Christmas Day

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It’s been a wonderful, cosy day for us here. Outside, it was misty and cool, but the rain stayed away. The boys began to emerge around six to open their Xmas stockings, and we cooked up scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and crispy bacon for breakfast… washed down with apple juice or Buck’s Fizz. Industrial-scale present unwrapping followed, and then it was time to begin cooking once more. A small duck first, for variety, and then about eleven, the legs of lamb, pierced with cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary, started roasting low and slow. Potatoes, roasted veggies, stuffing balls, pigs-in-blankets and sprouts-with-bacon all materialised throughout the afternoon. We all sat together and ate around four.

The boys occupied themselves with card games, quizzes, movies… and a few cocktails. The star of the show was Dash’s main present… a Meta VR headset that proved endlessly entertaining. This worked both for the person using it and those gathered around to laugh at how ridiculous it made them look as they tweaked imaginary controls hanging in mid-air and fought off invisible skeletons approaching from all sides. Nevertheless, the experience is good enough that I think VR is finally coming into its time. Throughout my lifetime, it has been one of those things ‘just around the corner’ for the last 30 years, but always lacking the compute needed to become more than a mere novelty. It looks like that’s changing now…