Happy New Year
Christmas went quite well. Surprisingly.
Notwithstanding a few domestic emergencies. I didn't realise how much planning went into cooking a Turkey. My Mother was trying to plan when to put the Turkey in the oven, with and without foil, and also when to start cooking the potatoese. It didn't take much to send her thoughts spiralling out of control.
My brother and his better half arrived early in the morning at Heathrow and then drove down to us. We were all fast asleep of course. It was only 9 a.m. for crying out loud!
This is where things started to go wrong. My Mum had, in the past been at great pains to point out where she keeps her door key at night. So when I was raised from my slumber by my daughter looking for a key I directed her to a non existant location. My Mum in her wisdom had decided to move the key to a location she considered eaier to see. It took quite a while for my daughter to locate it. Once inside they took themselves straight to bed for a few hours.
My studies have deduced that there is an alarmingly wide gap between my Yuletide dinner experience and the rest of the world. upon my return to work I was surprised to see how many people had stayed up until the wee small hours cooking their Turkey the night before. It may be important to point out that these were exclusively women! I point that out to highlight the way some people feel forced into crazy activity merely to please other people. The object for these people is to eat dinner by midday. In my house it is unusual for the Turkey to even see the inside of an oven by that time. Still the upside is that we didn't have to endure the Queen's Christmas message. My Mum has on occasion demanded to see it but it has truly never interested me.
The Turkey was good. The potatoes were good. I should add that there was a time when this seemed impossible. Utilising a second ("mothballed") oven in the granny flat had led to the Tatties cooking slightly slower than the Turkey. However they caught up whilst we "rested" the Turkey. Funny the euphamisms we use to dress up functions of killing and cooking. For instance I once saw my mum hammering at a steak once. She called it "startling". I figured the cow was pretty startled when it had a bolt through it's skull and then it's throat slit. This was just adding insult to injury. But hey!I Digress.
I was on washing up duty after dinner. Then it was present time. Everythinh them stopped for Dr Who! My American sister in law was at a bit of a loss to understand what we saw in it but I was gently surprised how up to date my brother was considering his exile in the US.
The whole shooting match ended with a game of UNO. A game so fiendishly simple we kept having to refer to the rather skimpy rule sheet for guidance. I had planned to be playing a card game like Newmarket. My Clever brother is rather good as he has the brainpower and numerical skills to count the cards as they are laid. I struggle to remeber the full set of suites to be honest. My plan had been to replace a few cards so that there were some identical cards in the pack and see how quickly he noticed. We never got round to Newmarket so I will never know. Until next time......
Notwithstanding a few domestic emergencies. I didn't realise how much planning went into cooking a Turkey. My Mother was trying to plan when to put the Turkey in the oven, with and without foil, and also when to start cooking the potatoese. It didn't take much to send her thoughts spiralling out of control.
My brother and his better half arrived early in the morning at Heathrow and then drove down to us. We were all fast asleep of course. It was only 9 a.m. for crying out loud!
This is where things started to go wrong. My Mum had, in the past been at great pains to point out where she keeps her door key at night. So when I was raised from my slumber by my daughter looking for a key I directed her to a non existant location. My Mum in her wisdom had decided to move the key to a location she considered eaier to see. It took quite a while for my daughter to locate it. Once inside they took themselves straight to bed for a few hours.
My studies have deduced that there is an alarmingly wide gap between my Yuletide dinner experience and the rest of the world. upon my return to work I was surprised to see how many people had stayed up until the wee small hours cooking their Turkey the night before. It may be important to point out that these were exclusively women! I point that out to highlight the way some people feel forced into crazy activity merely to please other people. The object for these people is to eat dinner by midday. In my house it is unusual for the Turkey to even see the inside of an oven by that time. Still the upside is that we didn't have to endure the Queen's Christmas message. My Mum has on occasion demanded to see it but it has truly never interested me.
The Turkey was good. The potatoes were good. I should add that there was a time when this seemed impossible. Utilising a second ("mothballed") oven in the granny flat had led to the Tatties cooking slightly slower than the Turkey. However they caught up whilst we "rested" the Turkey. Funny the euphamisms we use to dress up functions of killing and cooking. For instance I once saw my mum hammering at a steak once. She called it "startling". I figured the cow was pretty startled when it had a bolt through it's skull and then it's throat slit. This was just adding insult to injury. But hey!I Digress.
I was on washing up duty after dinner. Then it was present time. Everythinh them stopped for Dr Who! My American sister in law was at a bit of a loss to understand what we saw in it but I was gently surprised how up to date my brother was considering his exile in the US.
The whole shooting match ended with a game of UNO. A game so fiendishly simple we kept having to refer to the rather skimpy rule sheet for guidance. I had planned to be playing a card game like Newmarket. My Clever brother is rather good as he has the brainpower and numerical skills to count the cards as they are laid. I struggle to remeber the full set of suites to be honest. My plan had been to replace a few cards so that there were some identical cards in the pack and see how quickly he noticed. We never got round to Newmarket so I will never know. Until next time......
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