

Back to just coffee, then.

Total waste of time

After the sense of cameraderie engendered by the Grumpy Old Men Christmas Special, I felt a certain sense of anticipation regarding the feminine offering, from the Grumpy Old Women. I even considered that it might be acknowledged to be the better programme through the choice of times; the 'wimmins' one was, after all, scheduled for Christmas Day itself.
What a blatant dissappointment. I struggled through over half of it, desperately scrabbling for something to relate to, before I gave up and switched channels. Perhaps it was an effort to stress things in order to make them funny, but it seemed that every time I felt a twinge of recognition at some situation, most of the interviewees would take the story to the Nth degree, shooting sisterhood in the foot by trying to label us all as pathetic over-hassled creatures bewailing our lot as the voluntary and total slaves of the rest of the family.

Here then, is my own personal take on a stress free Christmas.

Preparation - gifts

1. Children have no right to tell you what they want and then expect it. They have a right to tell you what they hope for. If you can only get one decent thing on their wish list, mark that one as from you, and mark the rest as coming from Father Christmas. This has a double purpose as it also makes the relatives who send money very valuable. If your ten year old didnt get this year's 'must have' then a card with a fiver inside instantly changes from a boring dissappointment to collectors heaven, as each takes him or her one step further toward buying the hoped for item in the January sales.
   
2. Its all right for pets to be delivered late on Christmas Eve - its a secret but Santa has to do it that way to stop them peeing & pooping all over the sleigh and chewing up the other stuff when he does the proper run.
   
3. In our house Santa delivers stockings to the bedrooms, in which everything, even a satsuma, is individually wrapped, with lots of sellotape. No chocolate, yet. If the contents of the bedroom stocking offer some food, something to fiddle with, are not going to make your kids more hyperactive than they already are and are designed to be as awkward as possible to open then you stand a chance of making it to the living room first, possibly even dressed and caffeined up.
   
4. Have a lock on the living room door. Children are amazingly good about having a proper breakfast, or going to wash their faces whilst you down your first coffee, if they know that compliance speeds the moment when they find out what else Santa brought. Have a grand opening, when you are awake and ready.
   
5. Dont expect anything you remotely want as a gift, unless you give up on dropping hints and give your partner your own wish list, in print. If it contains more items than you could expect to get then the element of surprise remains. Make it your responsibility to liaise with each other's relatives on this. You can be totally specific about everything but jewellery.
   
6. Do the pre-shopping phone calls. Ask people, or their partners, what sort of thing they might be hoping for. Partners are always a little vague if there isnt a list in that household but at least the idea of 'something arty-crafty' steers you away from the scarves. It also trains the men into keeping mental lists because if you start in early November you will find that males are more likely to put their minds to it for a relative who wants to know, than they are on their own behalf or for the sake of their beloved. Its a matter of form.
   

Food

1. Where did you get your desire for 'home made' this or that? If you got it from a telly programme or a magazine, forget it; mentally tear it up and throw it away. We children of the sixties and seventies were brought up on artificially coloured and flavoured everything, so one day of convenience treats isn't going to kill the new generation, is probably going to cost less than buying all the ingredients separately and will look and probably taste a whole lot better. If you want to be really unhealthy just keep a duster of caster sugar to one side. Homemade sugary treats are distinguishable by the burnt bits and the fact that the sugar on top is also all over the serving plate.
   
2. If you got it from memories of Christmas baking with your own mother, then remember its a childhood memory and this is what you should consider passing on with one or at most two items offered on the Christmas table. The most lopsided cake or mince pie is accepted with coos and oohs if little Georgina (or preferably George, lets break some stereotyping here for the next generation) helped, or better still 'iced it all by him/herself'. Who cares if they get smuggled into pockets and then into the bin? Your child will either retain memories like yours, or will grow up loving to cook, in which case that’s half the hell of Christmas converted to a joy, for them.
   
3. Get as many of the nibbles as possible from a pound shop or scoop and weigh. Who cares if the box turns out to contain 80% packaging; wedge it on the window ledge or side table and display it as a box and not with the contents tipped out on a plate. After a good Christmas dinner and too many sherries you'll be after the carbs to soak acid, not sugary sweets anyhow and if you're not, then none of your unfortunately invited guests will give a hoot that they have never come across the brand name before.
   
4. Use generic turkey gravy granules, but make it up using the water off the inevitable sprouts, which is enough to make it taste home-made-ish.
   
5. Never ever have people round for dinner on Christmas day if you can possibly avoid it - be the Boxing Day host instead, and turn cold turkey, egg and chips into a family tradition. 'The oven just isn't big enough' is a perfectly valid excuse that will hit a chord with everyone. Of course it does, otherwise they wouldn’t be looking to get invited somewhere in the first place. An even better one is ‘Come on Boxing Day, when we can get the kids lunches out of the way first’. You will be a much better hostess when there’s minimal work and you can join in. Of course people who find themselves unavoidably alone are different, provided there’s not some glaring flaw in their character that instantly explains the solitude. If someone is hell to live with on a wet Wednesday in June they are going to be even more of a trial at Christmas, even if the person happens to be your sibling.
   
6. Buy a turkey crown. Let the bits you wouldn’t touch on your Christmas turkey be ready removed for the burger industry or whatever secondary income stream they use it for and make do with roasting only the white and easily carved meat. It comes out of the oven looking distinctly turkey shaped, for the benefit of the purists.
   
7. Never carve at table. Let the children see the roast looking huge and glamorous because they are the only ones that will be impressed by it, then carve and serve in the kitchen, before the veggies come out. The best compliment you can give your dinner companions is a hot meal. I positively hate going to houses where the man shows off, sharpening the carving knife and slowly slicing the meat at table. It just means it'll be another half an hour before everyone has passed the spuds, gravy etc round and you can actually start eating. Oh yummy, a stone cold meal fit for the cat, thank you so very much.
   
8. People have very strong feelings about stuffing; they either love it or hate it. Even if you do a fancy chestnut one, do it as balls or slices, so that it doesn’t seep into the other items on the plate if one person happens to think it tastes absolutely foul.
   
9. Mashed swede is heaven sent. Do it an hour in advance so its not taking up a ring on the hob when things go crazy, and shove it in a glass bowl covered in cling film with a few pinholes. Make it buttery and moist (even adding a bit of kettle water during the mashing can make it look creamier), then shove it in the microwave for 3 or 4 minutes until its steaming. People either love it or find it completely tasteless, and if its tasteless to you, well then you wont mind scraping it off your turkey, will you, because it wont have upset the flavour. A modest blob of piping hot swede holds the heat for ages and is brilliant for making sure the plate and the meat stay warm to the table.

Decorations

1. Designer decorations are for those with no families. For everyone else I recommend my favourite style – colour-blind, a.k.a. ‘done for the children’. If its sparkly, shove it up, complete with balloons; crash, bang, done.
   
2. Trees should not be indoors dying. If you love the smell of pine that much, then doubtless you constantly use pine air freshener and pine disinfectant. Clear off to the kitchen and sniff it. Otherwise buy the pure oil, or incense sticks. Get a good quality plastic tree that actually fits the living room, has room at the top for a star or fairy and a good solid base. If your hankering for a real tree stems from some sort of middle class one-upmanship where it is your social circle that has deemed it a ‘must have’ item, then turn the tables and play the conservation card, guaranteed to impress all your friends who keep muttering that they really should use the bicycle more often, really wish the recycling centre had better parking, etc.
   

Last hint – stop playing the game. Stop thinking the day is about anything outside of religion besides having a good time. If you love a real tree but also love to whinge all year about hoovering up the needles, love to produce home cooking but love to moan about being an unappreciated galley slave all day, then either simplify or shut up, you’re spoiling the party!

Well now a post made on Christmas morning might seem a little extreme, but hey ho, Santa brought me a new keyboard so I am having to test it out!

The old one, new just under two years ago is worn down so that the keys look like old stone steps, smooth and dipped and completely devoid of any indication of the letter they represent. I almost learned to touch type once but still 'i's and 'o's, 'r's and 't's interchange far too regularly when I pick up speed.

My daughter Imogen, aged seven, has made my day so far. I love her to bits, but have no idea where I got her from - she's either a genetic throw back or a leap forward. Her father took an interest in the present buying, but as he had to work right up to Christmas Eve but also spent half the year it seems, this year, away on courses, he shopped in another town and on his own. I watched her shoulders visibly sag for all of two seconds when she opened a present this morning to find a diary (the third she owns now, I believe) before she made the appropriate squeaky high pitched cooing noise and declared it was wonderful! How many seven year olds have manners like that, particularly ones that were not consciously taught at home? Her older brother by eighteen months, Lewis, has Aspergers and is rather more straightforward about things. If something is acceptable but not end-of-the-world amazing it is politely unwrapped, put down and kneeled on, to get to the next parcel. Something miraculous happened today however, as he has recently cottoned on that he is, finally, good at something other than computers; 'being sarcastic'. This has caused him to double his efforts and I marvel that the day is noticeably lacking in what he considers to be wit, so far. "Ooh, lovely, not", "Cor who got you that, the crap fairy?"

We bought him a computer game and he is happy; gone to his room and his computer. Silence.

I am off to play whatever my girl wants to play now, one of the craft kits she got, or dolls, or bedroom-rearranging to show off the new things (yes she's like that, incredibly girly, it must have been a dormant gene), then to start washing up from breakfast so theres room to start making lunch.

Merry Christmas!

Chaotic Christmas

I have just had my Christmas spirit restored. Now there’s a word, restored; maybe I mean vindicated, but it seemed to blossom with the warmth of recognition like some pitiful and malnourished creature, as I sat and watched the Grumpy Old Men Christmas Special on BBC2. Best hour I’ve spent slouched in front of the goggle box in a long time and it did more for my personal validation than even Harry Enfield’s Kevin did, just after my eldest son hit thirteen.

Now I find myself feeling all kind of warm and fuzzy and hopeful and benign because I’m not mad, we don’t have the most dysfunctional family on the face of the planet and the odd reverberation of Bah Humbug that has rattled around in my head itching to tick, tut and set my eyes rolling over the past couple of weeks is no longer a shameful secret looked down upon by a disapproving society.

Perhaps I am living in the wrong town, or maybe I don’t get out enough, but surrounded, I felt, by people doing the rounds and visiting this or that aunty/ pantomime whilst claiming to be having a solvent, benign and perfectly tranquil and soul restoring Christmas (on a blatantly high budget) had made me a little bitter. I forgot that if people were truly having such a whirlwind of ecstasy they would hardly be desperate to rush over and tell me about it, they’d just be getting on with it. I’m not irritated at them, mind, don’t get me wrong, but at the whole palaver where options seem to become necessities, where one appears to be letting the side down if the relatives you had paid no attention to for the last twelve months didn’t suddenly become the centre of the universe and the best people to take to a party, where buying presents only for those people that mean something to you and within your budget to boot is seen as the height of party-pooping.

Yes on Christmas Eve in this house the un-ironed laundry will get wedged into a bin bag and hidden at the back of the airing cupboard so that both sofas are empty ‘at least at Christmas’ even though this means it will probably end up going back through the wash in January to shift some of the harder creases caused by storage. Yes I will then be up, alone, probably until 1am, wrapping the kids’ presents that quite honestly we’ve been too knackered to drag out of the hiding places. Yes there will be something that someone deems essential to Christmas that we will have forgotten to buy, like chocolate, or enough milk for a cup of tea. Yes the children will thrill and rip and discuss and spread paper and presents around until its time to start making the dinner. Set it up, tidy it up, cook the food, eat the food, slob to the sofa and watch some inane family programme and start to feel like a prisoner. It doesn’t matter. That one TV programme has jogged my memory and reminded me it always was and always will be like this, please God.

Until I laughed along with the observations of Arthur Smith, Will Self, John Peel, Rick Wakeman, Jeremy Clarkson and more, I had forgotten that this is actually what its all about. I was beginning to see the whole thing as over indulgence and an almost tawdry and masturbatory experience – one that seems thrilling or at least urgent at the time, until the second its over, when it suddenly feels empty and pointless and rather grubby. Err, what did I do that for? Right, mop up and put the kettle on then.

I want to take task with only one point in the whole programme; I don’t think all people camped out at the supermarket are shopping crazy; I think some are distraction crazy and quite honestly if I had the money I might have joined them. Being constantly ‘down the shops’ and bombarded with sparkly lights and jingly music and crowds pre-Christmas is a way to tell ourselves that we are having a ‘brilliant time’ because its busy, busy, busy. Being out to the sales at 10am on Boxing Day is simply ‘something real to do’ that doesn’t involve being wedged on a sofa next to Uncle Arthur while he tries to slurp Satsuma pith out of his dentures, or next to the kids while they argue over who broke the most expensive present one of them got and how. I suspect the end of any trip just after Christmas is incidental to the journey – somehow we feel we ought to be up and about, anywhere but staring at the residue of the day before, but to have a real place to go and a real reason to go there when in fact what we want is the air provided by the journey to and from.

Some marketing genius (and may God deal as He sees fit) saw this, saw the need to keep the momentum up, as if like runners we need to keep going when the race is run, not to come to a dead and terrifyingly jarring halt; to take our minds away from hangovers and the temptation to strike relative X from the Christmas list forever, if not from this life, for the outrageous things they said yesterday under the influence.

Hallelujah brothers, I have been saved. It all boils down to sex with yourself again – that awful situation where the spirit and the flesh are both jolly willing but the damned mind doesn’t want to play along, it happens you know, as soon as you start trying to schedule stuff like that. Going for a bit of FIY in the same way as you’d treat yourself to a bun from the bakers just doesn’t work, the mind isn’t focussed enough and things start to drag on as you become more and more bizarrely creative in an effort to (said it before) keep up the momentum. Boxing Day, when Christmas day was a damp squib, can be like that. Like a puppy chasing car tyres it feels, even as the imagined seventh heaven pulls further away, that if your subconscious can just keep your flagging body running, there’s still hope of Nirvana at the back of MFI. Sad.

Christmas for me, now, is going to be laid back. The children’s noise and disagreements, the husband’s inability to notice anything not square and electronic, all of it will go over my head, or otherwise I will smile benignly knowing this goes on all over the country, and more than that in the homes of some really rather wealthy and respectable old farts. And then I will do what their wives do – hide in the kitchen and politely refuse help with the cooking, possibly with the vodka and my jar of crystallised ginger for company. Why on earth not? They all get away with it at barbecues.

Honestly, Merry Christmas!