Christmas Eve: my favourite day of the Festive period. Let’s face it, Christmas is all about the anticipation rather than the day itself, which is over in the blink of an eye. There remains a vestige of childlike belief that in a few hours, Santa Clause with be soaring across the starlit sky in his sleigh laden with presents from Argos, Debenhams and Amazon and that still gives me a tingle of excitement that is of course, now divested into my gullible offspring.
In the morning I attempt to drive down to collect the turkey from Waitrose. Alas my vertiginous driveway has been ostensibly rendered an ice-rink by the Arctic weather and I am unable to drive further than a couple of feet before the tyres lose their grip and the vehicle slides into the living room. I must thank my charitable neighbours, David and Mr. G, who kindly spread sand in front of the car, allowing me to launch my Renault Clio onto the perilous streets of Guildford.
Where are the gritters?
I’ve paid my council tax.
I expect a fleet of gritters working through the night.
Instead I lose control twice on some black ice, which is both terrifying, but also rather fun (in retrospect.)
Our free range bronze organic turkey meets its new family, at least until tomorrow lunchtime. It is enormous. I double-check in case Waitrose mixed my order up with an ostrich. Looks as if we will be eating turkey sandwiches, turkey korma and turkey puree until mid-March. Naturally, there is always a couple of items we forget, which means that I am despatched to Tescos in the afternoon to procure a last-minute salad, lest Christmas be ruined. Upon returning home, I order my wife upstairs so that I can wrap her present: a ridiculously expensive, but very chic “Issa” dress that I bought last Monday, a present that has lain hidden under Lily’s bed for a couple of days, just waiting to be discovered. The trouble with our house is that it is too small, too few nooks and crannies to hide presents away from inquisitive eyes and a nose that can sniff out an expensive dress from over 100 yards.
The afternoon is spent as fair-weather church-goers, occupying the front pew for the crib service. I feel slight pangs of guilt since we deprive our own brood of Sunday School’s religious education and enlightenment. If they grow up to me immoral, then it could be my fault. Then again, my wife is Japanese, our daughters are half-Buddhist and bible studies would only confuse them. But there is nothing wrong with them singing a few carols, even though if their mother mimes “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Away In A Manger”. As usual, there is some egotistical soprano at the back of the congregation aspiring to be the next Susan Boyle, their voice louder and more heavenly than others, extending the final notes a semibreve longer. The nativity itself, is naturally less pagan than the Infants school’s rendition…no tangential nursery rhymes here, just a straight rendition as scripted by Luke. With fewer sheep it looks more like the birth of the Messiah and less like “One Man And His Dog”.
In the early evening, we venture out for a family meal at “Bistro”, a cosy little eaterie in Guildford opposite the Medieval keep. We are the only diners, yet it still takes several years before my Breton chicken deigns us with its presence (although it is worth the wait.) As usual, Lily and Daisy are immaculately behaved for the first half-hour, whereupon they get bored and start worming their way underneath the table and stretching their legs in the pathway of the unnecessarily flustered waitresses.
The town is unusually quiet.
As I drive back, I reminisce upon the numerous Christmas Eves spent at my local pub, “The Grand”. You had to arrive there by 4.00pm, otherwise it would be full to the rafters of underage dipsomaniacs with latecomers forced to wait in the icy car-park. The evening was a rip-roaring bacchanalia consisting of countless rounds of Fosters, dancing atop wobbly tables to Wham’s “Last Christmas” on constant repeat and locking tongues with complete strangers just before midnight, when the whole pub would be showered in the taper from plastic poppers.We would spew out onto the car-park and wait for our moles to come back with information upon which party we could feasibly gate-crash. It was somehow…magical.
Now? Now The Grand lies forlorn, an empty shell of wistful memories, its walls crumbling away, the garden overgrown and feral, its innards ransacked long ago, slowly decaying until its inhumane owners can sell it off for faceless flats…
All that is in the past. We put the kids to bed, exploit our last opportunity to threaten them with Santa Clause’s eternal damnation should they not behave and then sit down to watch absolutely nothing worth watching on TV.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | bistro, christmas eve, crib service, guildford, the grand, turkey
