Happy Christmas....of course

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone and lots of good good wishes for the new year. I've been woefully inadequate in my posting and my reading of my favourite blogs. But full action will be resumed in the new year. It's just been a lovely - but full on - Christmas. Hattie has chicken pox - the first spots appeared on Christmas Day(!) and the others have variations of a sick/flu bug which is going around. But, still lovely despite all of this: the right combination of being at home and seeing all the family. And there's still the new year knees-up to come! Exhausting.

This Christmas

It'll be turkey on Christmas Day - I'm making chestnut and sausage stuffing, my lovely roast potatoes (I hope they'll be lovely!), lots of other bits and pieces and chocolate prune and armangnac pudding with rum butter. It's my first Christmas Day in my own home with just us and the kids. My first Christmas day where I'm in charge instead of my mother. And I'm excited. I want it to be perfect.

We're off to stay with my mum, my brother and sister, their partners and my four small nephews on Boxing Day - and that'll be lovely too. The kids all adore each other; seven cousins aged between 7 and 6 months, with another coming in March, will certainly make for chaos. Proper family chaos that's for sure!

Due to my German heritage, Christmas Eve is important to us too. We exchange our presents entirely on Christmas Eve around a tree festooned with lit candles (try buying the tree candle holders anywhere in this country..... I've had to resort to ebay!), and we eat bockwurst and potato salad with rollmops. I'm not making the Stollen though - that's still the domain of my mum who makes perfect batches - I hope enough to take one home for us. We have a magical Christmas angel who comes to light the candles on the tree when it gets dark while the kids outside the room press their ears to the door to see if they can hear her speak or catch a glimpse of her out of a window as she flies away. When I was a child, Father Christmas didn't figure at all in our Christmas, he was always a mystery to me really; but for my kids I've had to build him into the story -without Father Christmas things are too complicated at school and with their friends, so now he comes and leaves the stockings later on Christmas Eve. In that way we can leave a mince pie and a glass of whisky for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.... and attempt to amalgamate the two traditions. I'm always confused though and have to remind myself who does what - when I was a child the Angel came back to leave the stocking!

I'm coming up to two years in remission. This year I'm going to a New Year's Eve party. I haven't felt able to since the diagnosis. Two years ago at Christmas I was going through radiotherapy -and due to my poor prognosis I had very little confidence that I would be around for the next Christmas. Last Christmas I was still hounded by profound anxiety and ill health. This Christmas I think I believe I might just be here for the next. That's progress for me. I think I can face this New Year with new optimism. Life's a scary business that's for sure.

Weekend Bliss

My mother is having the kids this weekend. I'm picking them up from school and driving them up the snowy - but thawing - A1 into Northumberland. And then I'm driving home without them. The joy! Two mornings without being woken at the crack of dawn, two evenings when we can act like relaxed, sane people - the world will be our oyster!

I don't think we have plans to do much really, and we're too skint for anything too glamorous. But, we can read the papers from cover to cover without interruption. We can watch more than one episode of our beloved Mad Men box-set without falling asleep because it's so late. We can please ourselves. A little light lunch in town? Yes please. An afternoon trip to the cinema? Quite possibly.

We've all been on top of each other during these past couple of weeks - and I've been getting quite stressed and more shouty than I've wanted to be. This weekend is coming at just the right time. Thanks, Mum.

Fed Up!

It's so cold! It was -11 when we set off on the school run this morning. It took me the best part of half an hour to de-ice the car and get it vaguely driveable.

Because our backyard - where we usually park the car - and the back lane too, is like a snow-covered ice-rink, the car was parked about a ten minute walk away from the house on the main road. So the de-icing happened with the kids and Hattie in tow. Suffice to say Hattie did not enjoy the experience - and lets face it, neither did I.

And then we got stuck pulling away onto the road. Cue lots of wheel spinning and snow flying. We have a big heavy car which is not 4-wheel drive. And don't I know it? We're not equipped here in England for this kind of thing. Even up here in the north.

So - even the most everyday tasks become major deals. I suppose there is a sense of achievement which goes along with getting the kids in through the school doors. Hmmmm.

I've got lots to do - it's Christmas soon - hurry up and melt, snow. Enough already.

Cooking and Cooking and Cooking Some More

And now to more prosaic matters. The cold cold weather and crazy snow has had the same old effect on me - I've been cooking like a dervish.

We've lit our woodburner every day for the past week - the warm, sauna-like heat a balm for the terrors which hit us when we venture out of the door. It's a military operation getting the kids to school or buying a pint of milk. I've given up entirely on the car for the time being.

And I'm cooking. I've made my jars of pear chutney, ready to give to people as Christmas presents. A certain skint state has forced presents of economy this year - but corny though it is I've had much more pleasure from my rows of beautifully sterilised, prettily lidded and labelled jars, than I have from lining up bought gifts in previous years. And there's still homemade lemon curd and honeycomb to be made for the same lucky recipients.

And I have been cooking my way through the latest Nigella Lawson book as I threatened to do. Today we're having meatloaf - not something I've really thought to cook before, being English through and through. But this looks delightful with slices of egg running through the middle, and bacon wrapped around the top. Not a vegetarian's idea of heaven, I'll agree, and certainly not the lightest of meals it's true. We don't eat that much meat ourselves - but there's something about the snow that makes me want to snuggle right down with food and warmth and forget about other more aesthetic pleasures.

I'll let you know how the meatloaf turns out.

Snow - thinking of Dickens!

Snow weighing heavily in the gutters on the roofs. Snow lying wonkily along silhouetted branches. Snow feet deep on paths, hedges and pavements. Snow breathing, snow falling and snow settling on a new, stark landscape where nothing seems the same.

Old people, bent like sticks, wrapped up fruitlessly against the cold, struggle along the streets clutching packages of precious rations in their hands. With luck their tins and jars will last till the 'snap' is over - make a nice ham sandwich and a cup of tea against the cold! Breath rising in the cold house, saving the heating, they huddle next to the one bar on the heater.

Kids - blurs of colour aganst the white - slip and slide, their shrieks hanging in the cold air, static and frozen in time.

Cars, driven by the most intrepid and devil-may-care, slide and skid around the bends in the road, their tyres spurting sludgy snow onto those venturing out on foot.

And we, watching the snow falling, falling, falling tune our radios to the local stations to hear the latest on whether the school is open - radiant hope and exhilaration only a moment away for the children.

And it's still November.

Beer and a Latte?

I spent the weekend pulling pints and making complicated coffees on the enormous coffee machine at my mum's picturesque pub on the beautiful Northumbrian coast. She and my sister run the pub - it has its own micro brewery which brews fantastic beer if you're into that sort of thing (I'm more a whisky girl myself), and serves amazing food in the evening, so much so that the bookings are taken weeks ahead.

This weekend and next they're short-staffed so I was drafted in. I was working in the evening too - remarkably stressful having to glide around taking orders, opening wine while trying to look as if I know what I'm doing when I don't! I wasn't invited into the kitchen. Thank heavens.

I was rather tired by the time I finished on Sunday afternoon. The weather was terrible all weekend and consequently the pub was constantly completely packed with walkers trying to wait out the deluge. Many hot chocolates were consumed (by them not me!)

I left the kids behind in Gateshead on Saturday morning with poor Roger who was exhausted at the start of the weekend and beyond exhausted by the end. When I walked back in last night at tea-time chaos reigned with Hattie shrieking, Ed upside down on the sofa and Martha giggling horrendously in that particular way she has.

I finished making the tea, and after the usual bathing and reading and all the other bed-time mayhem, sank onto the sofa for an hour before springing upwards once more to tackle the ironing. Roger who had arrived home on Friday from work with the usual pile of marking and other work, retreated upstairs to his study. And much, much later we muttered goodnight to each other before falling asleep. I think we've exchanged a couple of sentences -if that - this weekend. Crazy - but at least I got a lie-in on Sunday morning before I started work. That's more than Rog got.