This will be my last Jotting until the New Year, so I wish you and yours a healthy and happy time at Christmas and during the year to come.
This year, the whole family is coming to us for the festivities and staying from Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day afternoon – and I cannot wait. Our two children have moved away but not too far, and it is just so special that they still choose to come back to Pinks Barn for our ‘feasts’, as they have become known. We will be seven, plus two children and I am in the planning stage now.
I am not sure why, but today I am sanding my lovely wooden kitchen worktops, turning out the freezer and making copious lists. I will be sending out a round robin email to all the participants on 1st December which lists the stuff needed to make the whole event work like clockwork. This will include duvets, highchairs, pillows, bottles of wine and fizzy, beer, nibbles and cracker jokes! Starly, my daughter-in-law takes it upon herself to make newspaper crackers including bespoke newspaper hats for us all. We have to shout BANG at the right moment and read out the terrible jokes!
Traditional will require speaking up the chimney, youngest child being dispatched to see if Father Christmas has been, Bucks Fizz and much singing around the piano. I bought Bill an app called Musicnotes, which is now on his IPad. We can buy songs and music and he can transpose any song up and down with a click meaning both Lou and Starly can belt out favourite tunes (Lou lots of Disney and Starly, smooth Jazz). Starly has recorded a CD called Blue. I can be listening to Eric Clapton on my player followed by Starly Cairns-Greenoff… it me smile.
