At some point in the night – don’t ask me how – I turned over in bed so I was lying face-down, slept soundly for a couple of hours, and then woke in agony, virtually unable to move. This didn’t bode well, I felt, for the day ahead. Eventually, with much wimpering, I managed to get up, take some more painkillers, and then get back into bed, once again propped up on a wedge pillow – and surprisingly I did then manage to get back to sleep. Still, when I woke again at 6.30, roused by the Boy Wonder’s stage-whispered, “Grandma! Is it time to get up yet?”, it was clear that I’d done some extra damage, and I was in much more pain than at the same time yesterday. There was nothing to be done about it at this juncture though, so I put my big girl trousers on, and my big girl back strapping, and hobbled downstairs to join the family.
I’m not going to lie and say that I had a lovely day, because that would be ridiculous, but I think I can say that everyone else did, and I do have some very happy memories of parts of it. Both grandsons were good value, and the Baby Brother was especially charming, singing his way lustily (and with very good pitching, I might add) through the day. His current favourite song is Jingle Bells, which he can sing in Welsh as well as English, but he also loves Old Macdonald and The Wheels on the Bus. He enjoys it when people join in with him, provided they don’t attempt to go off piste: on the one occasion I tried to divert him onto Twinkle Twinkle, he gave me a ferocious scowl, said “NO!”, and then calmly went back to Jingle Bells.
The only other thing I’d like to record here is how pleased and relieved I was to have bought the air-fryer – if I never ever used it again, it would have justified its place in the kitchen just by the amount of work it did today. Pigs in blankets, parsnips roasted with maple syrup and garam masala, and finally roast potatoes were all cooked rapidly, perfectly and without fuss in the air-fryer, leaving the main oven clear for roasting some stuffing, cooking a large dish of dauphinoise potatoes, and finishing off a sous-vide turkey crown. There were also sprouts, of course – pan-fried on the hob with pancetta and chestnuts, though it did occur to me that I could probably have air-fried those as well.
It was only after both boys were in bed, and the adults with more stamina than I could muster were thinking about eating some cheese, that I remembered I hadn’t yet taken any photos. Over the years, we’ve acquired dozens of tree decorations that are associated with particular members of the family, or have stories or memories attached to them, and this is the newest: a wooden dinosaur in a Christmas jumper which R and I bought the last time we went to Compton Verney. This morning the Boy Wonder walked around the tree with me and decided where it should be hung.
R: L2, C3, D7.
