It would be just him and me this year.
It was not our turn to host festivities. No little faces around our dining table pulling crackers with dubious jokes. No grown up kids participating in the annual wine testing competition.
The competition where everyone brings a bottle, takes the label off and guesses what the wine is and who brought it. Endless inside jokes and old scores settled for who brought the worst wine.
There would be no games of charades, no signature plates brought by different members, rum balls, turkey stuffing and the piece de resistance, Aunt Matilda’s Christmas pudding. No Gluhwein from the Austrian side of the family because they would be all speaking German and skiing in the Tyrol.
So, I just didn’t have the heart to cook the big Christmas lunch. We had tried a restaurant once before when it was just him and me, but it felt a bit odd and we couldn’t wait to get home to have a little lie down…and then him-indoors saw an advertisement for a take-away lunch cooked by a chef at the Shangri-La.
We picked the lunch up at 11am after a stirring Christmas service at St James in the City, which is something, we had never had time for before. The contents of our lunch exceeded our expectations. Turkey, prawns, oysters, vegetables, 2 or 3 salads all served with their own individual sauces. For desert the chef had prepared individual Christmas puddings and mince pies.
It was excellent value and all we had to do was serve it up. No shopping or standing over a hot stove. I thought how fabulous it would be if one owned a holiday cottage as the staff load up your car in the hotel parking bay…and off you go speeding up the highway in your Porsche to the Hunter Valley. The servings are so generous we had heaps left over so we called up our neighbours on Boxing Day to share it with us. I hope they do it again next year as my days of standing over a hot stove are over. Apparently the neighbours are ordering their own Christmas Dinners this year.
