How not to tackle a Christmas dinner

This week my London housemates and I celebrated Christmas together. There’s 4 of us in total (may as well introduce my cast up front!): Me, Tim, Taz and Sally. (These are pseudonyms so even if you’ve met us in real life you’ll need to go with the flow here).

If I’m honest it got off to a slow start. Firstly I couldn’t get away from the office and then I took a detour via 2 Tesco stores to find one that wasn’t sold out of mulled wine. When I did get home at 7:30 I found that the housemates had also take the same precaution on hearing that I was struggling to source this essential item and we therefore had 3 bottles between 4 of us (and 2 more bottles of mull-less red as backup). The worrying thing is that we drank most of it!

Tim had been in charge of the shopping. He was in trouble by the time I got in because the other 2 housemates had had a chance to review his purchases. I thought he’d done a marvellous job but Taz (who has an onion allergy) wasn’t so pleased as Tim had brought home pickled onions, sage and onion stuffing and an onion marinaded turkey. After all this storming, it transpired that Taz loves stuffing and so was prepared to eat it anyway. He anticipated that his stomach would be pretty upset the next day so he’d be having a pretty uncomfortable journey home for Christmas on the train the following day (as is everyone sat near the toilet compartment) but it would be well worth it. It took 2 hours for the food to cook but at least 3 of us were more than entertained with our pickled onions and Christmas tunes. When it was it was time to dish up we had an absolute mountain of food. I was quite impressed by this but even more so to learn that one of us (Taz) can carve!

It  looked even bigger in real life...

That was 3 days ago now and I haven’t yet recovered. I haven’t eaten a proper meal in 3 days! I’m not sure what’s wrong with me! I love food! I’m never not hungry. I usually eat on principle, just to exercise my right to do so three times a day. I went into work the following day feeling rough, and thought it might be a hangover. But no hangover lasts this long, not at my age, and not after a Thursday night. I’ll admit we did get a little tipsy, but we overcooked most of the wine to the point where it had no alcohol left in it. Even at the end of the night no one was drunk (although I did get to the point where some words got a bit muddled and I asked repeatedly if there would be icing on our mulled wine. I meant Yule log and was infuriated that no one could answer me!) My next theory was that I had food poisoning. This was backed up by a message from Tim in the morning telling us that he’d had to make an emergency stop off the train to go be ill. For a while I gleefully thought I’d found my solution (at least I wasn’t hungover, that would be unprofessional) and then I realised that I didn’t feel ill, just totally unable to eat. At some point that afternoon I felt a bit peckish so I got a bunch of grapes, had one, and then found this lone grape had done the job. Maybe its old age – maybe this is how all old people feel after eating a meal the size of a small chest of drawers!! But surely if that were the case one of them would have mentioned it.

Last night at about 9:30pm I thought I might be hungry again and so made a little light supper. As I did so I drank a glass of water. I shouldn’t have. It filled me right up. THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

The thing is, if I'm feeling funny, I can't wait to hear how Taz's train journey went!!

Merry Christmas!

A glimpse inside St Helier Hospital this Christmastime

This weekend I went to see mum in hospital. She tells me that no one in her ward is really ill (something to do with their campaign to all get sent home in time for Christmas). As if to prove it, on the eve of my visit all the patients decided to have a pyjama party in which they wore their PJs, sat in their beds and collectively watched strictly come dancing while shouting at the screen. The beautiful (heart wrenching) irony is that they spend all day in pyjamas confined to beds anyway.

I was relieved to see that she looked relatively chirpy when I arrived and as we got chatting she told me that her biggest problem was the extremely uncomfortable stent* in her hand that was administering intravenous antibiotics (not ill are we? It’s not many people ill enough to receive intravenous antibiotics that consider a stent to be the most of their problems, bless her).

As if in perfect demonstration that she’d regained her usual character (even if not health) we did manage to talk non stop for several hours, only interrupted once by a lovely lady in the bed opposite who was exceptionally pleased to tell us that she’d just discovered that the sterilising wipes could be used as make up remover. I’m not 100% sure that disinfectant is something that should be put in one’s eye, but in the absence of certainty I didn’t want to bring her cheerful demeanour down by saying so. This lady has been in hospital for over a month and her muscles have wasted away. I assumed she was planning to go home for Christmas too but didn’t like to ask.

What really struck me was that at such a difficult juncture in their year, all the patients were so cheerful (staff too!) It made me think about all I had to be grateful for. It also made me want to come back on Christmas day to personally make sure that everyone had a friendly visitor! Before I left mum confided that she was planning to go home in 2 days time, but “the consultants don’t know yet”. However, I’m very happy to say that much to our surprise it didn't take that long and she was released the very next day.

That said, if anyone did ask me to go and do some St Helier Hospital cheer spreading on Christmas day, I wouldn’t need asking twice!

* For anyone happy enough to have no use for such vocabularly thus far, a stent is a little tube which in this case was sticking out of the back of mum's hand. It allows the doctors to attach a drip to it on a daily basis and saves them the trouble of having to pierce the poor patients anew every time they wish to do so.

Sinterklaas is coming to town

First of all, let me set the scene. A couple of weekends ago I was in Monaco for a sailing competition (which I’ll admit is not as glamorous as it sounds) and we were all gathered for a black tie dinner on the Saturday night (also not as glamorous as it sounds, I’ll justify this in a future blog post one day). There were eight international teams there (each made up of 8 people: 4 males, 4 females) and it was early December, which as I was soon to learn, is coincidentally when the Dutch celebrate Christmas.

I was alerted to the fact that it was time for the secret Santa, just after dinner, when a handful of gingerbread flew through the air and hit me in the eye. It had been thrown by a very tall elf. I was surprised then to catch sight of ‘Sinterklaas’ and realised he was to be joining us. Visually he looked like a cross between Santa and a cardinal, with a little more emphasis on the latter. He was also very tall, spoke with a Dutch accent and when his hat fell off, which it did regularly (due to the quantity of wine consumed), you could see blond hair underneath.

The Dutch team tried to explain to us who this fellow was. Apparently in Holland they have this chap who visits all the good boys and girls on the first weekend of December. In the past it was said that he removed naughty children in his sack, but now he’s more inclined to use the sack to bring presents to well behave ones. He is an arch rival of Santa Claus and they have a fight the following day after which Sinterklaas goes back to his house in Spain…or something like that*. No one was very sober at the time and so I thought the explanation might make more sense the following day. It didn’t.

Apparently in Holland they don’t really go in for present giving, they focus more on the writing and giving of poems and so this is what we all had to do. A secret Santa of poem giving. Some of the poems were great, some were terrible and some teams technically had the distinct advantage that they had a member locked in jail for part of the day who were therefore able to apply themselves fully to the task of poetry writing. Nevertheless, the most awful poet was Eddie who introduced his masterpiece with the melodramatic explanation that he’d written it during his “incarceration” and then he proceeded to read out the shortest and least sensical poem of the lot while the opportunistically formed Free Eddie Party heckled throughout with drunken shouts of “Free Eddie!” (It was apparently much more satisfying shouting this now there was the man himself to shout it at). Once the poem was finished, it was loudly remarked that, after a day behind bars, he should have come up with something better.

Over on the UK team, we had drawn Rome in the secret Santa and had also struggled to write our poem. When it was our turn to send a representative to go and sit on Sinterklaas’ knee (good old Benjie) we explained that it would be an ‘interactive poem’ and was to require audience participation. It was also the type of poem that had a repetitive theme. I was impressed at the way Benjie sold it. The Rome team would be required to come to the front and the name of the poem was ‘I have never’…you may be familiar with it. It went down a storm.





* For anyone interested in finding out about Sinterklaas through a less confused lens. Here's a link to a well explained page. It does not however explain the fight between him and Santa Claus. I have yet to get to the bottom of that!

Also if you're interested in seeing the full story of that Monaco trip, it's accumulating here #ClareInMonaco

This is how Russians celebrate Christmas in Monaco. Apparently

First off I'd better explain the reason for the sudden drop in the quality of picture - my phone smashed today when I dropped it on the ground and the protective cover flew off. I feel a bit nervous about using it in case I get shards of glass in my fingers (it's not a clean break at all) but did risk it in order to photograph this doodle. As you can see, even the camera is not happy!

This is to be my first Chirstmassy post, inspired a couple of weekends ago when I was in Monaco with a team of 7 other Brits for a sailing competition (it isn't half as glamorous as it sounds but you’ll have to take my word for it). One of the highlights of the event was being able to explore the city in the evening. In particular, at the centre of town there is currently a fantastic Russian Christmas market, which we liked.

So many Russian dolls

All in all I'd say that Russian markets don’t feel that different to German ones only there are Russian dolls everywhere and very few tourists. It’s hard to be sure if the dolls are there due to the Russian influence or because that is what the Monegasques think defines Russia. What is for sure though is that the wicked tartiflette (basically potato, bacon and cheese cooked together and then grilled with yet more slabs of thick cheese melted generously on top) which we all had for dinner was almost certainly very French, although I expect it will soon be adapted as the national dish of Scotland. At least the for the cosmopolitan folk. It was gorgeous in a slightly guilt ridden way.

The star of the fair was the ice go carting. After walking the same streets as the F1 drivers during the day we were keen to get behind the wheel ourselves. It was an experience that did not disappoint. Just like when you drive on icy roads, the go karts have no grip on the track. The really fun thing about it is the way in which you spin out at corners. If you’re particularly unlucky you’ll find you’re than in everyone else’s way, maybe facing the direction of ongoing traffic (which is slightly more alarming because then you can see how much of a nuisance you’re being!). There is nothing to be done at a time like this but laugh. I think my helmet may have muffled me as I spent about 50% of my time laughing. I eventually worked out that the trick to a faster lap time is to drive slower and spin off at fewer corners. This is a bit of a boring lesson, so once it was established I returned to practice my my 'tail spin'. I’m happy to say I never did learn to get this under control and so it remained fun.

Ice Go Karting

After a few mulled wines on the trackside (because that’s probably a classic Russian tradition) we were ready to find a party and so followed some music we could hear playing to a marquee (I was by now clutching a chocolate coated banana, (another great Russian Christmas classic, probably) not because I was hungry but because I wanted to find out what it tasted like. It was delicious but I found it very difficult to eat because my teammates were so amused by its phallic appearance that I was only prepared to put it in my mouth when no one was looking, which wasn't very often since there were 8 of us in the team.) Anyway, as I was tantalised by this wretched banana that I couldn't eat, the rest of the team were intent on experiencing the Monacan night life. As mentioned, we had followed the sound of music to a big marquee. We trouped inside (me still clutching my banana) and were somewhat aghast to find a bingo hall with 4 middle aged people line dancing on stage wearing cowboy hats. It’s a very foolish looking person that can’t find a party in Monaco! With this top of mind we very quickly set out to leave the Russian market and all those Russian bingo-playing line dancers, to find a proper night club in the good old town (with very little banana left - what a good distraction!). 

A party such as that which followed deserves a blog post in it's own right. In fact, the whole trip probably deserves a series of posts in it's own right. I will therefore endeavour to bring you the stories of this trip to Monaco in it's entirety before the new year (potentially even upgrading the picture quality at some point) using #ClareInMonaco to tie it all together. 

Aqua aerobics at Virgin Active

I was supposed to be having a day of Christmas card writing and sleep when I got a message asking if I might like to come to a fitness centre instead (of course I would). My friend (Jess) had got 2 induction sessions at Virgin Active which meant that we could use all the facilities for free as long as we pretended to be interested in becoming members (although if I’m honest, when we learnt that there’s a 90s disco dance class in which they turn the lights out and give everyone glow sticks, we very nearly were interested).

It felt a bit voyeuristic being shown around the gym while feigning enthusiasm. My favourite part was spotting a woman on a leg exercising machine while totally engrossed in a novel from the waist up. What we really wanted was for the tour to be over so we could go swimming.

Eventually it was and, once changed, we shuffled out of the changing rooms in our brightly coloured bikinis (feeling a little self-conscious because all the serious gym-goers were in black one-piece costumes manufactured by speedo). More awkwardly still, we found we’d shuffled into the wrong room and were standing in a busy stairwell. The place was like a maze! You don’t really want to be lost in your swimwear though, it’s quite a compromising time to walk into inappropriate rooms. Someone pointed us in the right direction which was relatively helpful and (after another unintentional foray into a deserted corridor) I followed Jess into the pool room. She was looking over her shoulder, talking to me and reversed straight into a very toned, good looking Asian guy wearing nothing but a small towel around his waist. He seemed alarmed but I thought it might make my day.

After doing the obligatory few introductory lengths in the pool we spotted an aqua aerobics class a few swim lanes over and decided to join in. A lot of the ladies were taking it very seriously but we were not (perhaps me least of all because I had left my glasses in the changing rooms, couldn’t see a thing and was making up a good 60% of the manoeuvres). Our instructor didn’t seem to mind though – I suppose as long as she sees a lot of happy ladies exercising enthusiastically then the class is a success. A new level of glee was reached when ‘good Christian men rejoice’ came on and it was announced that we were to do some sort of barn dance/ceilidh. I can’t get enough of those on land let alone in the water! As it turns out, this is not an easy thing to do in a swimming pool as you move at half the speed owing to the water resistance, which in turn means it takes twice as long to correct your mistakes (which should be numerous, or you’re not having enough fun). There was a lot of splashing and a lot of giggling (from one particular dance pair, who couldn’t believe their luck at ending up in a swimming pool barn dance). Whenever the dance allowed us to get close enough, we'd continue our conversation. The conclusion of which was that when you reach an age whereby you can no longer muster an enthusiasm for clubbing, you go to aqua aerobics classes instead. This fulfils a basic human need to laugh and dance at the same time.

You might think it would have been funny to be a fly on the wall during this scene, but there’s a group of middle aged men on exercise bikes who went one better than that. One wall of their gym is made of glass and overlooks the swimming pool. I do find that slightly weird, but it’s hardly worth worrying about.

After this strenuous class we went to the sauna. I didn’t think I liked saunas (the air is so hot it’s almost dense and so they make me feel claustrophobic) but once inside I changed my mind. I actually found the sauna quite a funny place. It reminded me of the London underground. Everyone sits in extremely close proximity but we all do so in silence, as if no one else was there. Only in the sauna they’re all wearing speedos (going one up on the underground) and of course no one comments on the weirdness of the scenario. The steam room was a bit better in this sense and seemed to feature wearers of longer shorts. But the bubble pool was best of all.

Christmas at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

There are few things that please quite so many senses at once as a warm cup of, deep red, spicy smelling, Christmassy tasting mulled wine. It's a shame the thing doesn't make any noise - then it'd have all 5 senses covered!

Portsmouth historic dockyard was so full of Christmas this weekend that whatever your trigger, you couldn't help get into the Christmas spirit. Rosie, Cara and I went round the Christmas market buying ill advised Christmas presents (Cheese - What a terrible idea! Now I'm going to have to keep it in the fridge (which I share with 3 others) until late December. Probably gift wrapped); we were buffeted by flurries of fluffy white snow (which ranged from a light dusting to an intense blizzard depending on how near to the snow machine you were); we also listened to some sea shanties; saw all sorts of characters attending the fair in Victorian dress, including street urchins singing songs from Oliver and a couple of French sea admirals swanning about (it was as if there were a finite number of costumes in the box and all had been used on this occasion including the 'Scottish orchestra' outfits). Come darkness we got lost in a maze of aromatic Christmas trees beautifully adorned with fairy lights which led us to the ships.
It would have been foolish at this point not to take the opportunity to walk around the Mary Rose (which I was disappointed to find isn't actually fit to be trodden on as it sunk in rather a spectacular fashion a long time ago in not the kind of way that can be restored). However by the time I left I was quite convinced that the recovery of said ship may have been the most significant archaeological  find since the pyramids (although it's questionable whether these were ever lost in the first place). In particular I was fascinated to learn about the process by which we can work out who someone was based on examining their skeleton - apparently we can recreate a facial likeness good enough for friends and family to recognise in 60% of cases (which puts Bones into perspective for any fans of the TV series). I was considering the way in which the likeness of one reconstructed man was felt to be particularly good because he had an outstandingly distinctive nose, which is silly because skeletons don't have noses, when all the screens in the museum shut down in a not-so-subtle hint that it was time to leave. What a shame, now I'll never know where reconstructed noses come from.

This disappointment did not last long as we were distracted by the prospect of a ride on the merry-go-round. apparently Rosie had never been on one before. It was all a merry-go-round should be, only maybe brighter, faster and generally better (or possibly I just went to lower budget fairs as a child).

As I left it was getting dark. So for the first time I noticed that someone (horrendously brave and good at climbing inadvisable objects) had arranged fairly lights in the shape of a Christmas tree in the rigging of the Victory. It looked beautiful in the dark night. Portsmouth 1, Oxford Street 0.

All in all, I've decided that Christmas should start as soon as possible because it's the best part of winter. Nowadays I've come to realise that the run up is more fun than the day itself and so should be embraced as such. Also, no one serves you mulled wine in January, even though it's cold, so you have to make the most of it when  you can get it. Let's all throw ourselves into the Christmas spirit now!

What marks the start of Christmas for you?

It was all a merry-go-round should be, only maybe brighter

Someone had put Christmas lights in the rigging of the Victory

Specsavers are trialling a new way of boosting customer confidence

If the first trip to Specsavers was odd, the second one was at least as surprising. When I went to pick up my glasses little did I know that the sight of me in my new frames would be the least of my worries.

The guy that was fitting them for me was clearly not an optician himself, maybe an aspiring one. He was chatty though, what was my name, how old was I, what were my hobbies…(Crikey, he’s been well trained in making small talk. I tried to help him out by returning his questions)…where do I work, am I single? (Shit,) If I’m honest (which I am), then I am single. “Oh,” he said, “I’m surprised”. How on earth am I supposed to respond to that?! Here are a few options:

          ‘Oh yes, I’m surprised too’

          ‘If you knew me you wouldn’t be surprised’

          ‘No really, I prefer it that way, it’s more convenient’

I hate to say it but I went for the latter. I just didn’t have time to think of anything better! If anyone does know what the correct answer to this question is I’d love to know! I left pretty rapidly after this, which was unfortunate as I was there for a reason (to get my glasses adjusted to fit my face) and forgot about it in my haste to leave. Within 24 hours I was forced to admit that this was an important part of the process and now I have to book a repeat appointment for the following weekend. This is super awkward.