I Saw Three (Alien Space) Ships...

I’ll lose my three occasional visitors, me included, if I don’t update this today.

Christmas passed in a fairly incident-free way. We kept it Nuclear again, kept the usual rhythm of stockings before dawn, church, lunch afterwards (ham sandwiches pending turkey at around fiveish), and then got into some serious paper-ripping.

We dispensed with the traditional walk (truly traditional, much feared by the kids, but what I see as the Rasselass Requirement) – a few colds and proto-colds around enhanced the allure of the fire in the sitting room.

The afternoon passed, marked by the first few rounds of Simpsons Monopoly. P lost her crown as our very own von Hoogestraten. I took her advice, transferring out of free cashflow and into property, often at considerable risk, but I hit pay dirt – hotels on the browns did it.

First sherry at 5.14pm, GMT, and then into the final straight of feast preparations, featuring ham and grand marnier stuffing (inventor: E Curley), bread sauce, roasties, thothageth, bacon, cranberry sauce, brussells (or petits cabbages as they call them in East Dulwich), carrots, swede and famous extra thick gravy, much loved by I and J (inventors: L Thompson / A Hands).

After that depth charge, a bottle of fizzy and a bottle of Viognier, we retreated to the sitting room to watch Dr Who save the world from the Christmas Invasion. The new Dr took to his new skin in much the same manner as Jon Pertwee, much beloved of my seventies youth – he didn’t talk a great deal for the first bit, playing the ill card, I suspect partly out of concern that the Eccleston Lobby would rebel. He was also on ITV recently, playing a very convincing psychopath, so I suspect that he felt he had something of mountain to climb to enter the realm of our affections. I think he made a promising start and the Earth was duly saved from the monsters who had arrived mid-afternoon in mile-wide space ships that looked much like burnt Yorkshire puddings.

Whilst on the subject of uddings, the Christmas variety (creator: P) arrived during or just after Dr Who (the mind plays tricks after a few Viogniers) and was sheer pleshurrr, despite her concerns about the temperature.

After all that, the day became a bit ragged, not in a bad-tempered way, but in the way that a sustained episode of grotesque indulgence tends to quell the spirit somewhat, like one too many logs on a young fire. I can’t honestly recall what happened after that (partly due to one of my ever-popular sofasnoozes), other than to say that we came from the day with the sense, expressed first by P, that perhaps next year we might think about reinventing how we spend the day, perhaps to get a little closer to the broader peace and goodwill aspects of it. There was plenty of goodwill indoors (if not masses of peace), but maybe there’s a bit more to Christmas, whatever your position, than a quiet day in the suburbs, so we’ll see.

Anyway, to cool off after cooking over the coals I took a few minutes on the back steps before dinner. The air was cold and smelt clean and the clean branches of the trees etched against the blue-black sky looked like a million bare arms reaching upwards. Did more for me today than the 9.30, if I'm honest.