So This Is Boxing Day, And What Have You Done?...

Yeah, I know, I should be padding around the kitchen, with 19 drunk relatives sprawled across sofas, and patting my mince-pie-induced spare tyre, but...Christmas this year has been, well, kind of odd:

• The boyfriend is at his own place for the first christmas in several years, as he has his kids up here, so their first christmas with dad. Our kids do not get on, so we are not "conjoining" our christmasses
• I/we are not at my mum's - also for the first time in several years - as she has A BOYFRIEND now, gasp - and this is their first christmas "as a couple"
• Very stupidly I do not drive, so am stuck here
• The 13 year old wanted to spend christmas at home, and declared in advance he would only eat pizza on christmas day
• Raging pmt manifested itself on the 24th - always a great time to be afflicted
• I had sort of forgotten to buy any booze - in view of the above, a bottle or three of red would have been timely

During the week I had felt compelled, by pmt energy it transpired, to race around the house, changing beds, doing unfeasible amounts of laundry, taking unwanted magazines down to the doctors surgery, hell, even painting plant pots... and of course left wrapping up the kids' things til Friday night.

The 13 year old had just had another episode of staying up on Runescape for 36 hours, and so woke up and came out of his room at 5 minutes past midnight Christmas Eve. Great. The last minute.com wrapping had to be done stealthily and quietly under the duvet, but was eventually done. 2 stockings stuffed with chocolate and sweets (what was I thinking of???) were sneaked into their rooms, and I went to sleep....

Christmas morning was largely all fine and dandy, apart from the 11 year saying he felt sick first thing and would therefore not be wanting any of his chocolate, the presents went down well, a mad game of charades erupted somehow, phonecalls were made and received between us and other family members, the 13 year old accidentally hit the sous-chef in the eye with a metal bottle opener out of a cracker...

Then me and the 11 year old cracked on with cooking lunch, to a loose deadline of 1.30. The bottle-opener injury did not deter him from mixing up the stuffing, grating sprouts in butter, but hands were stabbed in the making of the apple sauce... As this was the first time I'd cooked at home at Christmas, it became evident that the oven was not going to accommodate a full-on roast AND a pizza... things came out of the oven, grew cold, went back in again... made a mental note to get a microwave.

By late afternoon I was blankly watching The Gruffalo and wishing I'd bought a magazine to retreat into. Ronnie Corbett was on, yet again, which was kind of nice, because who didn't love Saturday nights and The Two Ronnies. Although I'd intended to watch Dr Who, I felt a break for solitude and a therapeutic bout of dipping saucepans in boiling hot water was what I most needed. I came back in for the last 15 minutes of Amy Pond saving the world and got to grips with the backwards and forwardsness of the ghosts of christmas past, present and future without much difficulty.

And then it was time for the Christmas Strictly! The BBC did not pull the show, as Vince Cable had not lost his job this week, and his elegance on the dancefloor points to it being perhaps a good idea that he ditch politics and change career. There were quite a bit of Baker Backflips. There was a lot of John Barrowman's American Teeth. And he won. Which can only be a bad thing for his over-inflated ego.
Although the overriding impression of the whole show was Gavin, in a beard and white jumpsuit, looking like a lost member of the Bee Gees.