Travel Reference
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Me Tender' and after that, to most people's relief, this tradition seemed to fade away… The
fact my eldest children, lovely though their performance was, appeared to be mounting some
sort of resurrection of this tradition was a bit worrying and there were some anxious expres-
sions around the table, memories of previous karaoke horrors coming back from the distant
past and encouraging some of the more deranged members of the family to insist on doing it
every year. Well, you won't catch me warbling away, that's for sure; this Elvis has definitely
left the building.
Though I bang on about planning and menus and the like, Christmas Day is actually relat-
ively stress-free. There may be twenty-three people in the lounge, but everybody will have
contributed to the meal. Natalie will have prepared the foie gras, someone else will have
brought the oysters and someone else the smoked salmon. Natalie's mum might have part-
cooked the two turkeys, while I prepared the vegetables. Somebody else will have brought
the cheese, another the bread. A fruit salad will be rustled up, other homemade desserts will
arrive and someone else will have made a Christmas log. Brian, Natalie's dad, will have
baked homemade mince pies and a Christmas cake. Someone will have brought dessert wine
(a Jurançon or a Sauternes), someone else the red wine, and there'll always be bottles of the
'family' champagne. Papy once owned some land in the Champagne region, where he was
born, and the 'new' owners now provide us with a few cases of the stuff, in what some of
the family see as recompense for the underhanded way in which they obtained the land in
the first place. Finally, and after having taste-tested various high-class Christmas puddings
throughout December, a winner will have been decided upon on and the whole thing will fi-
nally be set fire to by someone wobbling after hours of rich food and wine indulgence and
wearing a dangerously angled, highly inflammable, paper crown. The children, of course, are
spared all this and are excused most of the sitting down; not that they miss any courses.
So everybody does something. It's obviously one of the signature meals of the year and the
French want to be part of the preparation not just the execution, a case of too many cooks
definitely not spoiling the broth. Having said that, though, Christmas Day didn't start too well
for me. Everything was pretty much under control by midday; presents had been opened,
wrapping paper folded up and put away for future use (not my OCD this time, but Natalie's),
the table was laid, the turkey was on, the vegetables were ready to go, teams of oysteropeners
were outside in the watery winter sun and already hitting the wine for their trouble. And then
sartorial disaster struck.
I had a chorizo sausage hanging in the larder, drying out for post-Christmas, non-turkey
leftover meals; but it was in a precarious position and so really I only had myself to blame.
I reached into the larder without concentrating, not looking at what I was doing, until I felt
something fall onto my arm. It was the chorizo, as yet undried, and my arm was now covered
in its oil. Only it wasn't just my arm, it was my sleeve. My beautiful new jumper, my heavy
wool Breton-style sailing jumper which I had got only that morning was soaked in red cho-
