Tag Archives: Christmas

The Captains and the Kings depart

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I was going to title this post The tumult and the shouting dies but the post was’t quite right and when I wiped it out by accident (yet again!) I couldn’t be bothered to retrieve it.
That’s how it came to be rewritten with a grander title. It’s not quite as accurate, because we had plenty of tumult and shouting, but a distinct shortage of Captains and Kings. As the memory fades a little I’m feeling distinctly more upbeat about it. It wasn’t all singing and sandwiches (though I admit that they did form a large part of the proceedings), we also had dancing and two different slideshows from Julia.
It took her several weeks to perfect the slideshows – I will never get Chariots of Fire and The Magnificent Seven out of my head. At one time I was hearing them so often I was waking up humming them.
I missed some of the events because I was confined to the kitchen after forgetting to put the snacks in the oven. That’s also why there aren’t many photographs.
Fortunately I was on hand when Santa called and gave out the memory boxes Dave and Jayne had made. They’ve been beavering away in Dave’s shed making the boxes and putting individual names on them.
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There were a few tears towards the end. There was also a certain amount of unsuitable competitiveness from one of the teams in the Christmas Quiz. I’m not saying which one, but my constant viewing of quiz shows seems to have paid off…
At the time it was all a little sad, but as I write a couple of days later it seems a lot more upbeat. With parents and group members and various other people (in person or by email) we’ve had a lot of positive feedback. We couldn’t have done it without the group, so can’t take all the credit, but it does make you feel better.
I can’t think of a tidy way to end  the post, but in real life we did the washing up.

 

Get that party started

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First event of the day – phone call from Number 1 son enquiring about the chance of a lift on Friday. Seems he’s bought so many presents that he won’t be able to carry them all. It’s his first Christmas since he started working full time. You can’t fault his generosity, but as a parent, I’d rather he invested it in National Savings Products for his future. (Yes, there’s no pleasing me, is there?)

We posted the last of the Christmas cards this morning – I’ve decided I really should stay in touch with more of my family rather than just meeting them at funerals, a sentiment expressed in several of the cards I’ve had this year.

When we drew up at the farm we had a phone call to tell us the taxi would be late. It seems the driver had managed to reverse in Vicki’s drive, put his back wheels on the lawn, and then get stuck by dropping the clutch and spinning the wheels.

Dave was here when we arrived, unloading the Christmas presents he has been making in his shed. Santa has many helpers at this time of year.

I’ve just been reminded that it’s nearly 11.00 and people will be expecting to eat at 12.00 – so I’m off to do the sandwiches.

Time flies…

 

The Final Countdown

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Yes, it’s a song title today. I did think of a variation on the TV show Countdown but at 58 I’m not ready to admit that I’m part of the Countdown demographic. (See later comments on age).

I bought a new knife today. I’ve been meaning to get a proper boning knife for some time and the one I spotted in the cash and carry had all the attributes I wanted – a good handle and a cheap price ranking higher than the quality of the blade. I don’t tend to wear knives out – they simply disappear (thrown away by family members, I suspect, as I never lost a knife before I was married) or get left on top of a cooker ring. Yes, I’ve destroyed a couple of good knives like that. I suppose I could build a new handle from exotic hardwood as recommended in various specialist magazine, but I’m really not that good with my hands.

From the cash and carry (having bought drinks and snacks for the party tomorrow) I went to the supermarket to buy the rest of the stuff we needed.  It was stressful, as the nearest supermarket to the cash and carry isn’t one I normally go to and it was crammed with coffin dodgers all doing their best to either get in my way or ram me out of their way.

Now, I don’t mind the former (in moderation) as we all dawdle a bit, but the latter drives me mad. If I responded in kind, with a quick flick of the trolley and a spot of wheel to wheel charioteering I would (rightly) be castigated as a hooligan and a bully, but give me a cardigan and a blue rinse and I’m instantly allowed to carry on like Genghis Khan. I was actually rammed by a shopping scooter on Saturday when a woman of only middling years decided she wanted the space I was occupying.

Mentally I dragged her off the scooter and gave her a good kicking. But in real life I just moved, with a subdued “Tch!” to indicate disapproval.

 

I’m off to cut cabbage for the coleslaw now.

It’s nineteen hours until the party starts and twenty five hours until the project closes.

That must mean it’s also twenty five hours until my new life begins.

Seems a good time for a poem, and as Dylan Thomas conveniently died over 60 years ago I think I’m right in say he’s out of copyright so I can quote it in full.

Tomorrow, I will be blogging in a more kindly and cheerful manner.

🙂

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Yes, we’ve cleared the board of the autumn display and put up some more Christmas decorations. We’ve signed a few Christmas cards the group are sending to other groups they belong to, hat making is under way and we all sniffed the Christmas cake this afternoon – it’s smelling good.

We put the Christmas tree up again. It looks like they had a private party at the weekend and knocked it over. No harm done but annoying all the same, particularly as they left a messy table and a strange smell in the air.

You may note that the tree is decorated with the remains of the saltdough animals we have been using for school visits – waste not, want not.

Apart from that I attended to the bird feeders, as noted in the previous post, wrote a post on kalettes for the other blog, put a goat back in the barn and lurked outside getting cold as I waited to photograph more birds. I came close to photographing a male bullfinch, but it was too quick for me. Apart from that there was little excitement until the table collapsed, flinging tea and telephones to the floor.

Hat making the Quercus way
Paper flowers
Our tree, with saltdough decorations

As we tried to clear the mess from the floor we were accompanied by wailing about phones. My reply (“That’s why we tell you not to bring phones and electrical equipment to the farm.”) didn’t go down too well. On the other hand, when you’re up to your ankles in tea and glitter you don’t want to know about phones, or hear the eternal “It wasn’t my fault.”.

Initially we were left with a mass of glitter in the joints between the floorboards but we managed to clear it out eventually. Well, Julia did. I lost interest and carried on writing about kalettes.

Great things kalettes, a proper old-fashioned cross between Brussels sprouts and kale (that is important as these days people tend to think any cross is a Frankenstein genetic modification job). It doesn’t need peeling,cooks quickly, tastes mild, is crammed full of goodness and looks decorative on the plate.

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Kalettes – new superfood or Emperor’s new greens?

 

Seven days to go

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Yesterday we mixed the Christmas Cakes (using a Mary Berry recipe) and tied up some loose ends. As the day closed it started to sink in that we only have seven more days with the group. It’s starting to sink in for them too, as the rehearsals aren’t going too well and they are starting to worry about it. I’m not sure why – we’ve never bothered with high standards before and people still clap and enjoy it. It’s about the effort, not the quality.

The dancing is making progress but the Technicolour Dreamcoat number isn’t going too well and we haven’t even started on I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. Fortunately this is our Christmas party rather than Britain’s Got Talent so there’s nothing but enjoyment at stake. Having said that, if we did enter BGT I don’t think we’d actually come last; bad as we are (and I personally can’t carry a tune in a bucket) I have seen worse.

Kirsty, rehearsing hard
Lyrics

We’ve had a rest from pom-poms as they all made their wreaths last week and took them home (before I was able to photograph them). I just need to make a few more then I may make a wreath, or I may allow the ladies to use them when we visit the Care Home for a wreath making session (though we keep saying we will call them garlands – same thing but without the funereal connotations).

Then again, I may just concentrate on cookery for the party – I want to make sure we go out with a good spread. We have a plan for a gingerbread wreath so I may make that instead.

The group did the poultry work as usual and replaced a faulty drinker, had a couple of walks through the trees, found a dead sheep, made a few individual craft projects, put up some Christmas decorations and did the composting, so it was a reasonably full day.

Christmas decorations by Quercus
Ecocentre decorated for Christmas

As part of the process of closing down we have given everyone their folders to take home. Some of them are inches thick with things they have done while they have been here, others (depending on how long they have been here, and how industrious they have been) are not quite so thick. Even so, there are a lot of memories in those folders and I’m beginning to feel a little maudlin at the thought of breaking up the group.

Feels like time for a bit of Housman. Nobody does maudlin quite like Housman.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

 

 

Just 360 sleeps until Christmas

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Ah well, back to work. Christmas has come and gone, I have caught up with my sleep, experimented with sloth and gluttony, moaned about the poor quality of TV and finally managed to get my new lap top working.  I’ve spent a year working on a netbook at home and a museum piece at work so it’s a pleasant change to work on something that doesn’t have to keep stopping to catch its breath.

The downside is that I will now be expected to produce a lot more work.

These are some photographs from a Christmas novelty we bought – it’s a special putty that allows you to make a snowman body, add plastic accessories and then watch it “melt” before doing it all again. It isn’t quite the right time for it but if I don’t use the photos now it will be another 50 weeks before I can use them.

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Snowman

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Melted snowman

At the moment I am taking a break from Qercus plans for 2016 – that will start in a couple of days – but I am just deciding which personal resolutions I’m going to have a go at breaking for New Year. So far, having just made a sandwich from the remains of the Boxing Day ham, the one about weight loss isn’t going too well…

Party time!

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I’ve become a bit casual over the years. At one time I used to worry about what I was going to serve at the party, plans weeks in advance and find that the whole thing grew and grew. Last year we actually had two parties, one for the group and one for a variety of volunteers. Two meals, two days, twenty people a day…

This year we opted for one party and a much shorter guest list. It wasn’t that we weren’t grateful to the people who help – just that we are finding ourselves very short of time.

Instead of spending hours on planning and preparation I rolled up outside out local Sainbury’s at 7.55 am (five minutes before it opened) and was out again 40 minutes later with  the party food in two bags.

As an aside here, am I the only one who finds shop “opening” hours a little annoying? If they advertise that they are open at 8am shouldn’t you be able to get to all the shelves instead of dodging round various staff and trollies involved in re-stocking? Just a small gripe, but a major annoyance when you’re trying for a quick charge round the shop. I have some sympathy with the shops that open on Monday morning and close at midnight on Saturday – they don’t have much choice. But if you open from 8 until 8 you have 12 hours to restock, so why are your staff in my way?

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It took just over two hours to make salads and sandwiches and nobody complained that most of the food was bought in. It’s obviously the way to go as I felt much more relaxed them normal and had plenty of energy for the game of Indoor Beach Volleyball. We had a giant balloon for a ball, a table for a net and various “local rules” regarding tables of food, slipping on coleslaw and taking telephone orders for turkeys in the middle of a set.

Safeguarding officers, Health and Safety Officials and the governing body of Official Beach Volleyball would all have had a fit if they could have seen us.

I ended up with two yellow cards and a sprained finger, though I still say that asking the referee “What kind of idiot are you, sir?” is merely soliciting an opinion from the match official, not offering abuse.

We also did the more traditional stuff too – carols, karaoke, bad jokes, pass the parcel and board games.

Tomorrow I’ve been invited to a fuddle. That’s a meal where you all take something to eat, like a potluck supper. It’s not a word I’m familiar with and in my family it’s a Jacob’s Join. We talk about the British and the Americans being separated by a common language, but sometimes the English are just as bad.

On Friday it’s Men in Sheds.

Saturday I’ve been landed with command of the kitchen.

Monday we have Party Part II for the people who don’t come on Wednesdays.

Then, with my stomach crying out for plan food and Christmas only days away, I will start to plan the Christmas Dinner.

 

 

 

Gathering speed for Christmas

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Further to what I said about nasty competitive streaks in people, I’ve just been turned over five times on the trot playing dominoes. It didn’t matter whether we used the picture side or the number side (these aren’t exactly adult dominoes) I just kept losing. Even when I played a perfect game I still had two tiles in my hand when the winner placed their winner. Simple maths suggests that I had just been beaten by someone who started off with one domino less than I did. I’d still have been beaten, but it wouldn’t have felt so bad…

It’s been a day of games interspersed with a few jobs, generally being a bit nippy to do too much outside. Next week it’s the Christmas party the it’s the big day.

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I’ve also managed to do the minutes from yesterday’s Management Committee meeting too, so it’s been a good day. It would, of course, have been an even better day if I’d managed to work out a way of never going to another meeting again. 😉

142 days until Christmas

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Have we really had 223 days of 2015 already?

Time really does fly as you get older, though whether that’s anything to do with the theories in the article, or just because you spend longer asleep in front of the TV is a moot point. In my case anyway, you may be a lot more active than I am.

I had an email this morning telling me that we have to have news of Christmas out by 3rd September. Not sure why this should be, as most people already know it will be at the end of the year even if they are hazy on the exact date.

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It’s going to be an interesting end to the year. We start apple-pressing in early September with Doga on 19th September, World Porridge Day on 10th October, Apple Day on 24th, Turkey Tasting on 28th November and our Christmas Event (with wreath-making and Dickensian cliches) on 5th December. Add seven shoot days and a couple of events waiting for confirmation and it’s quite busy.

Then there’s Project Molish. It’s something to do with children and tools, so there’s not much to go wrong there is there?

Doga? Yes Doga. You bring your dog, do some yoga, have breakfast and then take the dogs for a walk. We’re at the forefront of novelty Yoga here, or the cutting edge of chaos if you consider the likely result of introducing a random collection of dogs to each other while the owners go “om”.

Apart from that we’ve held a discussion on the existence of Santa and whether Rudolph is a proper member of the reindeer team or a later addition, so it looks like I’m not the only one who is thinking ahead to Christmas.

We’ve also done a butterfly count that saw us able to record two Commas for the first time. We’ve had record numbers of Peacocks this year, far outnumbering the Small Tortoiseshells that were last year’s commonest sighting.

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Comma

Overall we’re up on last year in terms of variety, though it’s the moths that have made numbers up. It’s time to start planning new plants for next year’s Butterfly Garden and I’ve been pricing up alder buckthorn. It’s a good plant for Brimstones – a butterfly which we had last year but haven’t seen this year.

I’ve just spent twenty minutes outside looking at the Butterfly Garden. For most of the time the loudest noise I could hear was the buzzing of bumble bees. That’s unusual on a crowded island. It’s also a good argument for planting to attract pollinators. I even managed to spot a Mint Moth. They haven’t been as common this year as they were last, probably due to weather conditions, and it was good to see one, though slightly annoying I wasn’t doing a count at the time. They are very small and difficult to photograph – you could fit two or three on my thumb nail.

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Mint MOth

Strange really, I start by asking if it’s too soon to plan for4 Christmas and end up with plans for next summer already.

No wonder time goes quickly!