Oh Boy.

“There is a surfeit of, well just about everything”, I said, not to anyone in particular as the only living creatures there to hear me were the dog and three cats and, whilst I am awfully fond of all them and appreciate their companionship enormously, it would be pushing it to say they are good conversationalists.
It was Boxing day. The rest of the family were still in bed, even the littlest girls had given up on their Plymobil pyramid and slept in. Sighing, I scraped the vestiges of Christmas Day’s dinner into yet another bulging black bin liner. The pudding had dried overnight and had adhered itself to my posh plates like cement, it was no wonder then that all our tummies felt distended and the aromas emanating from various guests’ nether regions was toxic.
The dog looked particularly eager to help with the task of clearing the food but as I had yet to locate a whole tin of barely opened Quality Street I couldn’t take the chance of feeding him anything other than his customary Large Breed Maintenance kibble, just in case. Pushing him out of the way, I replaced foil on the turkey and ham and cling film on the pudding and trifle. The cheese too needed re-wrapping. I tried to rearrange the fridge but it was an onerous task. Creams, salads and pickles vied for attention on every shelf, vegetables that hadn’t made the first cut were desperate now to be peeled and prepared but I wondered when any of us would ever again be able to look a sprout in the eye let alone of dish of pureed swede.
Even the cava, which was stuffed in the door of the fridge, was making me feel a little sweaty. Had I really needed to drink it from breakfast the previous day? I was so proud of my home-made sloe gin though, that I’d been eager to try a couple of Sloe-motion cocktails. They’d been very moreish. Yesterday.
It was all too, too much and we still had Boxing Day to get through when all that was left would be reheated and served with chips as opposed to goose fat, crispy, roast potatoes. Hubby walked in, looking I might add, a little dyspeptic.
“Morning love”, he said, with a pained expression and holding his belly and burping, “Oh sorry. Dear God, we ate a lot yesterday”. And kissing me as he walked past, he patted the dog with one hand and lifted the full bin liner with the other and carried it into the garden, to sit, jostled amongst the other five hundred.
“I slept like the dead though”, I said, putting the glass, turkey shaped dish of cranberry sauce on the bottom shelf, next to the whole St Endellion Cornish brie, that had about two millimetres cut from it.
“Which”, I added, “is probably more than can be said for my brother and his wife”. Forget the books, the scent, bath-salts and CDs which are a given on any Christmas, our greatest gift this year and joy to the world, was the birth of my baby nephew on Christmas Eve morning. Fabulous. Hope springs eternal with the birth of a new baby and he is a big and bouncing nine pounder. Having had a couple that size, I remember vividly the nourishment they need to keep their weight on a continuing upward trend on the all important percentile chart which paediatricians, midwives and health visitors obsess about. It’s a full time job that continues all morning, a lot of the afternoon, a few hours in the evening, oh and most of the night.
“Poor them”, said Hubby, opening the dishwasher stiffly, “Lovely as he is I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.”
“He’s exquisite”, I replied then, very slowly, added, “Would you consider a reversal?”
Hubby who was bent over emptying the dishwasher, jumped up as though electrocuted, a bloody great big carving knife in his hand.
“It’s ok”, I laughed, shieing away, “I was only joking”.
“Jeeze Alice, don’t do that to me, my tubes have been well and truly snipped and I can assure you that much as I look forward to cuddling my nephew, I do not, under any circumstances, want any surgeon, anywhere near, any part of my severed vas deferens”.
“Hmm” I said, “Emphatic.” We put the rest of the clean dishes away in silence and refilled the dishwasher and put another washing cycle on. By the time we’d made a couple of cups of tea, two sleepy headed little girls came into the kitchen and muttered something about poached eggs.
“Won’t a bowl of cocoa pops do darling?” I asked, “Only I really don’t want to perform the slightest culinary task before midday”.
Speaking of which, at the stroke of midday, more people turned up for lunch including a pale looking brother and his daughter. The other half of his family were finally sleeping.
Later, once everyone had gone home, I threw aside my apron, donned a new skirt and we all went by taxi round to Mag’s house for a soiree. It was bliss to sit in someone else’s house and not be responsible for what was in the oven.
Mags has a lovely house, full of interesting objets d’art and antiques hither and yon, one piece being a chamber pot that sits next to the downstairs loo. I was a little distracted however when, on pulling up my tights and looking down, seeing that the chamber pot had been, how can I put this delicately, utilised. Quietly, I found Mags and whispered my discovery before she rushed away, blushing. Minutes later she returned laughing hysterically, the chamber pot in her hand and tears pouring down her face. She could barely stand upright.
“What is it?”, I asked, laughing too.
“It’s not a poo”, she howled, “It’s a chocolate profiterole”. To which the Red-Head quipped,
“I didn’t like it and couldn’t find a bin”.