Happy Christmas! We hope your celebrations/gatherings during the festive season were half as good as ours – if so, you clearly had a great time!
With very little effort on my part I seem, somehow, to have collected another year to add to my current age. What are the chances of that? We ambled across to The Leopard for a birthday meal with Nick, Lucy and Annabelle which was very nice and very tasty. It seems I wasn’t the only one celebrating a birthday – there were three other tables who burst into a rendition of Happy Birthday as the waiting staff presented dessert with candles, etc. We could have had similar treatment, it seems, if Penny had told them it was my birthday when she booked. No worries, at my age I don’t need the fuss!
From the vast collection of birthday cards I received, these two were amongst my favourites:
Every year a group of villagers get together and wander the village on two successive evenings performing rousing renditions of traditional Christmas carols. They do the Upper Green and adjacent houses on one night and then, on a second night, they parade around the Lower Green and its nearby residents.
Penny had told them that she would make a few nibbles and stew some mulled wine for them on the Tuesday evening when they came to us. Imagine her horror when the doorbell rang and outside we could hear a rousing Christmas carol being sung. “OMG! I forgot!”
Oops! No mulled wine, no little nibbles. No worries. Having apologised profusely for her forgetfulness, she joined them for the rest of their rounds and they were, I gather, fed and wined at various stops. That does mean I have two bottles of mulled wine to get through but I reckon I’m up to the challenge.
And then, on Christmas Eve, the village has a long-standing tradition of gathering on the Upper Green for more carol singing. There was a great turn out and, no doubt, a considerable amount of cash raised for a worthy cause.
I have to confess, I am not a great fan of traditional Christmas carols and the Carols on the Green are decidedly traditional. And, as a bonus, you get to sing all forty-seven verses of each carol. Thankfully, the organisers provide printed song sheets. Hallelujah!
We went across to Nick & Lucy’s on Christmas Day itself which was lovely. We took Daisy and had a great walk around Oakley Woods to stir up our appetites, not that mine needed much stirring. Nick had done a turkey crown for the meat-eaters (i.e., Lucy and me) with roast potatoes, etc. Penelope made oodles of stuffing but must have forgotten that there were only the five of us – if we’re lucky we might be able to have stuffing for the next three weeks. Lovely.
During the afternoon we had a great Zoom with Adam, Ava and Jessie – Julieta was, apparently, otherwise engaged. They were in Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) enjoying what appeared to be a very festive celebration. And later, we had a Facetime session with a couple of very tired parents (Ben & Brex-Anna) who were up before the dawn even had a chance to crack with a very excited young boy. Ah, that’s what Christmas is all about.
Out to dinner on Friday evening with our lovely and long-time friends Pete and Sally Taylor-Wilkins on the occasion of their daughter Ruby’s 16th birthday. We met up at the Thai Orchid in Banbury, a very nice and long established Thai restaurant. A lovely meal, good fun and great to see them all again. Hard to believe that Ruby is 16! Where does the time go?
We’re looking forward to New Year’s – as usual, I suspect we shall be asleep about the time Berliners are celebrating.
A plethora of You Could Not Make It Ups this week.
Firstly, I don’t know about the rest of you but we enjoyed a very mild Christmas this year.
Forecasters are predicting one of the mildest Christmases on record with temperatures potentially peaking at 15o C and no chance of snow anywhere in the UK.
15o Celsius is just a tick under 60o Fahrenheit! 60o? At Christmas? Apparently, there is a climate crisis going on. But don’t worry, once the new American president takes office the climate crisis will suddenly disappear, I am assured.
And, a return to one of my favourite subjects in the YCNMIU sphere – the corrupt and dishonest water industry. It turns out that, after a “secret” discussion, money which was supposed to be used for environmental cleanups was instead diverted to pay bonuses and dividends without telling the government regulator. Bastards.
Meanwhile, keep breathing, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg