Mistakes, I've made a few

Christmas dinner- no big mistakes here

Some of these mistakes I have made in my life have been whoppers and are probably not for public consumption. I am restricting my fessing up to what happened this Christmas. I will start by sharing my loss at "spoons". Yes, I played and I lost. Big Mistake. My reputation has tumbled and now needs some time to recover. The rest of the players clearly had it in for me. I lost. They cheered. The whole village heard it. I forgive them as it is Christmas,

Chateau Dop- the finest that Cosgrove can produce!

On the Canasta front, Sammi was over 2000 points up on me at one point. Again, I was onto a monumental loss that was a total embarrassment. Strangely, bit by bit I clawed it back to 4980 to me and 4915 to Sammi. We called it a draw. It is Christmas and that for me is games time. I haven't played as much as I would have liked but it has been fun despite the knocks to my reputation. 

Other bits have gone wrong along the way. I made a panettone bread and butter pudding to take to a friend's house on Boxing Day. It came out of the oven looking lovely. It slipped out of my silcone oven gloves and in a nanosecond it had splattered every surface of my little kitchen. The dish smashed on the floor. A massive disaster. Things were looking bad on the dessert front for Boxing Day dinner.

I also made a turkey pie with chopped turkey, veg and fresh cream, flavoured with Lee and Perrins.  I can tell you, it looked good, it tasted good; and I was proud of it. When we were ready to leave,  I put it in a carrier bag to carry through the village. Up to this point, there were no mistakes. At least I had something to take to my friends. 

I put the dish which was in the carrier bag on the floor by the door, Sammi emptied the washing machine downstairs, I popped upstairs to pick something else up and meanwhile Lucky had stuck his head in the bag and ate a fair chunk of the pie. Argh! I couldn't believe it. Lucky had slobbered over my special pie that only I knew tasted good. 

Sammi wanted to take a picture of it just to show that I really had made something. We ended up just taking a shop bought Christmas pudding which we then brought back to our place after the gathering as there was already one there. Another oops. We didn't take any drink as Peter - now an expert wine maker had given me loads of homemade wine for Christmas. I didn't want a coals to Newcastle moment. The Chateau Dop, BTW, made by Peter was our Christmas dinner tipple - every bit as good as a top class wine!

The worst of the mistakes happened before Christmas. Ezra-Mae came over for a sleepover with Uncle Sam and myself. She loves staying at my place. This is a real treat for her. Uncle Sam or as she says, Uncle Gammi shaved his beard and hair with her help and then we gave her a hair trim. I am not too sure how it happened but she wanted it to happen and we obliged. 

Sammi hoovered up the hair and I blow dried the new style. She thought she was a princess. The next morning Danielle came over. She didn't notice THE haircut until Ezra-Mae pointed it out. We didn't know it was her first ever cut or that it meant so much to Danielle. Danielle was so upset, words cannot describe the trauma. My grand daughter wanted to stay another night but this was not to be. I can't say how sorry both Sammi and I are. We can't stick the hair back on but Sammi has emptied the hoover, washed the hair and it awaits collection. 

Lucky before her shameful theft of pie!

So now Lucky is farting turkey pie farts and Shadow is in the dog house because she hid under my bed and we couldn't find her just when I needed to go to the station to catch a train. We called her name and ran through the house at least twice. I even thought she had escaped. It was a close call, I only just caught the train to Euston for the connection to Truro where I am currently writing this. Shadow's disappearance nearly made me miss the train. Argh! 

Beautiful skies in Cornwall

Christmas at 15c in Cosgrove

Mark and Syd in Falmouth

Meanwhile, Sammi has my house to himself where he is catching up on his writing and probably emptying the cupboards of food. I just hope he is taking good care of Sally! I am in Cornwall having a nice relaxing holiday. All I need to worry about is catching a train home in time to make it to the pub for New Year's Eve. What could go wrong?