DELAYED

I have to confess that my Christmas tree hasn’t actually found its own way back into its very dilapidated box quite yet, presumably because it is hoping to meet up with the budding branches dripping with multi-coloured Easter eggs on its way out. Also it only seems like yesterday that I was unwrapping coloured balls and partridges without pear trees and turtle doves a-perching and glass baubles from the Highgrove shop, (well we do a naice class of Christmas kitsch when we put our minds to it. How many people do you know with HRH's baubles on their plastic, sorry, ecological Christmas tree? In Rome?)  Hooray for small things and may they never grow up and be too old to appreciate a chocolate sovereign or a soon-to-be earless bunny hanging from a droopy branch.

So I thought I might add a belated description of our late lamented festive dayandahalf.

It began with a string of Whatsups on a group chat between myself and the daughters, following my 'umble request to know how many people wished to sleep chez nous over Christmas?

Daughter No 1 (sent from a swimming pool in Morocco) : "all 3 of my kids if poss. "
Daughter No 2 (from her office, working her butt off) : "um - thought maybe just my 2 little ones, so that I could hit the shops together with my sister...."

Right. So they had that sorted nicely, didn’t they?
I wait 20 mins till they get desperate for an answer and tentatively start wondering between them whether the parents couldn't possibly go out and buy a bigger house with a couple more bedrooms? Then I put them out of their agony.
No probs, guys. Mattresses spread over the floors and warning notices will be posted to Father Christmas when he comes down the newly swept chimney because otherwise he might trip over all the bodies.

And then some eejit with a drone intervened and suddenly it was looking like half the family wasn't going nowhere. Daughter No 1, back in London from Morocco with a fading suntan, began researching trains to Brussels (huh?) having discovered that anything from the U.K. to anywhere in Italy had been booked out solid for the past 24 hours and that a train would cost her £800 for each member of the family. Finally, in the manner of all the best stories, just when we had all given up hope and she was resigned to rushing out to buy her own turkey and trimmings, a last minute message arrived.  She had found flights for "the equivalent of a small mortgage"  to Pisa whence they would drive to Rome.  Arriving on Christmas Eve. At that point, all we needed was the wrong sort of snow on the runway.

So I collected the turkey and forced it into the oven and slung a freezer full of variegated sausages over to Daughter No2  who was taking care of the trimmings.

Each sausage was decoratively adorned with a colourful flag denoting its suitability or not  for those with specific beliefs, religious or humanitarian, all dietary requirements being faithfully respected in this household. As usual all adult females were squashed into the not enormous kitchen when not frantically wrapping stuff behind closed doors whilst the men were slurping away when not wondering when the mince pies and espresso would finally emerge, (very bi-cultural, my lot). And throughout all this the kiddies were, according to age, prodding packages or their screens and generally bonding over the fact that Christmas was SUPPOSED to be celebrated in pyjamas without neat pony tails or anything on your feet.

So we dutifully cooked and ate and drank and made merry and went to church until they all flew off on holiday somewhere for a couple of days.

Question: Why do all my friends keep moaning about how much weight they put on over the Christmas period?  I lost two and a half kilos and haven’t been able to stomach anything fizzy for a month.

Now that IS tragic.