An Adult's Christmas Day in Scotland

A Happy Christmas to British, Irish and Australian readers, a Merry one to those across the Atlantic, and wesołych świąt to fluent speakers of Polish, whom I rather envy.

This year I burst into tears on the last day of work, so eager was I to be done with it and get stuck into Christmas preparations. These were truncated as the most recent local polski sklep has also closed down, and I had nowhere within walking distance to buy dried forest mushrooms or pre-ground poppy seeds. Thus, we dispensed with Wigilia and had more of a Scottish Christmas Eve supper, featuring avocado salad on toast, followed by trout and preceded by sherry and spiced nuts and Florentine biscuits. I had fasted from (or without) breakfast until supper the three days preceding, so it is no wonder I woke up between 1 AM and 2 AM on Christmas morning with a terrible stomach ache.  

Fortunately, that had cleared up by 7 AM when I leapt out of bed to attend to the traditional family Christmas Chelsea bun. Fortunately, the usual Christmas miracle had occurred: the rolled up bits of leavened dough wrapped around cinnamon, sugar and raisins I had left on the counter had puffed up and out enough to fill our largest roasting pan. I stuck the pan in the oven and went out into the dark predawn to listen to children exclaiming over their stockings. 

The murky streets were empty, but here and there windows glowed, and on the street behind mine, I passed a house with an upper flat whose windows were open and, sure enough, I could hear both the voice of an excited, questioning child and the explanatory tones of a woman. However, this was the only child I heard in my 20 minute walk through the streets of neighbourhood. The nearby street I would like to live on, as it is lined with picturesque 3-storey Victorian rowhouses, was as silent as an empty pram. 

I was back in time to take out the bun before it got too brown. Having already put baking paper under the cooling rack, I inverted the pan over it and made a pint of coffee. Toffee dripped onto the paper for ten minutes, and then I took the pan off and poured the rest of the boiling water into it to melt the adhering sugar. The bun, though the sections were unequal, was a success. 

This morning I contemplate whether I like better the actual bun or the walnut-studded toffee sticking to the paper. By St. Stephen's Day, definitely the toffee. 

Benedict Ambrose and I ate a quarter of the bun and drank all the coffee and opened our presents, which involved socks, nightwear, and snazzy treats from House of Bruar which we put on for Christmas Mass. The air was mild but drizzly. B.A. lurched along to the bus stop with my dress shoes and missal in a cloth shoulder bag, his new-to-him NHS walking stick grasped in his right hand. I followed along with a much heavier bag containing two bowls, an electric handheld whisk, a homemade trifle, a 2 pint tub of double cream, 2 Tbsp of sugar, 2 Tbsp of toasted almonds, 2 tsp of vanilla, 4 pieces of Chelsea bun, and a bottle of pudding wine.

The trifle and pudding wine went straight into the parish hall fridge when we arrived at church. The Museum of Modern Art had closed and locked its gates, so B.A. and I had to creep around the perilous street the long way. We can afford to buy each other items from House of Bruar, but a taxicab on Christmas Day? Forget it. 

There was a skeleton congregation and a skeleton choir, the latter made up chiefly of expats too cash-strapped to fly across oceans at Christmas. We began and ended with an English carol, a proper Christmas treat. I prayed that B.A.'s tumours had disappeared (or will disappear) and that he will get his strength back, and I suspect he did the same. Possibly others did, too, for there is prayer-provoking about a normally lively 50-year-old hunched over a walking stick.

I retrieved trifle and wine from the fridge and, after some protracted Christmas morning conversations, B.A. and I bundled ourselves into a clerical car and were driven over the Firth of Forth and far away to a Christmas lunch in a farmhouse in the countryside, where there was champagne, and a generous fire in the hearth, and scrumptious sausage rolls made from a pig most of us had known and disliked, and space on the kitchen counter on which I finished assembling my trifle. 

Then there was a splendid Christmas lunch/dinner before the dining-room hearth. It began with foie gras from the Charles De Gaulle airport and ended with a blazing pudding and my trifle. In between there was moist and flavourful turkey, crisp roast potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, round Brussel sprouts, sausage stuffing, and slivers of ham, the ham and sausages also originating with the former farmyard resident. He had bullied his wife and stolen her food even when she was pregnant, so we ate him without remorse. Over supper we added insult to injury by discussing the demonic nature of porcine squealing.

There were also delicious wines. 

I made Facebook calls to Canada, where brunch had ended late, so the turkey had been stuffed late and dinner would be begin late. One of my sisters had bedded down for a nap with her dog and her cat, and the other one was rather immobile on the parental sofa. 

When I returned my attention to Scotland, B.A. was back in front of the sitting-room fire, and the company all assembled there to play three rounds of "Who Am I?" I was Isabelle of Castille, J.S. Bach and some British actor of whom I had never heard, whereas B.A. was Ferdinand, Haydn and Audrey Hepburn. The last round was very difficult, and we eventually resorted to glaring hints and singing snatches of famous film tunes to each other. 

Sometime between 10:30 PM and 11:00 PM, the Edinburgh party drove off. Very unfortunately, I developed a case of car sickness so terrible, I eventually felt the need to announce it. The driver kindly let me out, and I aimed to be sick in the gardens of the local Episcopalian cathedral. Happily for its groundsman, this did not happen after all. Instead I eventually got one of my bowls out of the boot of the car and exchanged seats with B.A. He kept up from the back seat a steady flow of chatter with the driver while I clutched my bowl and moaned from time to time. Upon arriving home, I locked myself in the bathroom. Then I went to bed, grateful for its flat and stationary nature. Poor B.A. had to grapple with his stick and the bags by himself.   

This morning I awoke before the sun, which is now high in the sky, and ate 3 pieces of Chelsea bun (and toffee) and drank 2 cups of coffee, from which we can surmise that I am feeling better. To be on the safe side, however, I consumed these in bed and finished reading Alice Thomas Ellis's The Inn at the Edge of the World, which makes fine Christmas reading.  

I shall spend the day writing letters and doing housework. I may write another post though. Stay tuned.