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!