Work for me again this morning. It was an odd morning with a really busy first three hours followed by a completely dead last half hour. A flurry of Merry Christmas!’s and an air of general silliness. I did almost lose my rag with Nightmare Colleague and snapped at her twice. It was probably for the best she left early to catch her train as I’d long since lost sight of the end of my tether let alone being near the end of it.
I rang my parents in my tea break to check how my Mum was and see if there was anything they’d not got for tomorrow and wanted me to pick up. My Mum was suitably dramatic and said how dreadful it was going to be for the following reasons:
She couldn’t get fresh turkey so had to buy frozen. Assuming she intends cooking it and not actually leaving it frozen I don’t really see how this is a problem.
No fresh cream so she had to get Elmlea instead. I assured her baby Jesus probably wouldn’t mind.
She couldn’t get parsnips or sweet potatoes. I know, I know, it won’t really feel like Christmas without them. She is hoping my Granny who she had ‘on the case’ was going to be able to source some (possibly she has black market contacts from the days of rationing and is able to get root vegetables even when the supermarkets have sold out, I dread to think what sort of price she’d have to pay though). I assured her if Granny failed we could ring Bob Geldof and he would probably pen a single and raise funds for us.
It will of course forever be the year we had Elmlea and therefore Christmas was ruined though.
I came off the phone and relayed all this to my colleagues who said they felt our pain and their Christmasses were probably also runined. We did wonder if one day we might look back on this and laugh, infact as Sarah pointed out I already was laughing. Shock does effect different people in different ways of course.
Davies and Scarlett had watched Santa Clause 2 and 3 with Ady (they’d watched Santa Clause yesterday) and decorated pillowcases with glitterglue and fabric pens.
We had lunch and then headed over to Chris and Julie’s for our traditional Christmas Eve afternoon with them. The four older cousins were at fever pitch and spent most of the time playing hide and seek together in a rowdy fashion :). We sat and drank tea and ate mince pies.
Back home again, kids had tea, opened their Christmas Eve pjs gift, put out mince pies, brandy etc on the hearth, we all watched Shrek 2 on tv, Ady and I opened beer and fizzy wine. Davies and Scarlett went off to bed -sleepover in Davies’ room so that we all wake up upstairs in the morning.
Ady and I had a very nice Chinese takeaway and have watched various Christmas specials on telly. Predictably the children are still awake so we’re now waiting on them going to asleep before we can bring out the gifts and go to bed ourselves.
Am considering going to bed anyway and setting the alarm for 330am and getting back up then to put presents under the tree!