Well, would you believe it? This grumpy old woman loves Christmas! The last few days the English press has been full of articles about how many offices won't be decorated this year as it isn't politically correct - what rubbish. And Nativity scenes without Jesus - I ask you. And all to appease 'minority groups' who apparently celebrate Christmas themselves. There was a big rumpus in France last year as a college put up a Christmas tree in their forecourt and was later made to take it down as it offended 'minority groups' - mind you, this was in the middle of the veiled students row...
And of course we should have loads of articles starting in the next few days on 'how to get through Christmas in one piece', 'receipes for the morning after', 'what to do if the turkey is raw', 'a thousand things to do with children over Christmas' etc.etc. And not to mention kick-starting the economy during the next fortnight - I see that people are still paying off their credit card purchases from last year...why do people have to eat too much, drink too much and overspend?
As children, we had the most wonderful Christmases - my parents divorced when we were young and both remarried, and they decided that special days should be celebrated together; it was probably difficult for them but we were so excited that any strain the atmosphere went totally unheeded. Canny as children are, we soon realised however that we could play one set of parents off against the other to see who would give us the most extravagent present and we worked this routine a goodly number of years before they cottoned on! "Extravagent" would perhaps be a new bike - nowadays bikes are as 'ordinary' as a new pair of jeans, despite their horrific price - however.
The one aspect of Christmas that was terrible was The Lunch - never again will I eat those hormone induced turkeys and I only ate the Christmas Pudding hoping to find the 6d (remember those?).
It is only in the last few years that my mother and/or my stepmother have relinquished their 'right' to do Christmas and so now the 'kids' are allowed to change the rules. My rules are that no turkey or Christmas Pud are allowed in our kitchen, the drawingroom must NOT ressemble Hamleys, the house MUST be decorated and the Christmas tree has to be covered with all the works - none of these black designer trees for me! And, most importantly, that none of the above causes stress, panic or family arguments. Oh, I forgot - the dog has to either have a bit of tinsel or a ribbon on his collar!
Even when my children were young, we didn't feel obliged to 'do' things with them over the holidays - Christmas in itself was enough. It seems now that the minute the present giving is over, there is a tendency to have to rush out to either change the presents, spend the Christmas money, or rush off to a theme park, paintballing, cinema or whatever, accompanied with wails of "I'm bored".
Last year was our first Christmas in Verbier and my brother and his family came to stay - the children were slightly put out as we postponed presents until the evening as Lucie was working on Christmas day, but with the snow and the sunshine and a super whizzy lethal sledge that I whipped out, this was short lived and off they went to see who could break a limb first. We went for a long walk with the dog, stopped and had a snack for lunch and all met back at the chalet at the end of the afternoon. For our Christmas 'Lunch' we had a couple of poulet de Bresse which were lovely and the only problem was with the parsnips which turned out in fact to be white carrots - the label on the packet was in German, but they sure looked like parsnips to me! A bottle of champagne for the aperitif, a couple of bottles of good wine with the meal (not Swiss, I hasten to add), a silly game and later a flop on the sofa to watch a new DVD, and we all had a happy, stressless, no argument day. Bliss!
This year I have another of my brothers coming with his girlfriend and we shall basically run along the same lines - he doesn't like turkey either!
New Year is however a different kettle of fish - the chalet will be full of friends coming to ski for a week and my ex - now that is stressful! However, the plan is to feed them an enormous breakfast, send them off skiing for the day and I and anyone else who is in non-skiing mode will struggle up and down mountains with Angus.
PS My raclette photos are non-existant - the table was totally trashed before I could get out my camera so the composition was not exactly pleasing to the eye, but it was damn good!
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16 comments:
I love Christmas too, and also like turkey and Christmas pud, and mince pies. Yumm!
The boys are going to their dad this year so I'm having an adult Christmas and taking the boys to the UK so they can have New Year/Christmas there. They have adapted very well to the different ways we have to do things now. I think it must add to the variety of the holidays.
Mmmmmm - forgot about mince pies - love those! Might make some this year. I also love Christmas cake but am the only one in the family who does - I ate a Duchy of Cornwall cake that my sister-in-law brought over last year all by myself - took a week or so!
I'm very much enjoying your tales from Switzerland. Not sure about chocolate and cuckoos, but I certainly do remember Migros and Mandelgipfeli (almond croissants) from my days in Bern.
One thing I really miss, apart from the snow and ski-ing, obviously, is real Swiss Stollen. You can buy stollen, of a sort, in Waitrose and Tesco these days, but it's really not the same. Do they serve it in the Suisse Romande ?
Give my best regards to the Dents du Midi ...
I waved in the general direction of the Dents de Midi for you but the mountain tops have now totally disappeared as the snow arrives with a vengeance - my street is full of boarders and skiiers coming back down early from the slopes - I imagine they can't see anything up top!
I think that stollen is originally German, but am not sure, but, yes, we do eat it here - almost as good as Christmas cake!
Blow up that antler, Bill!
Roadsofstone - can I add your blog to my links? I saw it on your comment to Colin R and being Guildford born and bred and reading your blog about the Wey - well it has to go on my blog, doesn't it? When I am over in Guildford we go on walks along the Wey and in September when I was over, we met a man with a glorious houseboat who had sold his house, taken early retirement and was going around the canals and rivers in England.
Sure, fire away, Louise. Your comment about the cobbles (they're granite setts, no less) in the High Street of your old home town makes perfect sense now.
We are very lucky to have such great Christmas shopping here, and within walking distance, too (I live just a stone's throw from the
castle) but amongst all those designer boutiques it is increasingly hard sometimes to buy a simple loaf of bread.
I look out over the Wey towpath from my window every morning, but it's only a short walk to reach Pewley Down and the view which really brought me to live here in Guildford.
Shere is marvellous, as you say, and looked resplendent as I cycled by amongst wonderful autumn colours and perfect weather just a month ago.
Driving through the Greensand hills on the way to work this morning was quite a different story, though. It seemed that Abinger Hammer had all but disappeared amidst the rain, piles of squidgy leaves and knee-deep mud. It seems that we are now experiencing officially the wettest drought on record ...
Come on Bill - it's the office Christmas party. You are allowed to do something for which you will be desperately embarrassed afterwards and that keeps you wondering for days if you still have your job.
Yes, roadsofstone, know where you live - bit uphill to Pewley Down though, isn't it?!
I love Shere, it was the first place I lived after I was born - I actually don't have any memories of it from that time. What is lovely is that it hasn't been too spoilt - although after 'The Holiday' comes out, it might attract too many people and it's already almost impossible to get through the village...
I thought the Toronto Star was a serious rag - but if you imitate the senior editor who obviously wears a rainbow clown wig to the office, I am obviously mistaken. Reindeer antler are small fry ...
One musn't laugh. UADS (Unilateral Antler Deflation Syndrome) is a tragic condition, affecting thousands of inflatable reindeer each year.
I went to a Bono concert recently, where he made the point well by clapping his hands slowly. Each time he clapped, he said, somewhere an inflated reindeer antler collapses.
But I see from today's Telegraph that Gordon Brown has set himself a target to abolish UADS within 10 years, using squillions of UK taxpayers' money. Bless you, Gordie.
If you don't stop talking about turkeys, Anne Giblet will write a poem for you.
Please, no - a turkey poem! Giblets for the gravy perhaps?
I heard another Bono joke the other day - he appeared in a concert in Glasgow and before starting to sing, he clapped slowly and said - "every time I clap my hands a baby in Africa dies of Aids". A good, solid Glaswegian shouted in a thick accent "Well stop f---ing well clapping your hands then, you git"
The pope and clinton die on the same day. There is a snaffus with the bureaucracy, the pope goes to hell and clinton to heaven . It takes two days to sort the mess out and the assignations get reversed.
The pope crosses clinton whose on his way down and says. 'I am so happy my son I will finally see the Virgin Mary'.
Clinton's reply 'you see father you're a bit too late'.
While the power-saving features on a modern laptop are important given the amount of heat they throw out, they can cause problems for the unwary. An automatic shutdown of the screen display after 10 minutes of not pressing a key is fine, but do you really want your hard-drive to shutdown after an hour, say, which on re-starting is the equivalent of re-booting. You'tre placing a lot of trust in the system to retrieve from RAM all the programs you were running when you nipped out to the shops.
The auto hard-drive shutdown caused huge problems for me once, similar to the ones Louise describes. I have now disabled it in Options d'Alimentation (French laptop) by selecting "Jamais" !
Oops, that one should have gone at the end of Louise's previous post.
I enjoyed that excellent Bono joke, Bill - and I might even use it myself ...
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