Fake Christmas
So, I went home this weekend because I will be having Christmas in Brighton this year (woo! yay!) and needed to see the folks to drop off presents and to be generally festive in a non-festive way. The way things are going I might attempt to do things like this in the future. It's funny, I love seeing my folks. Except at Christmas. This is the one day of the year guaranteed to become a Voyage Up Stress Mountain, from arrangements of who will be where doing what, through to cooking times and arguments stemming from having both myself and my brother in the kitchen, attempting to cook the Tastiest Thing Ever. And add onto that the fact that Christmas is meant to be a time of peace, joy and goodwill to the world, meaning that the whole thing is a pressurised, crazy mad dash to making sure that everyone is having Fun With The Family.
All in all, best avoided, and substituted for this weekend's visit, which included a trip to a couple of foodie markets and a valuable lesson. Whilst there is only one true cheese in Lancashire, there are about 4,000 varieties of it, so those people who think that picking up "Lancashire Cheese" is a simple matter have not witnessed the amount of dairy products I sampled. In the end I got three different ones.* We watched Merlin, went out for dinner and generally had a lovely relaxing time. I opened some presents on Sunday morning (my mum wanted to check that things fit / were the right thing) and gave my folks some gifts to open on Christmas Day. No-one got annoyed about turkey.
The only one downside to the weekend was that we currently have a depressed cat. It was one of a pair (brother and sister) got from a rescue shelter around 12 years ago. The male cat died three weeks ago and since then the female has been following my parents around, howling. Practically continuously. From getting up to going to sleep. Aside from being very sad, it is also a little annoying. The suggested remedies include "buy a new cat" (mum's preferred option), waiting it out (dad's preferred option) and some sort of cat therapy (crazy internet option). Poor thing.
* This is much the same as the Lancashire Hot Pot. There is no one recipe, god-forbid, but instead as many as there are people who make it. Needless to say, each one is both genuine and The Correct One.
All in all, best avoided, and substituted for this weekend's visit, which included a trip to a couple of foodie markets and a valuable lesson. Whilst there is only one true cheese in Lancashire, there are about 4,000 varieties of it, so those people who think that picking up "Lancashire Cheese" is a simple matter have not witnessed the amount of dairy products I sampled. In the end I got three different ones.* We watched Merlin, went out for dinner and generally had a lovely relaxing time. I opened some presents on Sunday morning (my mum wanted to check that things fit / were the right thing) and gave my folks some gifts to open on Christmas Day. No-one got annoyed about turkey.
The only one downside to the weekend was that we currently have a depressed cat. It was one of a pair (brother and sister) got from a rescue shelter around 12 years ago. The male cat died three weeks ago and since then the female has been following my parents around, howling. Practically continuously. From getting up to going to sleep. Aside from being very sad, it is also a little annoying. The suggested remedies include "buy a new cat" (mum's preferred option), waiting it out (dad's preferred option) and some sort of cat therapy (crazy internet option). Poor thing.
* This is much the same as the Lancashire Hot Pot. There is no one recipe, god-forbid, but instead as many as there are people who make it. Needless to say, each one is both genuine and The Correct One.