My Festive Season

Yes darhlings I have quite the glamourous life these days! I left Bamako on the 22nd and arrived bright and early in Paris on the morning of the 23rd all primed for a spot of Christmas food shopping. I left my bags in the lockers at Gare du Nord and then stepped out into the frosty December morning to discover that Paris was essentially closed!

(So much for being the globetrotting sophisticate - I am so un-French I forgot that everything is shut on Sunday so that you can take your grand-mère out for lunch!)

As it turned out the Marché St Quentin, only 4 or so blocks away from the Gare du Nord down Boulevard de Magenta, was open extra hours so that people like moi could get hold of their last minute fromages, vins et paté du quoin - which I did!


Café floor

However, before tackling cheese-decisions, I felt it was necessary to stop in at my favourite café in the Marais again for lunch, a fortifying glass of Languedoc rouge and a coffee. I was then able to visit the magnificent chocolatier next door to select the world's most sublime macaroons for my kind hosts in London - and so I journeyed forth and made it to my comfy seat on Eurostar laden with French goodies and plenty of cheer for my arrival a couple of hours later at Kings Cross-St Pancras - nice!


Tower Bridge - London of course

Thus I walked into Chez Buchkins feeling relaxed and excited to be somewhere actually cold for a change, and then I discovered that there were ...


Christmas stockings

... waiting for me (in fact, a high-heeled Christmas boot for moi-même).

Cathryn and Mike and I spent the next day working on our bounty for Christmas lunch - a very much smaller gathering than the normal Raos-Chappell-O'Malley family do, but I managed to catch up with that event via the webcam, so saw all the kids running about and compared Christmas bellies with the rellies.


Christmas lunch

There is something deeply satisfying about the traditional Christmas lunch of roast turkey, baked leg ham, bread sauce, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, roast potatoes and root vegetables and an assortment of steamed greens (including Brussel sprouts), followed by plum pudding (complete with pounds inside) with brandy sauce, cream and ice-cream, fruitcake, mince pies, shortbread, and Cathryn's special Christmas chocolates - and the correct climatic conditions!

We didn't however manage to eat the ham, turkey and stuffing sandwiches (traditional Raos-Chappell-O'Malley Christmas dinner) until the next day because in typical Christmas-day style our intentions to sit down at 2pm didn't match the reality of starting to dine at 4pm. In fact we had so much ham over the next few days Cathryn declared Saturday a ham free day.

I got many presents from santa, all along a theme of helping me survive back onsite - so luxury long-life foods were abundant in my Christmas boot. I really must have been good! And then, when Cathryn and I hit London's high streets in the post Christmas sales (mayhem - never again), I found a little present for myself.


Italian boots

How could I say no to those - they were calling to me?

With Christmas over, Art and Trude decided to host a glam dinner party for us on New Year's Eve in their newly purchased, newly renovated London townhouse - very special. So, for the first time in years all I had to do was show up, and enjoy some ...


Champagne - yes please!

... followed by a selection of Arthur's favourite 'things' ...


Luxury entrée

(Tapenade risotto topped with foie gras, accompanied by Art's pea-dominated vegetable 'thing'.)


Bangers - no mash though

(Traditional English sausages with angels and devils on horseback, accompanied by Art's pumpkin-dominated vegetable 'thing'.)


Poires belle Helène

(A traditional dessert 'thing' that was very well received - the prince of dessert fruit starring again.)

With me at New Year's were some high-quality companions, and we discovered that some of us were more talented than others with the pea-shooters - just one of the many cool items that exploded out of Art's table firecracker! (No I've never seen one before either - what a great gift - surely illegal in Oz.)


...after the firecracker!

From left to right in the film you can see Caroline, Mike, Iain, Rodney, Cathryn (who is torturing Mike) and Trudy ... the only ones missing are ...


Helène

... and of course you all know ...


Art!

For such an occasion it was impossible for me not to inaugurate the most amazing pair of shoes I will probably ever possess ...


My Dorothy dancing shoes

So I claimed the dancefloor - naturellement!


Got it going on