Making It Up As I Go Along (10 page)

I’ve always wished I could be one of those
women who can cook complicated dinners for twenty people at the drop of a hat, while remaining
cheerful, fragrant and unshiny. Those fabulous creatures who can receive flowers, offer drinks,
stir an oxtail jus and turn down the oven
all at the same time
.

My lovely mother-in-law, Shirley, is one such
woman – she is fabulously capable and makes it look so easy.

I’m convinced this ability is a gift
you’re either born with or you’re not, and sadly I wasn’t. I’m not
entirely useless – I’m good at crosswords and I’m unusually skilled at
untangling delicate gold chains – but I’m afraid I fall down at the
hospitality-and-catering interface.

I like having people over and feeding them
– I think cooking for someone is a very loving thing to do – but the highest number
I’d ever prepared dinner for was … four. And the highest number of different
foodstuffs I’d managed to have ready to serve at the same time was three (potatoes,
chicken, cauliflower, for what it’s worth).

Then suddenly, a few years ago – and
I’m still at a loss as to how it actually happened – I somehow managed to invite
thirteen members of my family, including Shirley, to my house for Christmas Day. Through an
appalling mix-up,
I’d mistaken myself for a grown-up
.

I admit I had my own house. I even had my own
kitchen, but
my style of cooking was to throw everything in one big
casserole and feck it in the oven on a low heat for eight hours. I had quite literally
no
idea
where to start cooking a Christmas dinner. I was afraid of turkeys, I didn’t
like the way they looked so dead, and the thought of having to put my hand into the innards of
one of them made me shudder.

It was early summer, probably May or June, when I
issued my ill-thought-out invitation, so I dealt with it, like I deal with all challenging
situations, by putting it to the back of my mind and telling myself that it hadn’t really
happened. I couldn’t
possibly
have told my siblings and extended family that
I’d cook Christmas dinner. And even if I had, they’d forget.

But they didn’t forget … Oh no, they
were excited.

Somewhere around October, I realized it really
was
going to happen and then I was seized by genuine panic. So much so that (I’m
ashamed about this, don’t think I’m not) I decided I’d have to get an outside
caterer in. But not a chance. All the outside caterers were fully booked – had been, in
fact, since the previous January.

So there was nothing for it: I told everyone that
there would be no turkey or roast parsnips or suchlike this year. We were going to break with
tradition and I was going to make my Special Bean Stew.

Well, there was UPROAR. I was quite upset –
I’d thought everyone liked my Special Bean Stew, they’d certainly
said
they
did at the time. But there was widespread insistence on turkey. Even those who didn’t like
turkey said we had to have it.

My siblings swore blind that they’d help on
the day – but I knew they wouldn’t. I know what they’re like: too busy lying
on the couch, watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
and eating cheese straws to come and
stir the gravy. (Of course Shirley would have
been able to do the whole
thing in her sleep, but I wouldn’t let myself ask her – after all, she was a guest
in my home, I had some pride.)

So this is what I did: I bought everything
pre-prepared. I mean
everything.
A pre-prepared turkey, already boned (and stuffed, so
no need for me to put my hand into its innards), pre-prepared roast potatoes, stuffing,
parsnips, bread sauce, sprouts, trifles …
everything.

But I was still waking in the middle of the
night, genuinely overwhelmed. I knew this was too big for me, so – and this is where I
stop being able to take any credit – I turned it all over to Himself, who ran the entire
operation like a military campaign.

He constructed a detailed schedule: every single
thing, right down to the humble chipolata, had a time slot. Because we have only one smallish
oven, my dad’s beloved hostess trolley was called into action and on Christmas morning
Himself closeted himself in the kitchen and began clattering baking trays.

Rita-Anne and Caitríona were commandeered to
help, but I was ordered to stay well away, in case my anxiety was infectious. Instead I was
placed on cheese-straw detail (i.e. passing them around). Now and again an extra body would be
summoned to help in the kitchen and the door would open and steam would billow out ominously and
I’d bite my bottom lip and worry …

Then, all of a sudden, it was three o’clock
– the appointed hour – and bowls of food were being ferried to the table.

Amazingly, everything
was ready at the same
time
. Even more amazingly, it tasted lovely and I was so happy and relieved that, as I was
looking around the table at thirteen happy faces, I had a wild notion: maybe we should do it all
again next year.

First published in
Waitrose Kitchen
, December
2009.

Every year it seems to start earlier and earlier.
No sooner is Halloween out of the way than it begins: the bellyaching about Christmas.
It’s the only topic of conversation and wherever I turn I’m faced with people
whingeing that they’d rather gnaw their own ear off than go to their office party. That
they wish they could take off to a desert island until the whole wretched thing is over. That
there’s nothing in the shops but horrible spangly red dresses made-to-order for work
parties – i.e. suitable to be torn, puked on, jived in and at the end of the night thrown
in a shamefaced ball in the bottom of a wardrobe, never to be worn again.

On and on go the complaints – the expense,
the crowds, the family get-togethers, the hangovers … It’s all such a cliché.
However –
and mark me closely here
– just because it’s a cliché
doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

For the record, Christmas
is
awful.
It’s official: more marriages break up around Christmas than at any other time of the
year. That and summer holidays, of course. The unbearable workload coupled with unmeetable
expectations is what does for most people.

The first sign that the dreadfulness is nigh is
when Himself disappears up into the attic and re-emerges with his beloved Rudy. Rudy is a
four-foot-high, light-festooned reindeer and for the past five years he has spent the month of
December positioned over our front pouch, for all and sundry to see.

It’s as if some
esteemed visitor has come to stay. Himself watches the weather forecast with edge-of-his-seat
anxiety and the words ‘high winds’ fill him with dread. If we go out for the evening
he can’t relax, and if it starts raining he insists on an early departure, so he can check
that Rudy is all right.

Rudy was a big enough responsibility, but two
years ago a life-size Santa was added to the menagerie, then last December I spent one miserable
afternoon holding on to Himself’s legs as he leant out of a bedroom window, stringing red
‘berry’ lights from a tree.

It’s mortifying. Our house is lurid enough
at the best of times due to a misunderstanding with our paint – the patch test looked like
a soft, pretty lilac but writ large the colour has somehow mutated into a gaudy, dayglo mauve,
which means our home functions as a local navigational landmark (‘Turn right at the
horrible purple house …).

The funny thing is that normally Himself has a
great terror of tackiness, but I suspect that if he had his way we’d be adorned and
bedecked with Christmas lights and climbing Santas all year round. We’d be like one of
those houses that gets on local telly, which people actually make pilgrimages to.

Left to my own devices I’d be quite happy
not to put up even a sprig of tinsel – at least then the carol singers might leave me
alone. But at the moment, as soon as they clock Rudy on his lofty perch, they mistakenly assume
that our household is awash with seasonal cheer. ‘This lot will give us a couple of
bob,’ they think. ‘This lot won’t turn the lights off and creep around on all
fours, pretending they’re not in.’

And it’s not that I begrudge them the
money, it’s the standing at the front door in the perishing cold as they sing three verses
of ‘Away in a Manger’ that I can’t take. The problem is that I have
no idea how to behave – should I tap my foot and move my head jauntily,
like I’m humming along? Or should I stare wistfully over their head as if their lyrics
have stirred deep thoughts in me?

Instead I’m frozen in a rictus of
embarrassment, desperate not to make eye-contact, repeating over and over in my head,
Don’t sing another verse, please stop now, oh please God, don’t let them sing
another verse …

The only way I can cope with Christmas is to ask
myself,
WWSD
– What Would Scrooge Do? He wouldn’t go to his office party,
that’s for sure, and at least now that I’m self-employed it’s one thing I
don’t have to endure. God, it used to be awful – the drunken declarations of
dislike, the tears, the lost shoes. I was a disgrace.

Nor would Scrooge send Christmas cards. So
neither do I. The first year I thought the guilt would kill me, but it’s got easier. Maybe
it’s like committing murder: the first one is the hardest.

Call me mean-spirited. I don’t care. I just
can’t bear seeing people whose lives are already stretched to overload having to take on a
ton more stuff.

Come, follow me! Lay down your wrapping paper and
embrace your inner Scrooge! You have nothing to lose but a nervous breakdown!

First published in
Marie Claire
, December
2005.

Every year, around 2 January, I say, ‘Right,
that’s it! Next Christmas I’m going far, far away, to some country where Christmas
is actually illegal
.
’ Iran, perhaps. Or Saudi Arabia maybe. A place where
there’s no turkey, no
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, where hopefully I’d get into
big trouble for humming ‘Away in a Manger’ on the bus.

I always emerge from the festive period
exhausted, tubby, smothered with a head-cold, sporting a chinful of stress-induced cold sores
and in the grip of a powerful desire to live alone on top of a mountain for the next six months.
The worst thing of all is that I feel like a failure, like a curmudgeonly oddball: everyone else
loves Christmas, what’s wrong with
me
?

But then I made the delightful discovery that
I’m not the only one who feels this way. Oh no. Lots of people dread Christmas. And once I
knew I was not alone, my attitude changed and I realized that actually there’s an awful
lot that’s good about Christmas.

For some people it’s about the birth of
Jesus Christ, and if that’s your thing, good luck to you, no judgements here, but for me,
Christmas is essentially about
food.
Oh, to have the freedom to eat whatever I
want!

Here’s how it is. For most of the year I
feel ashamed of every bite of food that goes into my mouth. My internal monitor, that horrible
calorie abacus, keeps track of everything and replays any gluttony in order to shame and reshame
me.

No matter how little I eat in
any one day, there’s always the feeling that I could have managed on less. My appetite is
like an out-of-control Rottweiler straining on a chain, and even as I take the first mouthful of
anything I’m already worried about the last and how I’ll cope when it’s all
gone.

Refined sugar is my greatest love and my greatest
heartbreak, and trying to stay away from it is like getting up every day and going to war
– there’s danger at every turn. And then December rolls around …

I, along with my four siblings and assorted
spouses and children, usually spend Christmas Day at my parents’ house, which is
transformed into a refined sugar wonderland for the duration of the festivities. It feels like
every room I enter, I stumble over boxes of biscuits stacked knee-high. Hidden behind the
curtains in the dining room are three incongruous boxes of Black Magic. I open the fridge for
some swotty blueberries and there, twinkling at me, is the perfect Central Casting trifle. Dad
even gets me my own personal selection box as he has done every year since time immemorial, even
though every year I beg him not to.

I haven’t a hope, resistance is futile,
this is far too big for me. And suddenly it’s like a great weight has been taken off me
and I grant myself the freedom to eat whatever I want. For a limited period only – like a
half-price sale – and I feel skippy and carefree and bingey.

Last Christmas, I began the day, as I have begun
every Christmas Day in living memory, by eschewing my usual moral-high-ground breakfast of
organic steel-cut oatmeal and instead going back to bed with a tin of Roses, giving myself
permission to eat steadily through it until I can see the metal at the bottom. I felt sick long
before I reached that happy point, but knowing that there were no limits was what made it so
pleasurable. (In fact,
this ritual has become so ingrained that, after
bitter complaints from my siblings, Mam and Dad are now obliged to buy a second box of Roses for
general usage.)

And I felt no guilt. None at all. And frankly the
subconscious knowledge that I can go wild at Christmas is probably what makes the denial of the
rest of the year possible.

And
that
is what Christmas is for.

People complain bitterly about the
Groundhog
Day
misery of being trapped, once again, at close quarters with their family, of time
wasted watching shite telly, just like they do every year. But they’re missing the point.
Christmas is a holiday from guilt, from restraint and from responsibility – and oh, the
relief.
I may not be sunning myself in the Maldives but I’m taking a mini-break
from my own rules.

Yes, I know that as I play the Selection Box
Challenge with my sisters (basically you eat as much of your selection box as you can in a
minute – Dad times us) I’ll pay the price in fatso shame in January, but for the
moment it’s like a ceasefire. I can stop fighting.

It’s the same with alcohol – I no
longer drink, but those that do are made to feel perpetually guilty. You think you’re
simply having a couple of glasses of wine with your dinner after a bad day at work, but then you
discover that actually, no, you’re a binge drinker.

However, at Christmas time, you’re
obliged
to drink – the office party, the team lunch, the catch-up with old
school friends, the mulled wine at your neighbours … the drinking opportunities are
endless and, well, you don’t want people thinking you’re a killjoy, now, do you?

The month of December is the only time of the
year when you can get scuttered eleven nights in a row and put it down to sociability, and
frankly it’s what makes the forbearance of the rest of the year endurable.

Another thing that’s
lovely about Christmas is the comfort of our own unique rituals – and this is a Keyes one:
when we were younger, money was in short supply and because Dad was afraid we’d have all
the Christmas goodies eaten before the day itself, we were forbidden to eat any until he blew
the whistle on Christmas morning. But Caitríona and I couldn’t bear the waiting so,
before the appointed time, we used to sneak into the darkened dining room – repository of
the selection boxes – and sneakily slit one open, slide out a Curly Wurly and a Crunchie,
reseal the box with a handy piece of Sellotape, and tiptoe from the room, like cat thieves. And
we
still
do it every Christmas Eve. We leave the dining room and find Dad and sit and
ostentatiously eat our contraband, then Dad stares at us hard and forgets that we are now in our
forties and suddenly yells, ‘Where did you get that Curly Wurly?’ Then
Caitríona and I laugh ourselves sick.

The thing that people seem to resent most about
Christmas is the wasted time. At any other time in the year, if they had ten days off,
they’d go skiing instead of watching crap telly in their pyjamas. But the thing is that
doing something pointless in a life full of purpose is a precious joy. Under normal
circumstances I have a bottomless list of jobs. Always. I should be answering emails or changing
the bulb on my bedside lamp or removing my chipped nail varnish, or taking cod out of the
freezer or doing sit-ups or charging my phone or buying a birthday present for my god-daughter
or looking for lost things or making a new list because I’ve run out of room on my current
one. As a woman, I’m expected to be many different people, all of them fabulous.

But the
pleasure
of Christmas, of
watching strange old films which are already half over before the remote lands on them. Bad
films. Terrible films. Films of no worth whatsoever. Films that live on in the collective memory
and unite the small band of people
who saw them. Every Christmas we STILL
ask each other incredulously, ‘Do you remember that weird film about the man who lost his
memory and married his own wife? Did that really happen?’

But the very best thing about Christmas –
and sadly this confuses and upsets people – is the rows.

Of every lovely thing that Christmas has to
offer, this is the one that is most misunderstood. See, we’ve bought into that
goodwill-to-all-men business and we expect that it’ll be easier to love others at
Christmas time.

But why would it? There’s more pressure on
us than at any other time of year: the card-writing, the hangovers, the lists, the
present-buying, the crowds, the brutally relentless socializing, the cooking, the travelling,
the lurking outside Argos at daybreak, ready to do battle to get your hands on the last delivery
of Ninky Nonks (or Elsas or whatever it is this year) in the universe before 25 December –
it all takes its toll. And the next thing, we find ourselves mired in a sudden shocking shouting
match with our nearest and dearest – and we have the temerity to be surprised? Ashamed,
even.

But there’s no need,
no need at
all
! We have to stop thinking of this as a bad thing. No, it’s very, very good. See,
most of the year we are small, powerless creatures in a malign world and when bad things happen
we have to swallow back our rage. Our hairdresser gives us bouffy when we specifically said,
‘No bouff!’ We get a parking ticket two minutes,
two short minutes –
a mere 120 seconds – after the meter expires. At work, a toady younger man who is
gifted at golf gets the promotion that should have been ours.

And what can we do? Nothing! We are small,
powerless creatures and we have to force a wobbly smile and – yes! – tip the
hairdresser, because if we don’t she’ll only blow-dry our fringe
funny to punish us the next time. Instead of vaulting across the bonnet of our car and
biting the cruel ticket man, we have to pay the parking fine. And we have to start reporting to
the smarmy younger bloke at work.

And it builds up, all of that frustration and
impotence. Our shoulders are permanently up around our ears, a bit falls off one of our molars
because we’ve been grinding our teeth to dust in our sleep, and we jolt awake at 4 a.m.
every day to worry about the future.

… and then suddenly we find ourselves
trapped in an over-warm, over-full house with our family. Tellies are blaring from every room,
there’s no privacy and no peace, the kitchen is full of steam and Brussels sprouts and
it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose.

Hard to predict exactly how it’ll go
– that’s the beauty of it really. But suddenly you’ll find yourself shrieking
at a loved one about bread sauce, or lemons being cut into wedges instead of slices, or overuse
of the Sellotape. And of course the rage isn’t really about bread sauce or lemons or
Sellotape; it’s about all the other stuff, the
not-being-allowed-to-bite-the-traffic-warden stuff.

And my advice is, don’t be ashamed of your
outburst –
embrace
it. Have a good old rant. Release all that rage: it’ll
save you a fortune in therapist’s fees and dentist’s bills and it’ll stop you
getting addicted to sleeping tablets further down the line.

Because the important thing is that the
boundaries of family are far more elastic and accommodating than those of any other social
grouping. Families argue. We’ve been doing it all our lives and we always bounce back to
maintenance-level dysfunctional (what counts as normal round my way). It’s all okay.

And never forget, it will soon be January,
sackcloth-and-ashes month, so enjoy the gluttony, the sloth, the inebriation and the
arguments of Christmas. These are simple, low-cost pleasures – and yet
they are priceless.

First published in the
Sunday Times Style
,
December 2008.