Christmas 2007, Manchester
Christmas cooking started on Christmas Eve, when we made the stuffing, baked the potatoes and made the vegetarian dish, the Caponata. Christmas day started at 7am to prepare the turkey and put in the oven. Every 20 minutes after that the alarm went off and someone had to remove the turkey from the oven, baste it and reset the timer. It took more than four hours overall, and was very nice. Aroun 10 o’clock we opened loads of presents, many from Australia courtesy of various relatives but also given to each other, courtesy of Poundland. By 12pm there were five or six people in the kitchen, but through a controlled form of chaos (just like a professional kitchen!) we managed to prepare all the food on time. Of course, we over-cooked, but we also over-ate, so it all worked out in the end. Enjoying the feast were Lucy, Alex, Megan, Ally, Mark (Megan’s boyfriend from Connecticut), Catharine Abell (an Australian philosopher at the Uni of Manchester), and me.
As is the tradition here in the UK, we played The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ several times at loud volume and drank some beer and/or nice Australian wine. After lunch we watched the Queen's message - listed in the television guide simply as, 'The Queen' - which I suppose might be seen as annoying and anti-Republican, but here it just seems ludicrously quaint, and a little camp. Then some of us went for a walk while others simply went to sleep.
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