Christmas: that time we pretend to be a family again. This makes it sound bad but it isn’t – though there is always a jolt at the end. The routine is this: I turn up on the Eve, play with the children, often literally, with some kind of board game that they have, inexplicably, become attached to. (This year there were two: one geography based, at which I was terrible, and another based on the colours of, for example, company logos, at which I was also terrible.) I then go to bed on the sofa in front of a glowing fireplace, and wake up early on Christmas morning to start cooking the lunch.
Repeated experience has taught me that the best thing to do is to start at nine: that way everything will be on the table by three. Of course, this means we miss King Prince Charles’s speech, but we are not put into this world for pleasure alone. I try to hold off the wine for as long as possible but it becomes impossible to postpone the inevitable, and by 11am I am taking little sips as I prepare the (deep breath) goose, roast potatoes and parsnips, red cabbage, lentils, sprouts with lardons and croutons, stuffing (sausage meat, goose liver, celery, onion, prunes, chestnuts, breadcrumbs, sherry and an egg), pigs in blankets, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, and, at the very end, the highly stressful and time-sensitive business of making the gravy and getting everyone to sit down before anything goes cold. This is not a problem, as everyone present knows the meal will be fantastic. But not for me: I hunch over my plate, wrung out, exhausted, half-drunk, and too wired to eat. I pick at my food and listen to the merriment around me, as if from another world. No one is surprised at this any more.
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