She had a Q. Look

Christmas Dinner 1

We had a festive dinner round at my flat on Sunday night. It was partially in honour of the two English fellows flatting at Ange's house. They both have no family here, so we figured they ought to have a proper christmas-ish dinner at some stage.

Early in the day there was scare-mongering by Ange, who thought her boys had all piked at the idea of a) cooking things and b) spending money on ingredients. But turns out she was worrying without cause, because they pulled through. Marty quite proudly brought forth the ingredients for a Greek salad (after instructions from Ange) and Dave produced a cheese-board (again, after instructions from Ange that 'no - a packet of peanuts is not enough to contribute to a pot-luck dinner'). Reidun made a miracle of a dinner in almost an hour and a half, including roast lamb and minted potatoes and christmas pudding with brandy-cream.

I stuffed some pepperdews with cream cheese and they were yummy.

In all-out fashion, Reidun instructed me to rearrange the lounge into a proper dining-room. So the table was brought into the centre of the room and sundry chairs were gathered from around the house. A kiwiana centre-piece of driftwood and succulants was assembled and we were so posh that we polished the wine glasses (which weren't even used, because it was beer-weather). I had to sit on the computer-desk chair with wheels on it.

Crackers were pulled. Ange lost all three of her goes. Hats were worn. Even Daragh got in the spirit. Dave had some meat with his gravy and some token greenary around the edge of his plate. Daragh went back for thirds. I spilt some of my beer. Mint sauce is yummy.

We had lashings of icecream and icing-sugared raspberries and strawberries with christmas pudding and flaked chocolate.

Then we played Scattergories. It was highly competitive. I do believe I won. I am still miffed that they didn't accept 'Gangrene' as 'something that grows' beginning with G. Marty is equally peeved that we didn't accept 'Pants!' as 'something you would shout' beginning with P. And Ange tried hard to persuade us that 'Dummy' was a 'term of endearment'.

I had a scary dream that night. I woke up and quite coherently and somewhat still half-asleepishly said to Marty, 'The lions jumped over the fence! Me and Ange had to hide!' I remember being very relieved to have woken up at that point. You can't hide from a lion. They can climb trees (we were in a forest). At another point in the dream our netball team was on a stunt-like amusement-ride, testing it out for Peter Jackson (Morgan is his personal friend and had volunteered us for the job....).

Funeral

We went to Fish's Dad's funeral today. I think one of the memorable things is that it started raining heavily, and quite suddenly, right at 11am. That is the time the funeral was set to begin. Me, Cass and Ant walked in and it was barely spitting, and by the time we had seated ourselves in the pews it was thundering down. Kind of appropriate.

Murray read out a lovely tribute from Fish and Carol. It was interesting. Hard to think how other people would sum up your life in a 15 minute speech.

As a complete aside, I thought Fish looked lovely in her green top and very slim.

I think funerals are a very necessary thing. I always find it hard to actually picture a body inside the coffin as it goes past.

I remember 12 years ago, at almost the exact same time of year, going to my mum's funeral. I tried not to cry, and made it outside afterwards before people hugging me made me crack. It makes for a quite sombre christmas, though in my experience with a lingering death you become almost ready to move onto the next phase of grieving, where you try to adjust to life without the person there. I still have dreams with my mum in them, and she's usually sick in the dreams and I have this half-aware feeling that she shouldn't be there or at least that she will be gone soon.

Reading

I have 9 books out of the library, as I previously posted. I have now finished The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I really liked it. It was easy and fast to read, and had that innocence of a book about a 9 year old boy, but was poignantly tied in to history. Kinda hard to explain without giving away some of its loveliness, but I recommend it. Only took a few hours to read.

Now I am 120 pages into Black Swan Green, which we started teaching to our 7th formers this year and which they actually quite openly liked. Very rare! I like it so far. Quirky and lyrical with good humour. The narrator has a stammer.