It won’t have escaped your notice that Christmas has started early, very early, this year. Already on houses around here - not in Westdean I hasten to add, much too refined for that, but in simple Seaford - there are Santas and snowmen and god knows what twinkling on every frontage. And you can’t buy a Christmas tree for love or money though goodness knows why they’re being decorated so soon because every needle will be on the floor by mid December. Still, you can’t blame people for trying to cheer themselves up after what we’ve had to endure this year.
And Bay and Sophie cheered us up immensely a few days ago. Through the post came this wonderful Advent calendar, a combined effort that they’d been working on throughout lockdown:
But just as we’d opened door 5 our Christmas spirit was shattered by Taz the dog barking furiously at something. He’d spotted an intruder. A heron had managed to evade the netting covering the pond and, I suspect because no trace of five golden orfe, one large koi and a multitude of lesser goldfish have been seen since, had gobbled up the pond’s entire contents. And then this damn bird, because its head got tangled in the net, demanded to be rescued and released, only to return later in the hope of gorging anything left. So today, instead of traipsing round the forest in search of greenery for our front door wreath (you see, we like to enter into the spirit of Christmas too) I spent the entire day putting a skirt around the netting in a belated attempt to foil the blasted thing.
Anyway, back to thoughts of Christmas proper. Asked on WhatsApp what would be the highlight of their main meal on Christmas Day I received a variety of answers from our far flung family: Scotch egg…got to be turkey…roast porchetta with roasty potatoes & sprouts from the allotment…as much as possible…nut roast, red cabbage, sprouts, veg sausage for non nut roast lovers…mushroom wellington…takeaway from the pub…catch a passing pigeon…forgot to mention fresh figs with the porchetta. We’re having roast heron.