What a hardcore couple of days. One of the very few benefits of being canned just before Christmas is that you can devote days to preparing a meal of absolute awesomeness. So that is what I did.

I’m not entirely sure why Paula is gesticulating like Stalin in the above photo. If memory serves it was actually more of a helicopter motion than stern finger pointing. Either way, Megan is clearly not all that impressed. Alex seems okay with it.

Anyway, the day and evening were super awesome with super awesome company. I’d go into it in more detail but I really want to tell you what we ate, instead. (It DID take me fucking days to complete so, you know, go with it.)

- Homemade chili jam with the cheese and pate course. This stuff is legendary. The whole jar went. Good thing we made seven.

- Maple roast turkey that had been soaking in brine outside for days. See this video for a more glamorous/fictional account of how it’s done. It starts at the one minute mark but -to be honest- if you’re reading this then you clearly have enough time to watch the whole thing. This blog isn’t exactly breaking news, is it?

- Mother’s homemade bread sauce with the added improvement of using a food processor to crumble the bread, rather than standing around like OCD orphans ripping it into little pieces. This was the first experience of bread sauce for a couple of the guests and it was referred to as “the shizz”.

- Maple roast parsnip and butternut squash. Homemade cranberry sauce. Stuffing and gravy a la M&S. See previous post.

- Bacon wrapped chipolatas. This appears to be a very English thing so I thought I’d try it last year. I have since found out my paternal grandmother used to make it at Christmas time so I’ve got a nice family connection to it. This is good because they are AWESOME.

- Fancy pants honey/mustard ham served cold because I had the presence of mind to cook it on Christmas Eve. There’s only one oven, after all.

Here’s a photo slideshow of the day in question. Most of the images are of food prep taken with a phone because I was/am immensely proud of the whole spread. It is exactly as interesting as it sounds.

Though, it might be worth it just to see what a raw turkey looks like soaking outside in the rain, weighed down with a spade wrapped in a plastic bag. (Told you the video was more glamorous.)

That’s the lot, kids. Happy New Year, all!

Having just received my first ever semi-ironic Christmas circular, a brilliant and original thought occurred to me. I should write a Christmas circular!

The document in question originated from the general Dalston area and was penned by this man, who apparently specialises in stereotypical fiction. (The BEST kind of fiction.)

To be honest, it’s not going to be all that circular. It’s just a blog post listing random things that have happened in the recent-ish past.

The year began for us both in Bristol, with me working for the BBC. That’s right… That whole adventure wasn’t even a year ago. Gordon moved back into London to spend more time devoted to his abiding passion for sharks by working at Discovery Channel. The initial shame of living in West London eventually wore off as he realised how easy it was to walk to work and how close he was to museums and many delightfully middle class shops.

So began five months of alternate weekends in Bristol and London for Gordon and James. This was unbelievably tiring but had the benefit of never being more than a fortnight away from a Bath Ale. We also both became very familiar with the Victoria Bus Station which will come in handy if we are ever homeless and need somewhere to sleep rough. (You have to pay to use the toilets but they’re cleaner than the ones in the pub across the road. They’d be easier to wash the heroin sweat off your face in.)

From May, we had a couple of months of fortuitous timing as a dear friend of mine from Australia (Megan… Something.) began her London adventure by living in what became my library.

James moved back into London at about this time and took a job with an M&S that was literally at the end of the street we used to live on in Islington. That’s what you call ironic, Alanis.

Having finally received my passport back, we spent late August in Paris, which was absolutely awesome. This was followed a couple of months later by a super-awesome trip to Rome, which I can’t link to because I haven’t written the post because it was overwhelming and I have way too much to say about it. So here are some highlight photos instead. We saw the Pope but he wasnt wearing his stupid hat so, as always with us, a mixed bag there.

Upon our return from Rome, James took a brand new -significantly fancier- role at the giant M&S in the even more giant Westfield Shepherd’s Bush -conveniently located an eight minute bus ride from our house.

I went to Stockholm for work, then followed this up about a month later by returning to Sweden to ruin Ellen’s PhD graduation by MC’ing the celebration dinner. I also found out I am way too ADD to be good at Swedish mushrooming. All around, the trip wasn’t that great for the self-esteem when you think about it. But it was still super-awesome for those of us that weren’t hospitalised. (One of us was.)

Overseas visitors for the year were: Mum and Dad (allegedly to visit us but really mum wanted to go crop circle chasing), Mel, Royce, Ra (James’s brother), Freya and Merryn. (Sorry if I left anyone off.)

My time at Discovery came to an end a few days ago with the canning of almost the entire UK team. Easy come, easy go. I met some great people and got to talk about sharks a lot. Plus it has given me ample free time to prepare for the world’s most awesomest, most savings-est Christmas dinner ever! The addition of frequent snowfalls over the last week has made this more fun than I technically thought possible.

Through hours of planning, repeated re-reading of Delia’s and Nigella’s Christmas books and strategic use of James’s M&S discount we have:

• Homemade chili jam and pickled onions to match some amazing British cheeses
• Homemade fresh cranberry sauce for the day in question
• Drinks: red wine will be Chateauneuf du Pape, champagne will be actual champagne, the port is aged 21 years and all for a few quid a head. (The trick is to combine the 20% staff discount with ‘25% off when you buy a half dozen’ then buy 18 bottles.)
• Ham, Nigella turkey (steeped outside in water and herbs for two days), Harrod’s pudding, the world’s most alcoholic trifle, etc, etc, etc

I am honestly so unbelievably excited about this. But then I have to live up to all the money we spent on ornaments. Also it’s at the top of my mind because we just this morning returned from round three of laying in all the food I will be preparing for the massive and exciting Antipodean orphans Christmas I’ll be cooking. The checkout lady at Chiswick M&S said “well, you’re having a very M&S Christmas, aren’t you?” When we agreed, she continued with “is there any other kind?”

So with that, may I just wish you an unbelievably awesome Christmas and New Year from myself, James and apparently the whole team here at Marks & Spencer.

Chatting with a Saffa at work, we hit on the complicated relationship Antipodeans have with Northern Hemisphere Christmases.

You see, Christmas belongs here. Traditional Yuletide fare is essentially Western European survival foods: goose, preserved fruits, Christmas pudding (which lasts for years), etc.

I mentioned this before but, back home, I always found it slightly odd that my mother would light our dessert on fire and serve it in a heavily air conditioned room while the temperature outside topped forty. It’s incongruous -like strapping two cats into a baby bouncer. It doesn’t seem quite right.

The lead-up to Christmas is also so wonderful in the Northern Hemisphere… Especially London. The city is lit up like some kind of time-traveling hooker from the future. She still stinks and is crawling with god-knows-what but if you drink enough mulled wine and squint… Well… She’s so pretty!

So that’s the problem. The actual day belongs here and the lead-up belongs here but if that time-traveling hooker brought back some kind of wish-granting machine I would also like to spend the Christmas break back in the warmth.

The thing is… All the best bits about Christmas are the most Pagan; gorging yourself on food with members of your bloodline, garlanding trees with lights and colours, alcoholic drinks served with breakfast… It’s all Pagan and it’s all good. The shit bits belong to the interloping Christians: staying sober-ish so you don’t vomit on all the old people you have to sit next to on uncomfortable church pews in the middle of the night, actually going to church in the middle of the night, being bored fuckless hearing about the story of the ‘real’ St Nick. (Sorry, he’s still based on two Northen European Pagan gods. Who cares if there was some pedophile bishop in the fourth century?)

So, basically I just want all the Pagan bits of Christmas. And what could be more Pagan than basking in the rays of the sun and putting ocean-going animals in fire for two whole weeks while wearing as little as possible?

This is the Christmas break I find myself yearning for. Nothing beats it. The trade-off is painful.

Oh well, I shall have to make do with ornament shopping in the best Christmas store in the world:

Christmas really plays to Harrod’s strengths; OTT, camp tat. Figuring it would be crowded, we got there before it opened to loiter like pensioners in front of a closed department store. At least two thousand people had the same idea as us -including these fur protesters who appeared out of nowhere the second the doors opened. The looks of confusion and bewilderment on the faces of the European tourists as they had pamphlets forced into their hands were priceless -a true Christmas miracle.

After shoving past the protesters and old people we made a beeline for the ornament section (helpfully found online by James using nothing but an iPhone and twenty minutes spare time).

We got maybe seven minutes browsing before the hordes worked out where the ornaments were and descended. Now, usually crowds send me into a vile rage that only seven beers consumed alone in the dark can alleviate.

But today I didn’t mind. Here’s why I think that is:

To get to the ornament section, you have to head up two floors from the side entrance and then wade through three rooms of extremely over-priced whiteware. You know the kinds of things; five hundred pound coffee machines, a juicer that speaks French, a sandwich toaster made of unicorn hooves. Nothing in these rooms -if purchased- will be used more than once and not in any essential capacity. You won’t see any of these things in the first permanent colonies mankind builds in space. Because they’re crap that only Russian new money buys to put in holiday houses they never visit.

These rooms were practically empty.

The ornament section, by contrast, was a middle class mosh pit.

And I thought to myself… Good. Good!

Perhaps we are coming out of this recession a little wiser? Sure, we are still spending (one of our boxes of ornaments cost forty pounds) but we -or at least my middle class moshers- weren’t buying shit. We are all spending on something that is way better than a French-speaking sushi warmer that also connects to the iTunes store.

For what are Christmas ornaments if not the backdrop to two whole days spent in the company of your nearest and dearest? In my eyes they are the visible representation of an idea. The idea that the company you keep is the most valuable thing in your life… That the people you choose to spend your days with are worth celebrating… They are literally worth making your entire house look like a drag queen’s shoe collection.

So spend, my middle class horde… Spend!

There is nothing better than eating and drinking with good company in front of sparkly, shiny things.

And in that spirit I would just like to say… Wish you all were here.

Nothing like arranging a birthday get-together in West London during the worst storms of the year to kickstart Ryan’s complaining.

In his defence, it was truly fucking horrible. He got smashed in the face by wet garbage while waiting at the bus stop. The rest of us (except Monique because she’s a witch, maybe?) got completely soaked at the Portobello Road Market.

Serves us right for looking at antiques.

Of course, the plus side of the horrific weather is that we arrived at/fled into our dinner venue before 2pm, thus allowing for an extended drinking session. By the way, if you’re in the Notting Hill area, upstairs at The Oak is awesome.

And quiet during the day! As you can plainly see from my poor phone photography below:

So happy fiftieth (or something) to Leon. Nobody got you a cake so I wasn’t able to work out how old you are.

In general, the Antipodean Birthday Summit was a blast. As the evening wore on, Ryan even decided to chair an impromtu vampire board meeting:

You know, I hate to admit this in case any/both of my trendy North London friends read the post, but there was something extremely nice about kicking it Wes’side, for once. I’m so used to travelling to the other side of town for entertainment that I forget that we’re really not all that far from fun.

If your idea of fun is rain-sodden antiques, wet garbage in the face and pizza at a restaurant that doesn’t take bookings before struggling home through a gale.

And then blogging about it.

Because apparently mine is.

If one is to properly attempt mushrooming whilst in Sweden, one is going to need some gumboots.

Whilst recently in Sweden, I purchased said gumboots from the Swedish equivalent of Walmart. I think this should be called Svalmart, but they went with Coop.

Whatevs. Bygones.

Anyway, so I sunk thirty quid (on sale, of course) into some gumboots and went mushrooming in the Swedish woods. First let me say that I am shit at mushrooming. This could be because I am easily distracted. So now I have a bunch of photos of the Swedish woodland, some gumboots and no mushrooms.

The thing about spending thirty quid on gumboots for an unsuccessful mushrooming attempt is that you don’t really feel you’ve got your money’s worth. I wore them around town (Gothenburg) a bit, as this is normal behaviour in Sweden when it’s wet -which it almost always is.

I also happened to see some impossibly glamorous Italian women sporting gumboots in Rome the other week -where it is rarely wet but was for almost the entire holiday.

Putting these two pieces together with the fact I walk to work through three parks each day in London, I decided to bring them home via some extreme suitcase stuffing.

So, for this entire week I have woken up, leaped to the window and pulled back the curtains like a child on Christmas morning (somewhere in the northern hemisphere unless the child is retarded). Unfortunately it has been dry each morning in London -which is almost never is at any time of the year.

But today… Today was my day! It was pouring. AND James and I were going out for morning coffee because he had to buy some desk bells for work because his new job is really weird. (PS James got a new job.)

On went the gumboots and into a plastic bag went my white leather shoes. Off we went.

Stomp stomp. Suck it, late autumn leaves! Suck it, disgusting polluted puddles! Suck it, pile of unidentifiable garbage!

It was only at the cafe -which is about half way to work- that I realised something was wrong. Terribly wrong. These gumboots weren’t as comfortable as I remember them being in the squishy green undergrowth of a cool Swedish forest. In fact, could these roomy, fleece-lined, awesome shoes be giving me… Blisters?

After coffee I half limped to the office and got changed. Still wanting to celebrate the footwear choice I messaged Ellen, my Swedish connection. She messaged right back: “blisters?”

Hell to the yeah. Was this something that only the Swedes know about or is this because my knowledge of gumboots doesn’t extend beyond Paddington Bear (red boots) or Wal Footrot (black boots)?

So they’ll be sitting under my desk all weekend because I couldn’t bear the extra weight as I limped slowly home tonight in my -now muddy- white leather shoes.

Suck it, feet.