Christmas disaster

Another year, I only realized that I had forgotten to serve the sprouts with Christmas dinner when I founded them the next day, still on the stove, in the back cabin of our narrowboat.

I wouldn't care, except I love sprouts!

This goes back a good few years. I really pride myself on my Christmas gravy which I always start the day before by making a stock out of the giblets. One year I went to get the giblets out of the turkey and there weren't any!. Now for me this was a serious issue. Christmas Eve also happens to be DH's birthday, so I always try to make sure that there is no blast minute shopping to be done as I don't drive and don't expect DH to have to do any on his day. I phoned the supermarket (Safeways. Do you remember them) and played merry hell with the young sounding manager. I could imagine him telling his family later about this mad sounding middle aged lady ranting about the lack of giblets!. He was terribly apologetic and said he would send me some. A short time later there was a knock at the door and a young shop assistant was standing there with a huge turkey in her arms, complete with giblets! What a win win situation! I got my giblets, a second turkey and the girl got time out of a manically busy supermarket!

I had got up very early on Christmas morning to “put the turkey in”, I struggled with the heavy baking dish and thankfully slammed the door. The vibration caused a dish on the top of the dresser to fall, flying across the kitchen, it struck the work top and a sliver whizzed off it and sliced open the index finger on my left hand. There was blood everywhere. My DH elected to clean it up whilst my DS1 drove me to A&E, having noted my flowing dressing gown, and suggested that I got dressed rather than swanning round like Barbara Cartland. (Was amazed that he knew who Barbara Cartland was). When we arrived it was empty save for a somewhat manic girl in a party hat who was running up and down blowing out one of those things with a feather on the end that makes a loud noise. This did not go down well with DS who is not a morning person! The girl disappeared to be replaced by a nurse, who did a lot of tutting about the amount of blood. Eventually the curtain was pulled back to reveal the doctor. Yes, the was the girl we had first seen now with a white coat on and minus the hat and feather thing. However she did a great job stitching my finger whilst the nurse went to attend to a new arrival, but I have been left with a white scar running from the tip of my finger to halfway down it, though it only hurt a bit when I was digging into the turkey.

39 weeks pregnant with DS3 my parents were hosting Xmas. We headed over with the younger two late morning where my eldest who is severely autistic and learning disabled took up residence by the microwave and proceeded to scream every time the microwave stopped. He was literally screaming all day balancing on top of a high stool.

By about 7pm I had a bit of funny turn & had to go into maternity to get checked out. Just very high blood pressure which slowly came down with a cup of tea and a bit of peace.

We arrived back home around 11pm - parents had take the boys back to ours - to find ds1 still screaming.

When children were small, I took our frozen turkey out of the freezer and defrosted it. It was Christmas Eve as I always prepare the Christmas meal the day before. The turkey felt slightly greasy and I thought it had a slight whiff, but DH had a good sniff and said it looked and smelt fine so I prepared the bird and I put it out in the shed to stay cool

DPiL arrived and my MiL asked to see the turkey. We opened the shed door and the smell hit us. DMil went a bit closer and hasily withdrew saying there were blow flies on it.

It was just after 2.30 on Christmas Eve, but as the turkey had come from a local shop we hastily put it in the car and drove down to the shop with it. Meanwhile DMiL headed for the local butcher and managed to buy a brace of oven ready pheasant.

We got to the shop with the turkey and the shop keeper greeted us with a wail of, 'Oh no, not another one!' It seems they had been to the cash & carry 2 months earlier and their usual brand of frozen turkeys were out of stock, so they bought a couple of dozen of the brand available, which was not known to them. Ours was the 5th to be returned because it was off. There was one ordered uncollected turkey left in the shop (different brand) and 10 minutes before the shop shut. They asked us to wait and on the dot of 3.00pm, they put up the closed sign and gave us the turkey.

We then had to defrost it. We put it in a bucket and poured hot water over it and changed it frequently, we worked at defrosting the cavity so we could put hot water in that as well. We had it defrosted by 10.00pm,. My lovely MiL meanwhile had made stuffing for me from scratch. Until then I had always used Paxo and the Christmas lunch was as planned. We celebrated the New Year with the pheasant, which we had frozen in the meanwhile.

One year I carried in the roast potatoes, caught my sleeve on the door handle and dropped the dish which broke into several pieces scattering the red hot potatoes all over the floor.
We had potato waffles that year.

One year, with lots of people staying, I had a very crowded fridge, so I put the turkey in the utility room overnight, as it was very cold in there - t was a sort of outhouse. Next morning when I visited it, it had been nibbled and there were mouse droppings all around - gulp!

I said nowt, especially as my OH was a rather obsessional person and also a doctor and would have had a fit. I just cleaned it off, wrapped it in foil and put it in the oven.

That year I had taken a lot of trouble to make some rather posh stuffing with all sorts of tasty things in it.

Part way through the meal, one of my DDs said "What is this in the stuffing? - it looks like mouse droppings!?"

I nearly choked on my meal! - but just smiled sweetly and said it was cloves - which it was.

No-one to this day knows about the mice.

Another story from my childhood, I was about 6. A preiod before household fridges, let alone freezers. One of DF's work colleagues bought some turkey pullets and my father, with others, each invested in one.

Our turkey pullet was a winner, when slaughtered for Christmas, it weighed 22lbs. Our household consisted of my mother, who was 8 months pregnant, 2 children, aged 6 and 4 and my father, who was going away on business for two weeks on Boxing Day. It was also a very warm Christmas.

To begin with the turkey had to be dismembered to get it into the oven, and then, on Boxing Day my mother was left, with vast quantities of turkey, and only her and 2 children to eat it and nowhere to keep it cool.

I remember we were eating turkey for every meal, including breakfast and my mother was casseroling and stewing it and offering it to all the neighbours, i can remember taking some to school to give to a teacher.

How much of it had to be thrown away in the end I do not know.

One Christmas Eve was certainly one to remember! Having been out with friends, dd1 then maybe 20, came home after 11 pm with a live lobster which she’d ‘rescued’ because some drunken idiot bloke who’d won it in a raffle, and a few others, found it amusing to use the poor thing like a rugby ball and chuck it around the pub.

Distraught dd was bent on instantly driving to Brighton (not much over an hour’s drive from here) and putting it back in the sea.
My mother, who was staying, had forty fits at this idea - for a start it was a very frosty night (icy roads) and there would be ‘yobbos’ about.

So we agreed with dd that either dh or I would go with her first thing in the morning, to put it in the sea.
We left it outside in a bucket with some water overnight, but in the morning it was dead ? no doubt because of all the rough treatment the night before.
I could have done without all that drama though - especially when I still had presents to wrap! (I’m rather more organised nowadays.)