The Christmas song I can even listen to in June is…
Gaudete, a 16th century Christmas Carol. There's a pretty good choral recording here, but I can't find a decent recording of the brass band arrangement by Kevin Norbury (which I really love).
Hot chocolate, egg nog or mulled wine?
Mulled wine as long as it doesn't have cloves in it. Hot chocolate is nice, especially with a slug of whisky, but not malted. Ovaltine is horrible. Never tried egg nog but it sounds disgusting.
When do you put your decorations up?
Late. We usually get to the weekend before and realise we're running out of time. This year we did it on the first weekend in December because we thought Baby Badger would get excited - if nothing else she enjoyed pinging the baubles!
What are you having for Christmas dinner?
I'm answering this in hindsight as a) I'm writing this after Christmas and b) I wouldn't have known as I wasn't doing the cooking (hurrah). We had turkey stuffed with a [insert bird name] stuffed with a [insert another bird name] with roast veg, honey glazed carrots, sprouts, port and cranberry sauce and bread sauce, followed by Christmas pudding and mince pies with brandy butter and brandy cream. I didn't, of course, eat the bread sauce because it's pointless - why add tasteless baby food to something already rather lovely?
What’s your favourite Christmas tradition?
Playing carols with the local brass band on the village green on Christmas Eve whilst Father Christmas gives out presents to the children. We even have carols sheets for anyone that wants to sing along (we usually get a good 30-40 in varying states of tipsy-ness).
Have you ever gone carol singing?
I think I did once, a long time ago. More recently I've played carols as part of a brass group, with and without singers. The best one was playing sat on hay bales on a trailer being pulled round a local village by a Landrover - very amusing and as a bonus we were fed and watered on the way round!
When did you discover the truth about Santa?
I'm not sure. I think I must have blocked out the trauma.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
Multi-coloured LED lights, hopefully in a subtle twinkling configuration but they seem to come on in random chase mode. Assorted shiny baubles. Decorations from various travels and memories: glow in the dark plastic snowflakes and icicles from my childhood; corndolly baubles from our honeymoon in Germany; enamelled baubles from a factory we visited in North Korea.
All I want for Christmas is…
Honestly? Some sleep, an opportunity to relax and a whole bunch of forgotten annual leave so that I don't have to go back to work until at least February. Given that the latter is pretty unlikely, I'll settle for two of these.
Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Lovely. Hurrah for decorations from childhood and travels and of course for brass bands. Oh - I wonder if this is the same Kevin Norbury with whom I played in the West Cheshire Schools Concert Band (and whom I knew as a child as his parents attended my dad's church...)I appear in the audience shown on TV when he was a finalist in the Young Musician of the Year as the concert band attended en masse to support him/be inspired.
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