Forget the cut potaotes

So it’s nearly Christmas!  Once upon a time (er der years ago) I used to make my own mincemeat. Then I slacked off and merely made my own mince-pies.  A couple of years ago I thought words to the effect of “blow this for a game of soldiers,” and put some business Tesco’s way.  The Other Half reckoned the great day dawned when I realised you could buy ready-made Yorkshire Puds.  I’d been got at, you see, by all those books and TV programmes detailing 101 things to do with Brussels sprouts, to say nothing of the wilder shores of Buggering About such as making your own Christmas wrapping paper out of ordinary brown paper (like, do you know how expensive brown paper is??? And Christmas paper in the Pound Shop is 99p for 10 meters?) and then, taking a potato, carve reindeer and Santa prints onto the cut side of the aforesaid potato and print pictures onto the brown paper.

Someone, somewhere, is having a laugh. Ignore it all, I say.  Forget cut potatoes and get on with the things real people do such as writing the cards, doing the shopping, seeing the relatives, planning the meals, decorating the house, making costumes for the nativity play, steering your mother away from the brandy and, in my case, practicing the music for church.  There’s some serious guitar work happening on Christmas Eve, and if I don’t practice, my fingers are liable to fall off!   I really feel I’ve earned Santa’s sherry after that.  (Santa gets a mince-pie (Tesco’s) a glass of dry sherry and a carrot for Rudolph when he comes down our chimney.)  Peter reckons that he’d really like a glass of malt whisky, but something tells me Santa is a dry sherry man. Oh, and the carrot is bitten into as well; for a long time that was taken as proof positive by the junior Gordon-Smiths that Rudolph had called.   And, if you look up on Christmas night, you can see Rudolph’s nose shining brightly.  (Don’t mention the distant sound of a jet engine; that’s Rudolph’s nose, right?)  I’ve impressed a whole generation of Young with that one.

So Merry Christmas everyone!  Ho, ho, ho.