Christmas in the time of Covid - Christmas Pudding Creation

I may have missed the boat this Thanksgiving Day with regard to 'Stir-Up Sunday,' but I'm never quite sure when that falls, so, in this household, it falls precisely when I'm ready and happen to have enough ingredients lined up - and even then there's usually a last minute pop to the shops to retrieve additional dried fruit or a bottle of stout. 

As with so many other things in 2020, this year I've opted for change, embraced the apple theme and gone full Somerset Brandy/Calvados, in generous proportions. The dried fruit has been soaking for 48 hours as I keep forgetting to assemble the rest of the ingredients; sloshing more apple brandy over the fruit as I pass is my way of preserving the future pudding, but perhaps not my liver! The addition this year of diced dried apple and grated Bramley will, I hope, make this year's pudding a little lighter than some years when, 'because it's Christmas and Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the pudding, aflame, brought to the table,' we've wo/manfully had a slice, slathered it in brandy butter, double cream and clotted and sometimes a brandy custard sauce - Go Big or Go Home - and then collapsed in our respective sloth-like heaps only to stir from our fun amidst the wrapping paper and tinsel to replenish glasses and slake our parched throats. 

The 'lighter' pudding is partial acknowledgement that our waistlines may not be quite as they were back in March - and when we also have chocolate alternatives for the non-dried fruit members of the family, the temptation to double up is already too great. 

I know my limitations and I'm not good at restraint, so with the latest addition to our collection of Christmas whimsy, (see above), Stir up, Wish well and Have a glass! with/for the cook! 

Christmas in the time of Covid

After a lapse of almost seven years due to an unexpected blip in family health, it's time to review and renew the blog. I have cast about for a new name to signal fresh beginnings, but as I'm still writing fiction set in Fiji, Sulus in Somerset will stick! 

There is much to exercise our minds in 2020; latterly the approaching festive season and the logistics involved when trying to co-ordinate family spread over the UK. Do you know which #Zone, #Tier or #Lockdown state you're in? It's hard to keep up sometimes: the introduction of a tier system in Scotland, a variant of the same in England, Northern Ireland introducing a lockdown whilst the rest of us were wondering where Summer had gone and Wales being understandably cautious, meant that for a while we were unsure whether our local tier matched that of our daughter in Scotland. Would we be permitted to visit? Big Nick, as she is known in our household, soon put us right, 'no foreigners beyond the wall!' Would a son be allowed to visit his girlfriend in another part of the country - same tier - but with a journey involving travel through circuit-breaking Wales, also appealing for, 'English, stay away'?  

#Boris, with his usual dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards suave look, solved it all by placing England in another lockdown. Although not one as we knew it. No emergency trips to retrieve offspring from university this time and schools are still open, along with DIY stores, Garden Centres and anyone else who has plonked a spanner or a pot-plant in their shop-front. I'm delighted that the dishwasher repair man will be here in a fortnight, better than the month I'd envisaged, and the car can be MOT'd later this week, but explaining to elderly parents who are isolating with dementia, Parkinson's and all the paraphernalia of old age, that I can't see them until early December, and then we're at the mercy of statistics and graphs, seems a little topsy-turvy. Necessary for their physical health whilst their mental health deteriorates. 

Will students have to clutch a certificate of competence in order to exit their university town? Who will monitor when/if they do? Will a failure to do so result in some sort of reprimand from their seat of learning or an additional credit if they wave the QR code in front of the relevant person? Too many questions, but if travel is needed for Christmas, Vision Express, SpecSavers - & other opticians available on a high street near you - will be deserted as thousands test their eyesight the #Dominic Cummings' way! 

Purification Car

Sandi Toksvig mentioned in a column that February come from the Latin, februum, meaning purification. She takes the opportunity in the second month of the year to add to her bucket list; whether writing things down or actually taking part in them. This year I shall be approaching the purification angle slightly differently and ridding myself of my wonderful family wagon.

Over the years a people carrier has been the only possible means of transporting a family of six and two hounds. Add to this, assorted mountains of sporting kit, friends, family and furniture and the local dealership for our particular brand has been only to happy to oblige in updating the model.  The current jalopy has travelled a mile or two, traversed Europe, knows exactly where any athletics stadium south of Hadrian's Wall lies, whether to turn left or right to reach the local town in record time and can pretty much drive itself to all football pitches and cricket grounds in the south-west. If your family is interested in sport, this could be the vehicle for you!

Our family is beginning to dwindle in number as the eldest children leave for pastures new and the need to drive a minibus at all times seems ridiculous. As a result, I have been test-driving assorted models of estate cars in recent weeks; all of which seem fabulously speedy, improbably smart and ... ridiculously expensive. One particular make provided quite the nicest car it has ever been my luck to drive; the price tag made me smile - the salesman thought I was impressed at his knockdown rate, but I was only trying not to laugh as I thought of all the one bed flats I could buy for the same price! Some can turn on a sixpence, others perform extraordinarily well in towns, (we live in the countryside), some fly - or near as dammit - but none can fit all six of us in and two hounds.

It is with some misgivings that our, (extremely reliable should you be interested!), people carrier will be left at a garage later this week in exchange for a 'fresh' estate which I shall have to re-programme for all sporting venues within a one hundred mile radius.

Our timing is exquisite - new puppy arrives one week after the car; fresh teeth and fresh boot to chew; and that's not a wellington boot either. Must be mad!

Collapsing Christmas Cake

This morning, as other family members hunkered over their Weetabix, I turned a large bowl of brandy soaked fruit into a Christmas cake and put it warily into the oven. The only other time I have tried this recipe, as dictated by the diva of domesticity herself, I found myself stuffing the sprawled contents of a supposedly cooked and cooled cake back into the tin and introducing the concept of a twice baked fruit-cake to the family. That year it resembled a ready-made alpine scene and Father Christmas slid rather gracefully into a ravine that no amount of icing would fill!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Birth Chutney

This is not its technical title; the one listed in The River Cottage Year is for 'Glutney', a word which instantly appeals and the recipe doesn't disappoint - bung in all the excess garden fruit and veg is the basic premise.

At eleven o'clock last night I ladled quantities of this year's brew into recycled and scrubbed jars ready to wait out the winter months in a store cupboard before consuming. The oversized marrows, endless small tomatoes, carpets of apples and the odd pumpkin have been beckoning for some time, but it was the birth of a nephew that prompted me to get out the chopping board and pan. A little over three years ago his older brother was born on the day that I happened to make a batch of chilli jam - the two were unwittingly linked - and a jar of the vintage chilli was recently discovered lurking with intent on the back of a shelf, (no comments about housekeeping, thanks!). When the newborn's eldest sibling, a sister, was born nearly six years ago her maternal grandparents and I descended within 24 hours bearing gifts of food of all temptation. A long way from home and on a fleeting visit, my first impulse had been to raid the deli counter of the local supermarket and, along with a bottle of the fizzy stuff, deliver it to the proud parents in celebration.

This is not a need I felt immediately after the birth of my own offspring - physical exhaustion is a pretty good preventive - and it has not been a pre-planned or even forethought option with assorted nieces and nephews over the years, rather a natural reaction and the connection only made this morning as I wrote labels over the breakfast cereal. Birth, a time to celebrate, to give thanks, and in this house it seems to be done with food!

Techno-fit

Is it only me, or has the art of exercising been transported too far into the twenty-first century?
The gym which I half-heartedly attend has recently availed itself of an entirely new set of equipment; most of which looks as though it is designed to test the very latest robots.

Being bewildered whilst engaging with pedals and levers is probably not a good idea so I accepted the offer of help from a 'trainer'. She was a) far younger than me, b) clearly far fitter but c) so caked in make-up that I wondered if it was possible for her to exhibit signs of perspiration! With all the enthusiasm of youth and that training courses had provided her with, she exhibited great patience when demonstrating the purpose, possibilities and potential benefits of each machine. Quite how I am going to remember not to stride too far on one in case it transfers into 'run' mode from 'step', I have no idea; probably only by falling off the darned thing as pedals lunge forwards.

The capabilities of each machine to improve my stamina, fitness, mobility, or whatever it is I think I'm going to the gym for, is nothing when compared to the entertainment that I can be treated to whilst I am there. Gone, dear reader, are the days of stuffing a walkman in a pocket and jogging slowly round the block.

Receipts and Route planners

In honour of a forthcoming family wedding a couple of weeks ago, I gave my car it's annual clearout. Armed with plastic bags for rubbish I began in the boot and worked my way forward. It soon became clear that I must have forgotten to conduct the 2012 visitation.

Squirrelled away in pockets, car doors and under seats I found: clumps of mud from football and cricket pitches alike, five plastic bottles, some with water, some without; a bag's worth of used tissues, biros in black, red, blue; pencils, some with lead in them; three books - one of them kept by me at the front of the car in case of getting stuck in a jam or waiting for a late coach back from a match, I hate having nothing to read - two rancid sticks of lipsalve; about £4.20 in loose change; sweet and chocolate wrappers; three socks - none matching - one t-shirt; a dozen or so used parking meter tickets; one £2 win scratchcard which I know for a fact has been there since we've had the car; a ski-lift pass, (haven't been for three years); plastic bags in case the dogs get taken unawares on walks; dog biscuits; a glasses-cord, (same ski trip); one pair of secateurs; one mascara, no longer useable; one hundred and one receipts and route planners that plotted my life over recent years.

The latter were the only things that caused me to stop for they told a tale. For some years I have driven the length and breadth of the country with our eldest for sports training and local, regional and national competitions. Each piece of paper (I refuse to get a tom-tom, I do not need someone to tell me that I've just missed a turn and I should take the next right when they don't even have eyes on the road), reminded me of competitions in obscure welsh towns, hard-to-find midlands industrial estates or better known northern cities; of hockey matches in fancifully named west country locations and of hours upon hours spent supporting and encouraging, cheering and cheering up, becoming an amateur expert on the niceties of the javelin throw, high-jump run-up or baton passing in the 4 x 100 metres (could tell the GB team a thing or two); of matches in horizontal rain that turned to sleet, or shouting anxiously as a hockey ball flew too close to the offspring's face. Years of 'phone calls home talking my other children through the niceties of preparing a meal, of knowing the best place to buy fuel when lost in the Brecon Beacons, of pulling into service stations for the obligatory energy giving chocolate and of wondering how much longer the car would hold up.

I stuffed my maps to stadiums and sports clubs into the bag with a sigh - but at least the car might last until the new year!