the hol­i­day spirit

 My good­ness, where to start?  It has been five weeks since my last con­fes­sion… I mean, post.

First of all, here is our Christ­mas-card image for those VERY few of you who are not on our list.  What a beau­ti­ful girl, inside and out.  She’s just home from a school his­to­ry trip to Berlin, and we are hap­pi­ly reunit­ed for the holidays.

Life has tak­en on that fre­net­ic qual­i­ty that usu­al­ly crops up dur­ing the hol­i­days.  The may­hem seems to begin reg­u­lar­ly around Hal­loween and not stop until about Jan­u­ary 3, at which point we all wake up and real­ize that we’re com­plete­ly drained of all human ener­gy and need to lie around like slugs to recover.

For the first time ever, we three are spend­ing Christ­mas on our own here in Lon­don.  I am anx­ious not to dwell on miss­ing the beau­ty and excite­ment that is Red Gate Farm at Christ­mas — shop­ping for a tree at Rol­lie and Judy’s, run­ning up and down the base­ment stairs with orna­ment box­es, run­ning to Jill and Joel’s to trans­fer to our house the enor­mous pile of gifts that have been accu­mu­lat­ing at their house dur­ing our over­seas shop­ping, the fair pos­si­bil­i­ty of snow, the fun of see­ing our neigh­bors and know­ing how hap­py it makes them to see lights on in our dear lit­tle house, and can­dles in the win­dows, for a whirl­wind few weeks.

Every­one is telling us that Lon­don emp­ties at Christ­mas, although the fact that there are so many peo­ple telling us this argues that there are SOME peo­ple here, if only to report on how qui­et it is!  We have tick­ets to a “Cin­derel­la pan­to” with friends, tick­ets to “A Christ­mas Car­ol” with the great Simon Cal­low, guests invit­ed for Christ­mas Eve, din­ner par­ties to go to after the day, and wed­ding anniver­sary lunch reser­va­tions at Nobu!  We won’t be bored.

Bored!  Some­times that sounds ter­ri­bly appealing.

Novem­ber was its usu­al busy self, filled with lots of oblig­a­tions, work, adven­tures and mad­ness.  The month saw me ring­ing for one of my favorite occa­sions, Remem­brance Sunday.

It is such an under­stand­ably bit­ter­sweet occa­sion, cel­e­brat­ing Britain’s his­to­ry, watch­ing the old gen­tle­men of the parish walk­ing slow­ly into the church, their chests adorned with medals, the scouts car­ry­ing their flags, “The Last Post,” the heart­break­ing read­ings.  “At the set­ting of the sun, we will remem­ber them.”  A huge hon­or and priv­i­lege to ring at St Mary’s, then at Chiswick with the bells half-muf­fled (an incred­i­bly mov­ing, eerie sound).

And there were wed­dings to ring for!  One mem­o­rable after­noon was spent ring­ing the bride “in,” watch­ing the amaz­ing dis­plays of Lebanese wed­dings guests dressed to the nines in tow­er­ing heels!  Then ring­ing the bridal cou­ple “out” in tan­dem with the thun­der­ing organ.  Oh, wed­dings are fun.

Of course there have been the end­less the­atre tick­ets (Mark Rylance in “Richard III” was a rev­e­la­tion), respon­si­bil­i­ties at Lost Prop­er­ty, get­ting a new fam­i­ly for my vol­un­teer social work (love­ly except that the chil­dren give me their every germ!).  But truth to tell, the land­mark event of all our lives was the much-antic­i­pat­ed school Christ­mas Fair.

The Fair has been John’s life for months!  As the first-ever (and prob­a­bly only, now every­one’s seen how much work it was) Father Chair, his life has been one long round of con­stant phone calls, texts, emails and cof­fees with every mem­ber of the 30-strong Fair Com­mit­tee, organ­is­ing the Vin­tage Stall, the Raf­fle, the Tombo­la, the adver­tis­ing, the staff pan­tomime (yes, real­ly), and my per­son­al area of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the Food!  John was in charge of cor­ral­ing us all, an expe­ri­ence a bit like herd­ing cats!  The day before we all gath­ered to dec­o­rate.  My domain was the beau­ti­ful two-roomed Vic­to­ri­an library, filled with price­less books.  Our ran­dom attempts to trans­form the space were huge­ly successful.

Avery was offi­cial Fair Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and she was every­where, with her friend Mil­lie, cap­tur­ing the action.  I cap­tured them.

Every once in awhile, on dec­o­ra­tion day, John would stag­ger in the door of the library, moan­ing soft­ly, lying prone on the floor with his hands over his eyes, telling us of the con­trolled chaos out­side our peace­ful library.  It was love­ly.  Real­ly one of those days when you know you must remem­ber it all, and enjoy it, and you do.

My fun was only slight­ly marred by falling, as I was hang­ing bunting over a win­dow sill, through an ancient met­al grate into a hole filled with heat­ing pipes and gal­va­nized steel tubs!  OUCH!  “Oh my God, Mum­my, are you OK?” Avery raced over.  Oth­er moth­ers raced over.  I had cut my hand and in the clas­sic ges­ture of despair, put my hands to my face, so every­one thought I had cut a slice in my cheek.  No, not that bad.  But the oth­er moth­ers insist­ed I go to the school nurse, in case I need­ed a tetanus shot.  “Not unless there was a rabid dog in the hole where you fell,” the nurse assured me.  “You poor dear,” she crooned.  “Here is a parac­eta­mol [Tylenol in Amer­i­can] and let me clean that cut.  Now, my advice is you go down the street to the Queen’s Head [local pub] and down a stiff whiskey.  But that’s the Liv­er­pudlian in me com­ing out.”

I was a brave girl and stayed to dec­o­rate the rest of the day, final­ly crawl­ing home to call my mom­my, as even a full-grown woman must do on these occa­sions of dis­as­ter.  “Waaah!”  She advised a hot bath with a cock­tail and a mys­tery, and that’s what I did.

The morn­ing brought the real deal, the Fair!  The day start­ed as it would go on: with a mit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter.  The super­mar­ket deliv­ery of 36 bot­tles of wine and 15 bot­tles of Pros­ec­co arrived HERE, instead of the school.  “But no!” I wailed.  “It’s meant to be across the riv­er at the school!”  Avery and Mil­lie watched from the door­way of the house as I begged and plead­ed.  “My moth­er is flirt­ing with a deliv­ery man,” Avery said, dead­pan.  Fine, it worked!

“I’ll just leave my track­ing device here at your front door and my boss will nev­er know I left and came back,” he said, prov­ing my old opin­ion that no mat­ter how old we get, every­one likes to fool the teacher.  That was the best £20 I ever spent, and what a triumph!

Then we were at school.  Oh, the Vin­tage Stall!

The boun­cy games in the Sports Hall!

The moth­er who was in charge of dec­o­ra­tions was a total genius, mak­ing absolute­ly every­thing with recy­cled mate­ri­als.  Oh, the num­ber of super­mar­ket piz­zas are fam­i­ly ate so that she could cut out star shapes out of the sty­ro­foam mats!

Our fam­i­ly spied this beau­ti­ful wreath straight­away — made from a dis­card­ed old copy of “A Christ­mas Car­ol” — and bought it at the end of the Fair.  Just genius.

My co-Food chair Mary and I donned the new aprons that had been made for us, with a sketch of the school on the front, a cher­ished new belong­ing.  We spent the entire day rac­ing up and down stairs, between the hot food in the din­ing hall, the end­less array of smoked salmon sand­wich­es flow­ing out of the kitchens from our vol­un­teer moth­ers, up to the libraries to super­vise still more vol­un­teers sell­ing the six dozen cup­cakes and brown­ies that had been made by still more vol­un­teers.  Cof­fee, tea dis­pensed with a smile!

Through it all, the girls sold their wares at tables down­stairs, the results of a long, com­pli­cat­ed “Drag­on’s Den” process that John invent­ed, to give them a chance to build a busi­ness and con­tribute to the Fair.  They were his favorite bit of the whole expe­ri­ence, those love­ly girls.  He still gets teary when he thinks of them!  Den­im-cov­ered note­books, origa­mi Christ­mas cards, home­made choco­late shakes, per­son­alised t‑shirts, you name it.

It was either the longest or the short­est four hours of our lives, depend­ing on how you looked at it.  Dif­fi­cult to believe that it had tak­en over 30 adults and twice that many girls over 18 months to get to the day, and hun­dreds of peo­ple ON the day.  Avery was every­where tak­ing pho­tos, get­ting a chance to shop at “Vin­tage” under the aus­pices of her job, buy­ing a gor­geous old leather jack­et.  There was so much won­der­ful stuff, not that I saw any of it, food-obsessed as I was.

One of the high­lights of the day for me was when I was on a lunch-deliv­ery errand to the stall­hold­ers and came upon a lady sell­ing cash­mere shawls, but more impor­tant­ly, hold­ing a tiny beau­ti­ful baby.  “How old is she?” I asked, in my usu­al shame­less baby-lov­ing fash­ion.  “Ten weeks, and she has to be held every minute!”  “Would she come to me?”  “Yes please!”  So I got a heav­en­ly, warm lit­tle bun­dle to cra­dle for a moment, sleep­ing amidst the noise and chaos of peo­ple sell­ing leather note­books, antique books, scent­ed can­dles, hand­made jew­el­ry.  The moth­er wolfed down a pile of salmon sand­wich­es grate­ful­ly and then resumed her sleepy burden.

Final­ly, in a state of utter exhaus­tion, we real­ized that the impos­si­ble had hap­pened and 3 o’clock had come.  We hawked our last cup­cakes two for one, shooed out the stall­hold­ers.  The mon­u­men­tal job of cleanup began, gath­er­ing rent­ed table­cloths, sweep­ing up the lay­er of crumbs, feath­ers, wrap­ping paper and raf­fle tick­ets lit­ter­ing the floor of the Great Hall.  The sun set as we labored, turn­ing the school we had trans­formed into a Fair back into a school.  We exchanged con­grat­u­la­tions with every­one who had helped, and final­ly went home.  The Fair Was Over.

And when the pro­ceeds all came in, John was tri­umphant: 25% more prof­its than the last Fair.  His com­pet­i­tive spir­it was sat­is­fied and the school’s schol­ar­ships and char­i­ties very happy!

And because life paus­es nev­er, the next week was Thanks­giv­ing, and what a beau­ti­ful evening it was.  As usu­al, we had invit­ed a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of guests, but actu­al­ly behind every invi­ta­tion was a rea­son: the head of the school cater­ing team who had been so won­der­ful to John dur­ing the Fair, the beau­ti­ful and ever-patient head of the Par­ents Guild who over­sees every­thing that hap­pens at school, my Eng­lish bell­ring­ing friend whose 100-year-old moth­er had died the week before, young friends who brought their new­born baby, Avery’s cher­ished group of friends.  We could each eas­i­ly have invit­ed twice as many peo­ple, as it’s always such fun to bring togeth­er a myr­i­ad group and see what happens.

To my intense joy, the next day brought a show­er of thank-you notes through the let­ter­box (one of my favorite Eng­lish tra­di­tions, the hand-deliv­ered note), among them a foun­tain-penned beau­ty from my bell­ring­ing friend, whose note expressed his life­long grat­i­tude to Amer­i­ca, whose sol­diers had arrived dur­ing Britain’s dark­est hour and “made us feel that every­thing would be all right.”  He explained that he had always want­ed to thank Amer­i­ca, and that Thanks­giv­ing had been his oppor­tu­ni­ty, 70 years on.  What a per­fect crown to the holiday.

And so Christ­mas is upon us.  After an unsuc­cess­ful search for a tree that smells like a tree, I have suc­cumbed as every­one seems to these days to a breed of tree that smells of noth­ing but retains its nee­dles.  We had such fun, dec­o­rat­ing before Avery raced off to Berlin.

Is there any­thing more mag­i­cal, more cel­e­bra­to­ry than Christ­mas orna­ments?  There is just such a joy­ous feel­ing when we unpack the tis­sue-wrapped bun­dles and remem­ber who gave us each one, oohing and aahing over trea­sures going back all the 23 years of our mar­riage, right up to this Doc­tor Who beau­ty, a gift for Avery from my love­ly moth­er.  We said as we have said every year since tod­dler Avery began help­ing to dec­o­rate, “Now, if one gets bro­ken, that’s all right.  They’re just things.”  But they aren’t, really.

It is a bit scary to think that this tree is absolute­ly packed with pre­cious orna­ments, AND back at Red Gate Farm there are enough orna­ments to fill TWO trees.  I might have a bit of an addiction.

And so the fes­tive Christ­mas week approach­es, filled with friends and food.  Do you fan­cy a bone­less chick­en stuffed with every good thing under the sun?  I do.

Bone­less Stuffed Chicken

(serves six eas­i­ly with leftovers)

1 large chick­en, boned and tied with the front cav­i­ty left untied

1 1/2 cups bas­mati rice, steamed in chick­en stock

1 red pep­per, diced

hand­ful chest­nut mush­rooms, diced

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

4 pork sausages, tak­en out of their skins and sauteed

1 pack­age Boursin cheese or goat cheese (about 1/2 cup)

1/4 cup Marsala or Madeira

1/3 cup melt­ed butter

pinch smoked paprika

Sim­ply mix all the ingre­di­ents well and stuff the mix­ture into the chick­en, fill­ing the cav­i­ty com­plete­ly.  Fin­ish tying the chick­en closed and place in a foil-lined  deep bak­ing dish.  Cook, cov­ered with a lid or foil, in an oven at about 350F/180C for about 2 hours or until cooked through and juices run clear.

This is a nice dish to get you in the roast­ed-turkey spir­it, but with that lit­tle extra some­thing, per­fect for a casu­al din­ner par­ty.  And make sure the butch­er gives you the bones for stock!

Mer­ry Christ­mas to you and yours, and all our fam­i­ly’s wish­es to yours for a peace­ful, healthy, joy­ful holiday.