Christmas on ice
This was the Christmas of ice and spillages.
Tara Banana started the day by rolling thoroughly in a gift left for her by a fox, so the first thing was giving her a good shower and shampoo. After that we managed to slop cocktails, goose grease, water and almost-but-not-quite mulled wine all over the place. Ah well.
Although the snow had almost gone, the melt had refrozen overnight, producing a lot of black and grey ice on our path, drive, and through the village. It was warming up too, so the surface of the ice was melting, for maximum slippiness. In retrospect, inviting our elderly parents to lunch was a more risky activity than it could have been, both our Mums hit the deck during the day, fortunately with no great damage done.
It was lovely that they could all come, but possibly we should have removed to one of their houses when we realised the problem rather than have them come to us. They live locally in places less ice-beset than us. Though how we could have done that given that there was no way we could get either of our cars out, I don' t know.
We thought at one point that everyone was going to have to stay the night, as having parked on ice on a hill, my mother was unable to reverse off it, but luckily philmophlegm's parents car in front had at least one wheel on tarmac, and was able to get out allowing my Mum to slither forwards and escape as well.
As usual, we had not ordered food months in advance - we just went to the farmer's market on Weds, and got things that looked good on impulse. I guess if everyone did this it wouldnt' work, but as usual, most people didn't. The town was really quiet when we got there at 10am, though the traffic was busy by the time we left. Though I 'm not sure if they were shoppers or just people passing through as the car park was still pretty empty.
We had a goose and a nut roast, with an enthusiasm of vegetables - I hadn't really thought about the veg, but we'd grabbed rather a lot of different things, so at least our dinner had 5 a day!
5 dogs for Christmas (my hounds, Tara Banana, and my mothers' two collie crosses) might have seemed rather a lot, but in fact they were all terribly good, quiet and well behaved, even though the ice meant they had not had quite the walking I had planned. The cats mostly stayed out of the way, apart from Perl, who took up residence in the middle of the sofa on her own cushion and demanded strokes, and the Bungles, who took turns in flinging themselves onto the table and tripping us up, as usual!
I think Az and Tara Banana would have liked more presents, I was a bit scrooge like with them this year and only provided one tripe stick each in wrapping paper, but Az and Tara were quite interested in our presents, and I felt mean that they didn't have more to open themselves.
The human presents were lovely, but a bit out of hand in terms of numbers I think, it did feel a bit overindulgent. Though I'm not complaining too loud, as I have a new No Whining mug, hurray, and also a Little Owl box and a batbox. I can probably soothe my conscience a bit by saying these are really for the owls and bats, not me... (though I bet I don't really get little owls in my owlbox, I reckon it will be jackdaws if we are lucky...)
Much to my greedy joy, I was also given some of the finest fudge in the world, by philmophlegm - which I have just eaten for breakfast. Well, if you can't eat fudge for breakfast on Boxing Day, when can you eat it for breakfast...?
I hope everyone reading this has had a good Christmas and I wish you (and us) a non-icy new year!
Tara Banana started the day by rolling thoroughly in a gift left for her by a fox, so the first thing was giving her a good shower and shampoo. After that we managed to slop cocktails, goose grease, water and almost-but-not-quite mulled wine all over the place. Ah well.
Although the snow had almost gone, the melt had refrozen overnight, producing a lot of black and grey ice on our path, drive, and through the village. It was warming up too, so the surface of the ice was melting, for maximum slippiness. In retrospect, inviting our elderly parents to lunch was a more risky activity than it could have been, both our Mums hit the deck during the day, fortunately with no great damage done.
It was lovely that they could all come, but possibly we should have removed to one of their houses when we realised the problem rather than have them come to us. They live locally in places less ice-beset than us. Though how we could have done that given that there was no way we could get either of our cars out, I don' t know.
We thought at one point that everyone was going to have to stay the night, as having parked on ice on a hill, my mother was unable to reverse off it, but luckily philmophlegm's parents car in front had at least one wheel on tarmac, and was able to get out allowing my Mum to slither forwards and escape as well.
As usual, we had not ordered food months in advance - we just went to the farmer's market on Weds, and got things that looked good on impulse. I guess if everyone did this it wouldnt' work, but as usual, most people didn't. The town was really quiet when we got there at 10am, though the traffic was busy by the time we left. Though I 'm not sure if they were shoppers or just people passing through as the car park was still pretty empty.
We had a goose and a nut roast, with an enthusiasm of vegetables - I hadn't really thought about the veg, but we'd grabbed rather a lot of different things, so at least our dinner had 5 a day!
5 dogs for Christmas (my hounds, Tara Banana, and my mothers' two collie crosses) might have seemed rather a lot, but in fact they were all terribly good, quiet and well behaved, even though the ice meant they had not had quite the walking I had planned. The cats mostly stayed out of the way, apart from Perl, who took up residence in the middle of the sofa on her own cushion and demanded strokes, and the Bungles, who took turns in flinging themselves onto the table and tripping us up, as usual!
I think Az and Tara Banana would have liked more presents, I was a bit scrooge like with them this year and only provided one tripe stick each in wrapping paper, but Az and Tara were quite interested in our presents, and I felt mean that they didn't have more to open themselves.
The human presents were lovely, but a bit out of hand in terms of numbers I think, it did feel a bit overindulgent. Though I'm not complaining too loud, as I have a new No Whining mug, hurray, and also a Little Owl box and a batbox. I can probably soothe my conscience a bit by saying these are really for the owls and bats, not me... (though I bet I don't really get little owls in my owlbox, I reckon it will be jackdaws if we are lucky...)
Much to my greedy joy, I was also given some of the finest fudge in the world, by philmophlegm - which I have just eaten for breakfast. Well, if you can't eat fudge for breakfast on Boxing Day, when can you eat it for breakfast...?
I hope everyone reading this has had a good Christmas and I wish you (and us) a non-icy new year!