Are scoundrels always intoxicated?
A Christmas story:
At my secondary school, it was an annual tradition for the Year 10 (I think) Home Economic class to make a heavy fruit cake and decorate it with almond icing and sugar work as a year-end project. All the finished cakes were put on display and younger students were encouraged to go and look. So we did, my friends and I, in Year 7. Given the time of year, a lot of the students had decorated their cakes for Christmas, but some obviously had a special occasion in mind and had decorated accordingly. Anniversary cakes, a wedding cake, a couple of birthday cakes with the person's name written in icing on top: Diane, Noel, Julie, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Noel sure was getting a lot of cakes. "Who's Noel?" I asked my friend, but before she could point out what an idiot I was, the older girls behind us laughed at me and, just like that, I had a sudden moment of clarity that Noel was meant to be Noël and his cakes were part of the Christmas section. Can I suggest this festive season, we should all stop and ask "Who's Noel?"
My mother and I had a quiet Christmas at home this year. The past few years we have spent the day on the ancestral family farm, where my mother's 99-year-old aunt lives, to have lunch with extended family among the koalas. Which is nice, but several of the cousins have very different political views to us and like to say so, loudly, which does tend to cast a pall. "You know they'll think covid is a hoax," said my mother, "and I couldn't stand hearing that over lunch. Let's stay home." When her cousin called to invite us, she apparently started, unprompted, on an anti-mask rant, which my mother said made saying "thanks but no" much easier.
This year, I made a bûche de Noël (another one for good old Noel!), using a recipe from my mother's 1989 copy of Australian Women's Weekly French Cookery Made Easy. It was a roaring success; we shouldn't have waited thirty-one years to make it. This is it after frosting, but before the dusting of icing sugar snow and assorted greenery to pretty the plate up.
And now I have a week off, with no plans except reading two books to make it to fifty for the year.
At my secondary school, it was an annual tradition for the Year 10 (I think) Home Economic class to make a heavy fruit cake and decorate it with almond icing and sugar work as a year-end project. All the finished cakes were put on display and younger students were encouraged to go and look. So we did, my friends and I, in Year 7. Given the time of year, a lot of the students had decorated their cakes for Christmas, but some obviously had a special occasion in mind and had decorated accordingly. Anniversary cakes, a wedding cake, a couple of birthday cakes with the person's name written in icing on top: Diane, Noel, Julie, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Noel sure was getting a lot of cakes. "Who's Noel?" I asked my friend, but before she could point out what an idiot I was, the older girls behind us laughed at me and, just like that, I had a sudden moment of clarity that Noel was meant to be Noël and his cakes were part of the Christmas section. Can I suggest this festive season, we should all stop and ask "Who's Noel?"
My mother and I had a quiet Christmas at home this year. The past few years we have spent the day on the ancestral family farm, where my mother's 99-year-old aunt lives, to have lunch with extended family among the koalas. Which is nice, but several of the cousins have very different political views to us and like to say so, loudly, which does tend to cast a pall. "You know they'll think covid is a hoax," said my mother, "and I couldn't stand hearing that over lunch. Let's stay home." When her cousin called to invite us, she apparently started, unprompted, on an anti-mask rant, which my mother said made saying "thanks but no" much easier.
This year, I made a bûche de Noël (another one for good old Noel!), using a recipe from my mother's 1989 copy of Australian Women's Weekly French Cookery Made Easy. It was a roaring success; we shouldn't have waited thirty-one years to make it. This is it after frosting, but before the dusting of icing sugar snow and assorted greenery to pretty the plate up.
And now I have a week off, with no plans except reading two books to make it to fifty for the year.