Christmas Flame.

Woke up late today and was surprised Mum wasn’t already awake and pottering around the house. Spent the morning being really, really quiet until we realised Mum wasn’t actually in the house and had gone to Aunt J’s yesterday while we were at the wedding.

Mum caught a train back to Aberdeen at lunchtime, and arrived home just as I was standing in the garden trying not to be sick (having fled the kitchen)... We’d bought a leg of lamb and I was attempting to prepare it for slow-cooking and eating at dinner, when I realised that although the meat itself smelled fine, the bone smelt absolutely foul. It really turned my stomach – I can handle gore, but smells really get to me. After some umm-ing and ahh-ing (it was in date and had been fairly expensive), we considered cutting out the bone and just cooking the meat. When even M started to feel ill, we gave up and threw it away, though. Yuck.

We all fancied a walk at the beach, and I was determined to slow-cook SOMETHING for dinner, so instead I prepared a chilli with big chunks of beef and left it to simmer away while we headed to Sand Dollar for lunch. We’ve been their best customers over the last 10 days! We had a good walk before M drove us back home for a seat on the sofa and a glass of wine.

I’d managed to leave my handbag at the wedding venue yesterday (d’oh!) so we popped round to R’s parents’ house to pick it up. They looked tired and a bit fragile... Despite their hangovers they’d had to spend all day clearing up the mess from yesterday! We went home via A’s Mum’s house. He and L fly back to Norway tomorrow and it was good to see them before they left to give them their presents. Junior A seemed to like his monkey toy, and A and L liked their birdhouse. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can go and see it in situ in Norway!

An evening playing Scrabble (Mum won), basking in front of the fire and watching TV with a glass of something cold. The slow-cooked chilli went down well after 5 hours in the oven at 160, with home-made guacamole and lots of crème fraiche. Another great day with family and friends. Happy happy.