Christmas Eve/Day will be just the two of us.
Not for the first time. When your kids get married off you share them on alternate Christmases with the other set of parents.
More music than usual probably: certainly Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. But VR has a new suggestion:
“Let’s not get dressed. PJs and dressing gowns throughout the day.”
Good idea! Also, if I didn’t shave and used a spoon to eat my dinner* I’d be sluffing (The educated classes spell it sloughing). Snakes slough when they get rid of their skin; more recently, and especially in Yorkshire, the word can mean temporary rejection of all middle-class morals and standards.
Well why not?
And there’s a poignant detail. I have slippers but if I wear them all day it’s too much off and on. Instead I wear my old thick-wool après-ski socks and weep an occasional nostalgic tear. Once I frolicked among the snow-covered high mountains but that was in the days when my legs wore muscles and I knew not fear.
Some things never change. I will blow dust off the cocktail shaker and make a pair of KCBs, courtesy Mr Boston’s Cocktail Guide, a definitive encyclopedia. Main constituents are gin and kummel (an aniseed/caraway seed liqueur) in the ratio 6:1. Very adult.
* An individual beef Wellington.
COMPENSATION For at least ten years VR has been a member of Ewyas Harold art group, presently hibernating from Covid-19. She suggested they all create Christmas cards: the originals to go to one other member, the scanned versions to form an internet exhibition. My second blog, Tone Deaf renewed, was launched as a test pad for New Blogger. It’s doing nothing so that’s where the cards reside.
You could pay them a VISIT.
Thanks for sharing the cards with us. They are beautiful. I looked up the Mr. Boston's KCB version. It looks yummy. I can't help but wonder what KCB stands for since the site I went to didn't explain. I will look further. I noticed there wasn't a review yet on the site for the KCB. Here's your chance! If you do write one, let us know so we can go and read it. https://mrbostondrinks.com/recipes/kcb-cocktail
ReplyDeleteColette: We acquired Old Mr Boston's de Luxe Official Bartender's Guide at a garage sale, probably in Mount Lebanon, a Pittsburgh suburb. Its 150 pages cover about 950 recipes and by far the best feature is the indexing which comes in two parts: purely alphabetical, and grouped according to the base liquor. For four or five consecutive years family guests staying with us at Christmas were subjected to a marathon tasting (62 recipes all told) with strict rules about imaginative adjectives. No one was allowed to say "All right", for instance. KCB was the only one to score 10/10 and I myself provided the single-adjective judgment, already used in the above post. Adult.
DeleteRather than chase down the original meaning (sure to be boring and/or bombastic), far better to come up with one's own guess as a tribute:
Kingdom come, Begod!
Killer-class booze
Kick (a) conservative bum.
But you could do much better. You've got edyoocayshun.
Not shaving for me, but I know that wouldn't be for you.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: If not shaving is such a pleasure, why not grow a beard?
DeleteI did that once as a sort of protest when the end being nigh was announced at Yorkshire Bank. I decided it made me look even more ancient.
Delete