But a good time it was. Spent the festive season with my friends in Ealing who have the advantages for Christmas of a large family and two boys of 15 and 10 of whom I am inordinately fond. And rather than weeks of shopping and preparation, I just get to chop a few vegetables and decorate some puddings. (I could wonder at my macho image when others get tasked with opening stiff jars and I am left to decorate trifles as my specialist area, but hey-ho.)
Truly heroic performance from the matriarch in getting through it all while coming down with a cold including a 4:30 am start to get the monstrous turkey (to feed 11) into the oven in time for lunch. But it was certainly Christmas with all the trimmings (what are trimmings by the way?) and the variety of desserts (trifles (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) cheesecakes and pudding (duly lit with brandy)) had to be postponed for a few hours for us to recover from the main course without actually bursting at the seams.Well if one is going for conspicuous excessive consumption, surely Christmas is the time.
And the boys seemed happy enough with my presents which was good. But of course being modern boys what they really love is playing on their X-Box with new games. The 10 year-old is just getting to the quite adorable stage. He has developed the talent of pleading so winningly I can't help feeling he would have had the Bumble in Oliver Twist serving up champagne breakfasts to him. Just needs a slight tweak to the volume control. (Maybe just turn the treble down a bit and the bass up? There must be a switch somewhere. I'm sure his older brother will know where it is - teenagers seem to be able to find such things without resorting to the instructions.)
And there is something so sweet about being patronised by a 10 year old as I upped my pitifully small zombie kill rate to 10. Have a horrible feeling that his Dad didn't feel killing Nazi zombies is entirely within the spirit of Christmas and I confess it probably doesn't feature in the traditional Dickensian manual, but one has to move with the times. If you told me 20 years ago I would be sitting next to a Christmas tree firing at the undead with a 10 year old I too would have been surprised, but actually for me that particular Ghost of Christmas Future far beats my Ghosts of Christmas Past. And it did keep with the spirit of things to my mind. There was one happy ten year old having fun, and that seems to be the fundamental thing to me. (And it kept me away from street corners mugging old ladies.)
His older brother is just such a cool kid now. Really struggle to think I remember him as a toddler. But actually much prefer them as teens. And now to all intents and purposes he is an adult or as near as dammit. Well towers over me anyway.
Stayed up late with two of his 20+ cousins to watch dvd of No Country for Old men (the teen having cruelly and with great difficulty been persuaded it was bedtime - so not quite an adult). Felt certain superiority in that I was still awake at 2 am when the film finished, unlike my two lightweight companions. Have no stamina these young folk.
Boxing Day most of us (but minus the boys who would have needed to be surgically removed from their consoles) went for a walk in Osterley Park (for the uninitiated, a National Trust house in West London set in lovely grounds with cattle and horses grazing in the surrounding fields. A weird bit of rural England surrounded by suburbia) Bitterly regret not bringing my camera or I would have had some lovely shots of the house in the snow and of the frozen ponds. Unfortunately the paths had turned into sheets of uneven ice and when it comes to ice-skating I am up there with Bambi. Nevertheless survived without mishap and avoided hypothermia as its still incredibly cold.
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