Christmas

. . . was a riot. 21 people in the house! Children, presents, food, and musical instruments were piled high. Jeremy and his two sisters, Stephanie and Fenella, took care of most of the cooking, the children laid the (very lo-oo-oong!) table, and I did the drinking! Everyone had brought a contribution to the day, and lunch was delicious.

Present opening was - hmm, I don't think maelstrom is too strong a word to use. The air was thick with scraps of wrapping paper and cries of 'Thank you!' Except for Kit, who, on unwrapping his present from Grandma Rose, hurled himself shrieking across the living room to hug his thanks. She had baked him a chocolate cake and decorated it with five £1 coins. His two favourite thing in the whole world - better even that Lego.

In the evening five of the cousins performed solos for us, Sam on trombone, Raul on sax, Mia on recorder, Kit on guitar and Emilio very creditably on trumpet.

Boxing Day was much quieter!


It was lovely to have with us my cousin Mark, his partner Felicity, and our friend Teresa, currently in her second year at university in Munich.

Everyone's been sick

No post for a while, as for over a week now Beri and Sid have been sick, so nothing has been happening, apart from much brow-soothing and medicine dosing. Beri started with a monstrous temperature, and spent three days alternately baking and freezing. Just as he got better Sid started. But just to be different, she added a little throwing up into the mix. But everyone is well now, and ready for their appearances this afternoon in the church nativity play. Kit is still playing Gabriel, Sid is now promoted to playing a sheep, And Beri will now be playing 'a member of the congregation'. Enjoy your Christmas Eves.

Kit's Panto

Kit was the prettiest Ugly Sister I have ever seen! Of course he was - they had cast the seven tallest children in the year group as Dwarves, and the tiniest girl as the Giant. He wore a very flouncy pink ballgown, a Diana Ross wig and large gold sequined stars for earrings. He modified his boysie demeanour not one jot, and had the best lines. For instance, to the other Ugly Sister, (you need to know that Argos is a warehouse retailer that sells all manner of homewares)

KIT: We must have new dresses! Let's look in the Argos catalogue.

CHARLIE: But there are no dresses in the Argos catalogue!

KIT: I know, but there are a pair of shower curtains I think would suit you!

Very sadly I don't have a picture right now, as I wasn't careful to make sure that the camera batteries were fully charged. We asked friends to take one for us, but it hasn't been developed yet.

Being in our church choir, Kit sang in Carols by Candlelight this evening. The service opened with 'Once in Royal David's City'. The thrill when those few small treble voices stopped the hubbub of a crowded church in an instant was electric.

Sid meets Santa

An excuse to post another picture of Sid, this time with the time-honoured 'But nobody told me Santa was scary!' look on her face. Why I don't know, as Santa is here being portrayed by Ray Stacey, whom Sid knows well from church practically every Sunday. Go figure.

Things are hotting up here for the Christmas celebrations. It looks now as if there will be 21 of us chez nous on the day. In addition to the immediate Valentines, 16 of us in all, Mother and Russell will be joining us. Our friend Theresa, in her second year at univerity in Munich, is coming for a few days, and my South African cousin Mark, in London for a few weeks, and his girlfriend Felicity will be here. Julia is leaving on Sunday for three weeks in Thailand! She won't be back until early in the new year.

Beri's Nativity Play

This time the hall was much larger and the stage much more crowded, making it difficult to get even an acceptable photo. And yup - I thought the sheep outfit looked like a radiation suit too. All the main groups of characters had a dance to do, and as soon as we get the DVD of the play, I will have a go at posting the Shepherds and Sheep dance - it's particulartly splendid. And because all my children are Autumns, the white was a bit tragic. But then he may look ill becasuse he was - by the end of the day he was running such a temperature. I think we'll all be glad when term is over.

An On-air Dedication

One of my current vices is online Scrabble. The site is well laid out, easy to use, provides a team of people online to answer anyone's questions, and also gives you a chat box so you can talk to your opponent if you want to.

Late last night I had a game of Scrabble with a woman born and raised in Wales, who currently lives in the Bahamas and owns the local radio station. She asked me to tune in over the internet, and what I wanted to hear, and blimey if a DJ half way across the world with the voice like chocolate didn't play It Never Rains in Southern California and dedicated it to li'l ol' ME! She also told me that, until he died, she was good friends with Count Basie who lived round the corner from her! COUNT BASIE! *lots of little squeeking noises!* I love the internet - please please shoot me the day that I start finding this ordinary.

Sid's Nativity Play

Aah! This time the wings are for real. She clearly had a lovely time and joined in all the singing. And being as how all my children are Autumns, how lucky that the tinsel was gold!

Beri Treasure (say that quickly to get the pun!)

Isn't he gorgeous! Everyone else we know declined to buy their photographs on account of the whole head-down slanty pose thing. But, for Beri, it works really well.

Copies if this and the one of Sid posted earlier mean that grandparents' Christmas presents are pretty much taken care of. For the rest, Amazon here I come.

Bah Humbug!

'Tis the season to be . . . inundated by nativity plays. For a ghastly couple of days I thought we were involved in five (count'em! FIVE!) of the beasties, but Beri had to cancel his appearance in one because of a previous engagement - namely, it was a school day!.

Nevertheless, four is more than enough. Each child has their own school's, and they are all taking part in the church one. That means, for me, six costumes to be arranged, six paper trails about ticket allocations and for which performance (and can / will Grandma or Aunt Julia or Daddy go) and when they regret sibling will not be accommodated, making arrangements for their care. Kit is playing, respectively, an Ugly Sister and the Angel Gabriel, Sid is playing an angel and a kitten, and Beri is playing a sheep and a sheep.

Tomorrow sees the switch-on of the village Christmas lights. Everybody flocks to the village green for a candlelight procession, barbeque food, funfare rides and Santa. What they actually do, the minute they get there, is lose their children in the melee and spend the next 45 minutes looking for them. As it's well after dark by then, Ha! No Chance! By the time the children are found, the parents are frazzled, furious and hungry, while the kids have had a whale of a time. They've found something to eat from goodness-knows-where, they've been partying with their friends, and happy? Larry isn't even close.

I've used the title of this of this post alarmingly early in the season!

Ma's Beano

Mother recently decided that it had been a while since she saw the Black Forest, and within days she was in her car on her way to south Germany. She didn't want to stay further south than Kochem, but did manage a day trip to Trier.

A major reason (to us) for visiting Germany is bringing back FOOD. Packet salad dressing, just add water and oil (I'm not ashamed! It's delicious!), my favourite chocolates (when Jeremy asked me where he should put them, I had to say 'out of my reach') and a gigantic kasseler - a cut of pork not much done outside south Germany, currently nestling in Ma's freezer. I have an awful suspicion she will be cooking her own birthday meal this year.

Casino Royale

Because of a diary mix-up - SO not my fault - I saw this movie tomight, while Jeremy has to wait until Wednesday - ooh the power! I could wreck his evening with a few well-chosen words! But I won't. Suffice it to wonder how on earth they found not one, but TWO such odd-looking women to act opposite him. Another blogger (Wyndham) said that 'the famous Bond quips fall from his lips with all the charm of a dead pigeon off a roofrack.' Certainly true of the love scene bits, but I thought the vodka-martini line was perfectly done.

And the shoot-em-ups were tremendous - I didn't know which way they would turn out. An unusual feeling for a Bond movie.

Jeremy instead was doomed to yet another squabbly PCC meeting, while on Wednesday I go to an evening of stand-up comedy with some girlfriends. Them's the breaks, neh?

Sid's asleep again

Jeremy and I have had a couple of evenings out, and all in one week! We are dizzy from the social whirl, but Sid is completely whacked. Thing is, Ma has sat for us on both occasions. Kit of course manages his bedtime himself, Jeremy puts Beri into bed before we go, but Sid is a law unto herself. We have given Ma detailed instructions on what passes for a bedtime routine but Sid just ignores the whole issue. Both nights we have come home to find the little miss asleep on the sofa, because the only way Ma has been able to get her to go to sleep has been to lie back on the sofa and feign sleep herself. Apparently it takes 20 - 30 minutes of Ma's total immobility to convince Sid to give up and crash herself! And of course this is all happening extremely late in the evening. The next day it's a (welcome) return of the afternoon nap, but what this is doing to Ma's willingness to babysit is something I haven't discussed with her yet.

Stefania's visit to us ended on Friday. This whole family now has a standing invitation to visit Milan - no family should be without one! The exam she had to hurry back for is tomorrow, so I am holding thumbs. (And typing at the same time - how jolly talented!)

Freecycle

I'm also about to become a moderator for our local Freecycle group. If you don't already know about this, take a look - such a simple idea, and so easy to be part of.

We saw some lovely fireworks tonight. Our village has an annual display, to which we reckon about 2,000 people turn up. In previous years, Jeremy and I took it in turns to be the one to take Beri home - poor baby hated them, even with ear defenders on. This year he really enjoyed them, but by then end of the show he was so cold he screamed all the way home. Ho hum. Maybe next year we take a sleeping bag and a hot water bottle for him.

In the mean time, here is Sid's school picture. Doesn't the furry seat she is sitting on look like a pair of wings!

One door closes, another opens . . .

Libraries actually. not doors. Our village library is due to be closed by the council at the end of this month, to our appalled consternation, so a gang of us villagers have come up with a business plan for a community library to be run by us. We have had lots of indications of support, and next Wednesday is crunch day, when we need people to commit to giving money / joining a staffing rota / being on the committee. Preferably all three. I mean to be voted onto the committee - wish me luck.

Meanwhile, ironically, the shelving for our library has been delivered, and before it is actually installed Jeremy and I are oiling it. (When we first saw this house there were two small rooms we knew would, on being knocked together, make a lovely grown-up hideaway.) Finally its starting to take shape, but both J and I are uncomfortably sticky from the teak oil and very headachy from the fumes. It will be beautiful, of course, and I am so looking forward to unpacking all our books some of which I won't have seen for years.

I promised Jeremy that we absolutely would not have more books than we have space for, but looking at the quantity of shelving, it occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, we may not have enough books to fill them! What a delightful thought!

Slides

A bit of a bust to be honest - we discovered when we got there that all the tickets for the three big slides were gone, and the queues for the two small ones were taking at least 45 minutes. Kit was very patient, Beri went slightly off his nut, and Sid and I joined the queue at the last minute. Poor Sid! I found myself startled by the ride down, I think she was terrified. Thank goodness Stefania was at the bottom waiting for her! Kit reckoned it had been worth the wait. If we go again, we will definitely get there for 10:00 when it opens.

Invasion of the Milanese

Stefania's mother and brother have joined us for a couple of days. Both charming. Steffi is having to work overtime translating between her mother and me, and prodding her brother to talk english. He is fourteen years old, taller than Jeremy, and his english verges on the non-existent. This hasn't stopped all three children taking him to their hearts, about which he has been very gracious, and perfectly prepared to join in their play. I suspect the fact that he is very free with the games, animations and music on his mobile phone may have swung the boys' good opinion! Kit and Sid are gamely getting their tongues around 'Allesandro', but Beri is resolutely calling him 'Alexander'.

We are all off to the Tate Modern tomorrow to have a go on the slides.

Malaria, or not

Poor Jeremy has been feeling really crummy for days now. The results of his blood tests indicated, well, not malaria, but a mosquito-borne virus which is giving him temperature spikes, insomnia, huge headaches and, when he takes the pills to get rid of the headaches, asthma. There is nothing the medical establishment can do save prescribe painkillers.

Who would have thought that you needed the full spectrum of immunisations just to go to Kiev? We are going to remember his three-day trip there for the wrong reason. Well, the not-malaria as well as not even finding me an ashtray with 'A Present From Kiev Airport' painted on it.

Stefania . . .

. . . is a beautiful 20-year old italian lass, whose father is a colleague of an ex-colleague of Julia's. Got that? Stefania wanted to improve her English, so it was arranged that she would stay at Julia's stable yard for a few weeks, helping on the yard. Which is where, on our usual Tuesday evening visit, Jeremy, the children and I met her. One week into the arrangement with Julia, the poor girl realises that her liking for horses is rather more theoretical that hands-on, and could she come and live with us instead, and help look after the children! Beri and Kit are quite bowled over, and Sid is deeply in love. I don't know in what direction Stefania's English will improve, but I bet you the children's Italian will be terrific before the week is out.

He shall make music wherever he goes

Kit is coming up to his third guitar lesson, and isn't bored yet. I am finding it very hard not to over-enthuse, or over-comment on his practising - very difficult as I am thrilled he chose my instrument.

Beri discovered a dalmation costume and won't wear anything else!

Brand new blog

Can I actually have a blog without having a paying job? Looking around Blogworld it appears that, like a salary, a necessary adjunct to employment is a displacement activity. We didn't have blogs in my (working) day, I had to be far more inventive to avoid work. You youngsters don't know you're alive.

What I have instead is a very untidy house, washing and washing up to do, and a two year old daughter superglued to the television screen while I set up a bloody blog. Tch - life, eh?

And I have to set up this blog so I can post a comment on Liz's wedding pictures. Not to do so would be rude. So this is Not My Fault!