Last year was an infamous Christmas in our household, for it was much discussed and agreed by all the family (except my wife) that my wife actually 'broke Christmas'. It was not a label that she particularly welcomed but I think she has come to terms with the accusation now. I believe, if my memory serves me right (and it VERY rarely does), that it all started by her boiling either a Gammon Joint or potatoes on the hob on the cooker just a couple of days before Christmas. Being a typical woman she wandered off to do some multi-tasking, probably present wrapping with her left hand, paying the bills with her right whilst reading War & Peace and ironing with her left foot. You may well ask what she was doing with her seemingly idle right foot, well not a lot, but then no one's perfect are they? So the plumb Turkey (come to think of it, she might have been plucking that with her right foot) was sitting in the fridge and the Veg, trimmings and all things Christmas dinnery purchased and secured in the larder all ready for the gathering of the clans on Christmas Day. I believe it is all to easy to blame others in this day and age and that there is no 'I' in team and furthermore that any marriage should take a collective responsibility in any problems or crisis that arise in the day to day life that we lead, but for the record I was at work so what follows next was nothing to do with me!
The pan boiled over, which should not be a real issue because cookers should be made sealed & secured from a bit of water shouldn't they. Yes they SHOULD, but this was British made and it wasn't sealed nor secured and it did go BANG! When I got home after what was one of those 'full on' days ready for an evening meal, I found there was no cooker and no (now this is where it got serious), no TV! The cooker had completely tripped out the entire house, it was dead, the only life it had in it was the large spark that flew across the room when it went POP and the power surge it created weaselled its way into the Sky TV box and it too had demised. Our aerial for analogue had decided to hang upside down from the chimney several years ago, I guess it got bored of the same old view day after day and year after year. I totally empathise with it as I can remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old getting bored with the view from my bed at night. Not content with facing the room or facing the wall, I'd some times lay the opposite direction in bed but stupidly I didn't (being an inept 8yr old boy) alter the bed sheets accordingly and found I had to quickly scrabble back to the open end again for gulps of breath. So I tried laying in the normal place but I hung my head and shoulders right out of the bed so that my head was upside down and nearly touching the floor affording me an interesting and very different view from my bed. I really took to this and kept the habit up for quite a long time and it probably accounts for why I see things so differently from everyone else. In all honesty it probably accounts for a lot more than that with so much blood rushing to my head!
So, the TV aerial was useless, so we had no TV. ERGO, MY WIFE BROKE CHRISTMAS.
12 months later and with time healing the fractures wounds we are in a new house, a new career and a new life. So all should be fine but yet there are rumblings of discontent from within the household, concerns that they don't have a repeat of last years events and the eyes seem to be turning towards me. You see I need to re-decorate the house and the kitchen is the item currently on my hit list at the moment and when I decorate, well I tend to carry out 'extreme decorating'. I like to get everything back to the core four walls & floor for that matter. I have stripped the kitchen to the barest of bones. So with just 4 days to Christmas we have no fridge, no freezer, no cooker, no hob, no work surfaces and no taps (which is just as well as we don't have a sink anyway! BUT, I'm not stupid, I have kept the dishwasher plumbed in. I just HATE washing up!
We are therefore in a situation that we are having to march to the 'cloakroom' (Bog) to fill the kettle (not actually from the toilet) then march back again to plug it in. Last year we bought a mini baby Belling cooker which just plugged into a wall socket, I think it took about 3 days to cook the Turkey, well this was Alison's 'get out of jail' card last year and is mine this year. It should be considered a 'slow cooker' rather than an alternative cooker. What is really irritating is that I keep going to throw the old tea from the pot down the sink, which isn't there, and wandering off with wet toes. So my Daughter is home and my boy is coming home and it should be a time of peace and goodwill to all people, but I've broken Christmas this year and I am not feeling that warm, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, nutmeg, mulled wine, cups of tea in bed family cosiness and I just can't understand why.
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