Documenting a lovely week

Plus crackers, a great drink, good movies to watch

I have had the most wonderful week and I’d like to tell you about it. It feels important to record it, so that I can remember it when I have one of those weeks in which nothing goes right (they happen). Some magical combination of things resulted in seven days in which nearly all my favourite things and some marvellous novelties were all in there. On the face of it, nothing extraordinary happened, which is perhaps why it worked so well?

On Monday we came back from our epic trip to Uruguay – a long flight back but no jet lag because the time difference is only three hours (can’t work it out at all but it’s true). Tuesday, I went to see my son and his schoolmates in their GCSE drama performances and I love that sort of thing – young people having a go at something completely different. Wednesday evening I chaired my local school governing body meeting, which probably doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but I get huge satisfaction and pleasure from giving something back to the community in which I live. Sorry, I know how hideously worthy that sounds but it’s the truth. (There was a study recently which showed that doing charitable things makes you feel good, but doing them secretly makes you feel even better. Love that.)

Thursday started with me filming a short piece to camera for a documentary on the arts that is being made, and that felt generally quite glamorous. Then an old friend took me out for a delicious Greek lunch in Marylebone. After that, I went to watch my son play in a match (mother’s joy) and from there hot-footed it to Portobello Road for (one too many) drinks with my BF and our agent. On Friday, I went to St Martin’s in the Fields, the church on the corner of Trafalgar Square, for a ludicrously brilliant evening showcasing Mozart’s Greatest Hits (as it were), as part of a partnership with Sky Arts – there’s a new series coming out on December 21st, which is based on Peter Shaffer’s film Amadeus. Actors from the series introduced various sections and because it was Mozart, I even recognised some of the music, so there was the bonus of feeling a tiny bit clever. In the concert was a debut by a French pianist, only 16 years old, Arielle Beck, and she was so good, I cried. I am going to go to more things there, and the tickets are absurdly cheap. Look at this –Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by candlelight in the new year, and the tickets range from £9 to £32! Shoehorn in that culture! (London was absolutely RAMMED by the way, we could hardly get down the pavement.)

It doesn’t stop there. On Saturday, we drove down to stay with old friends – what’s a better pleasure than that? – who fed us delicious food and sat us comfortably by their roaring log fire for more chat, before we went off to visit other friends with their beautiful newborn baby. She was mostly clamped to her mother’s boob (bliss), but I got to hold her for a little bit, big black eyes looking around, tiny snuffling noises that made me want to melt into the ground. From there, off to a friend’s 50th birthday party, in actual Bath Spa. We stood around the pool (is it a pool in a spa?), watching the steam rising off the water, drinking English champagne and quaffing canapes. Then a proper dinner, with very funny speeches, and I got on very well with the chaps sitting on either side of me, and there was dancing afterwards.

Sunday, we drove home, arriving just as our son had finished making pancakes for his two friends who had stayed over. I love teenagers in the house (I actually do!). And shortly after, my niece, and her half-brother and their dad came over to help put up the Christmas lights outside the house. We are hosting a station for the village’s Christmas Lights Walk this weekend – everyone wanders through the village with a mug, filling it up with either mulled wine or hot choc at various houses – and I thought I should get my act together. Or rather my ex-brother-in-law’s act, given he is the man who lights up Bicester and National Trust houses (and asking him to help with my lights was like asking a surgeon to cut my fingernails but he is a very nice man, and kindly agreed to do it). Then we all – teenagers and children, ex-bro-in-law, granny, and us – sat down for an enormous lunch at 4pm. I was worried that one chicken might not stretch far enough, so had roasted enough potatoes to sink the Lusitania (does anyone know that joke anymore?) and finally collapsed onto the sofa in blissed-out stupor when they’d gone.

On Monday, we wondered why we felt a bit tired…

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OK, so Christmas. The overwhelm has started already, hasn’t it? I was in Tesco last Saturday – reminder: at that point, not yet the 1st of December – and people were elbowing each other to grab boxes of crackers and there were mountains of food piled up in the freezer section, and there were about 143 different types of nuts and dried fruits for sale, and I just thought: CHILL OUT, GUYS. This madness is not sustainable for another three weeks.

Well, gee. We are going away soon and although I am looking forward to it immensely, I have realised that because we don’t return until the 18th, I basically have to have Christmas in the bag by the end of the weekend. And given that I don’t even begin to think about it until 1st December (unless forced to think about it while in the freezer aisle), this is proving something of a challenge. I am shopping in the style of a losing but eager contestant in Supermarket Sweep, and I know where this will lead because it’s happened before: one person in my family will end up with a stocking the size of duvet cover and everyone else will find nothing but one satsuma that has started to dry out inside. I never remember what I’ve bought and whoever is uppermost in mind gets the most. (Oh, apart from me. I always do extremely well out of Christmas because all those gift guides contain many, many things that I fancy for moi.)

That’s it from me on Christmas shopping. Absolutely no help to you whatsoever.

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BUT! I have been looking for good crackers and I think I’ve found them. They are at Meri Meri. These are £30 for six, but the presents look decent. The ones I’ve ordered look very pretty indeed. I looked hard at Fortnum & Mason’s but I felt for the price they just weren’t LUXE enough. If I’m going to pay £100 for a box of crackers, I want the toys inside to be solid gold, not the same sort of thin tin toys you get with Aldi’s £5.99 Luxury Crackers.

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Also, trying to cut down on the booze – clever month to start, eh? – and have found these tins of dealcoholised margaritas. They taste surprisingly like the real thing, especially if you add ice, rub lime around the rim of the glass and dip it into Tajin, a sort of miracle spicy lime mix that is also delicious added to eg mango or melon. But please note: these drinks contain 0.5% alcohol, so are not recommended for alcoholics. That’s enough to trigger a relapse. If you are merely trying to cut back, hard recommend.

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Finally, gave up on telly and watched movies this week. Favourites lately: Benediction (BBC iPlayer), a very moving and wonderfully acted film about Siegfried Sassoon. Mr Burton (BBC iPlayer), similar to above but about Richard Burton (with Toby Jones as the man in the title - it gets explained and the story is pretty amazing). And Overboard (Prime), because there’s never not a good time for Goldie Hawn.

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That’s it for now! More next week. Share the love – click the heart, tell me your shopping tips or drinks or what you want for Christmas!

Love,

Jess xx