To paraphrase the New York Times from Christmas Day: once more the battle has come to and end and for another year the War on Christmas is over. And yes, once more, Christmas was victorious!
I trust that we all had a wonderful time and we all managed to make it onto Santa's good list this year. For me Father Christmas came a little earlier than usual on Christmas Eve; he came in the middle of the afternoon. What did he bring me? He brought me a spirit sapping, agonising Falcons loss to the Buccaneers — a loss which, with the Falcons being eliminated from the playoffs, sent my gambling firmly in to the red for the year. At least the Scouser from Orlando, that I met at Barley's during the Chicago game, will have enjoyed the result. Bastard!
Apart from the part of the evening where I was weeping into my beer in the corner of the room, Christmas Eve was very pleasant. Our house entertained one of the housemate's mother and sister, I got to roast a chicken for the first time — discovering that in this day and age it is ridiculously easy to roast a chicken.
Christmas Day itself was more of a low key affair, and no not just because we were hungover. The day largely featured sleeping, present opening, phone calls home, watching King Kong and a trip to the bar (well a trip to five bars actually, but the principle is the same).
Yesterday I got all adventurous and took a drive around south eastern Ohio. I stopped in Chillicothe, Ohio's first capital, for lunch (a greasy Chinese buffet that was the only place open downtown, and which made me feel queasy for the next couple of hours), lost to myself two times out of three games of pool (an impressive feat, I think you'll agree) at the coffee and billiards place in downtown Portsmouth and drove through Haverhill — discovering that the one in Ohio (which was apparently named after the one in New Hampshire which in turn was named after the one in Massachusetts which took its name from the hell hole in Suffolk in which I spent far too much time during my formative years), much like the one in Suffolk, is not worth getting out of the car for, or for that matter even being conscious in the car while the car is unfortunate enough to be there. (I'm just taking a little breather here as that was a very long sentence.) After Haverhill I went by Ohio's southernmost point, cleverly named South Point, before swinging north up the Ohio river, through pretty little Gallipolis with it's Our House Tavern Museum (which was sadly closed when I drove by), before ending up in an Athens coffee shop called Donkey for a little respite from the driving. It was very nice to get out of dull, dreary, cold Columbus for a while, even if the rest of Ohio was equally dull, dreary and cold yesterday.
1 comment:
I'm impressed by the roast chicken :-)
This year I managed to roast a turkey for the first time, which was surprisingly successful. Of course, given that turkeys are not exactly small, and that we had four adults plus a pair of very short people for dinner, I'm going to be eating turkey sandwiches for the next week...
Probably followed by turkey pie and turkey curry.
Maybe following your attack of culinary adventurousness you might make Christmas Puddings next year (also actually very easy to do, although a bit time-consuming).
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