yonmei

12:03 pm: What kind of Christmas did you have?
The first part of my day was fine: I went to midnight mass at Old St Pauls with Step and First (and Richard Holloway did the sermon! Richard was the Bishop of Edinburgh for many years, and a reliably troublesome priest he was: and an excellent public speaker.

Then I set off to walk home, and caught a taxi on Leith Walk, and got in about 3am.

Woke at nine-ish, baked scones, packed, and set off to RiK and Col's for Christmas breakfast.

Something cool about this Christmas; two civil partnerships proposed. Step and First, RiK and Col. Step and First had the religious ceremony many years ago in Old St Pauls, but are talking now about doing the legal thing for next-of-kin security: Col proposed to RiK on their last holiday, and are now planning it for their 20th anniversary in 2009. They both said it would be "quiet", but are planning to do it as a party on a boat, so, um, possibly a gay man's idea of "quiet". ;-)

Anyway, breakfast was lovely, and I headed off about three while I still had an hour of daylight left. I was thinking I would get to the Forest just after four, which I'd been told would be open for volunteers, which sounded like a nice idea: coffee and cake and then the final walk up to my parents' for the dreary end of Christmas Day.

Only no one with keys had yet shown up, and it was way too cold (and even drearier) to hang about, so I headed on to my parents' flat: arriving just before five, when they were still fast asleep from the exhaustion of the Quaker Christmas lunch.

This is the part of Christmas Day I hate most. When I think that if I were at home I could have a pot of chilli waiting for me, and sit in a comfy room with a nice fire and candles burning and open the presents (from my sister and Ann) and read Yuletide and do some writing: and instead I am sitting in my parents' cluttered and cold kitchen waiting for them to wake up, looking forward to a dreary evening with tired parents and expressing enthusiasm over whatever my mum got me this year.

So I'd come with alleviating material, and one unexpected bonus (two): I had brought a good book to read, I had brought the makings of a good tea with room to nibble on it before the parents woke up (scones, three sorts - plain, savoury, and almond; fruit cake: two round cheeses; hummus with pesto; horseradish sauce) and I meant to make myself a cup of tea and have a couple of scones. What I also had (yay!) was the unexpected bonus that my parents had unburied a whole stack of bottles of brandy, I suspect all gifts from Aunt Margaret to my dad over the years (two or three open, none less than half full), so I could have hot tea with a dash of brandy, and I did. The bottles were all very, very dusty. I have no idea what my parents will do with them, but I don't suppose it will actually involve enjoyment. The other unexpected bonus was that it occurred to me that my dad's brand new computer was up and running and accessing the Internet, and if I snuck upstairs very quietly I could have a surreptitious look at the Yuletide website, so I did. This was cheering.

It was also cheering that, after my parents woke up, instead of waiting with increasing hunger for my mum to decide what we were going to have to eat (a matter of no urgency to her, since she would have had an enormous and very savoury meal only two or three hours ago) I could point to the food on the table already and say "Let's eat now." (I did end up trying some of my mother's no-garlic no-tomatoes all-vegan gluten-free savoury, and it was as dreadful as you might expect.)

And presents weren't so bad either. (I had got my parents a copy of Raw Spirit, Iain Banks writing about the Iraq war and his quest for "the perfect dram", which I thought they would both enjoy, and a gift certificate for worms for their compost bin, which had the merit of being (a) unusual and (b) not something to add to the clutter. But I must check that they actually spend it and don't lose it.)

My dad gave me the latest copy of his memoirs: birth to his getting his first graduate job at Belfast University. (He beat out Kingsley Amis for the position, which Kingsley Amis bitterly resented.) I am very much looking forward to reading this. (It is just printed and bound - at the university copyshop, I would guess - but I hope he gets it finished and I think it is publishable.) My mum gave me a lovely book called Comfort me with apples, by Ruth Reichl, which looks like exactly the kind of food book I enjoy, and a lovely warm scarf. Also, an ugly glass paperweight, a slightly pretty perspex paperweight, two notebooks, and a small tin without a lid decorated with used stamps with a theme of children's story illustrations. You can assume that everything after "also" will be ending up on ebay or a charity shop, but the first two gifts were actually really on focus and I shall make a point of telling her so, because she is normally so bad at presents for me.

Anyway, the evening wore on in a dreary kind of way, and I told my best funny story suitable for parents ("Huckabee, asked by small child, who is his favourite writer, says 'Dr Suess'. Small child (aged 7 or 8, I gather), later asked by reporter what she thought of the Presidential candidates' answer, says 'I'm surprised, I thought he would be reading at a higher level. My favourite writer is C. S. Lewis.") which sent my dad into mild hysterics and made even my mum giggle a bit.

I left to catch the C16 at ten to ten, with the presents in a bag (Richard and Colin had given me a lovely birthday directory with pockets for cards) and it came at ten, only it stopped on Leith Street... and so I finished Christmas Day as I began it, with a long walk home through cold grey streets. This time, I really was tired.

I didn't open my presents from Ajay and my sister when I got in, which is a shame because they would have cheered me up: my sister gave me a rather splendid toy unicorn, with horns that you can change and three figures for the unicorn to impale with its horn. Ajay gave me a bag of goodies from Lush and a lovely wooden clip with a picture of a cat. I was too tired to do anything, pretty much, but feed cats and take rubbish out (the bin by this time was stacked) and wander around grouchily and put a load in the washing machine and wander round grouchily some more and read some Yuletide stories and finally go to sleep, still feeling grouchy.

But this morning I did a yuletide recs post, and read the comments on my yuletide story, and squee'd a bit, and opened my presents, and had a healthy breakfast of fruit. Banana, apple, clementine, kiwi fruit, and a dozen lychees. My mum gave my dad a whole box of lychees for Christmas, bought while they were shopping for fruit'n'veg: it is quite mad, but I got a largish bag of lychees out of it, so, well. (My mum concealed from my dad that she was buying a whole box of lychees by sending him to another part of the shop to pick up some parsley: he thought she was quite mad at the time, and from the look on his face, was not sure she was less insane when he discovered why. Erho. Also, I was sent home with a stollen. Great: more cake.

I have a book to read! Two. Three, including my dad's memoir. Also it is broad daylight and I should go out. Though I also have four flashfic stories to write.

Tags: family stuff, yuletide