There is a huge muddy Christmas tree lying outside in the rain. We let our fields to three different farmers and one has the use of a large barn free. To show his gratitude he has started providing us with a tree (from where?) and the first year he asked how tall we wanted it. As our main room has a very high ceiling we said pretty much as tall as they come. The trouble is that tall forest trees tend to be thin and skimpy at the bottom and rather unlike the pictures of Victorian children playing hide-and-seek around some mass of greenery. In later years he started zooming up and dumping a tree in the garden in the week before Christmas and then zooming away again without speaking to me. On several occasions, like this time, the tree has been just wrong. But there is nothing I can do without causing massive offense. Each year the children say, 'What is the tree like, it's not one of THOSE is it?'. 'Err... maybe just a little bit'. 'Well just f@ck it. You've GOT to tell him'. But I can't. It will now involve dragging out to the wood and finding a way of secretly removing some small branches from another fir tree and then wiring them on to our one. IT IS ALL SO STUPID.

The other farmer also goes in for secretive present leaving but in his case it is invariably an oven-ready chicken which appears mysteriously on the doorstep, (in a bag obviously). This would be sort of okay except that his chickens are ENORMOUS; they are unlike any chicken we have ever seen. 'It probably is free-range', I said. 'Don't be so ridiculous', said my husband, 'You can see that that chicken has never taken any exercise in its life'. They have a sinister, other-worldly look rather like the first stage before Soylent Green. Last year we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it and it spent weeks using up a useful part of the deep freeze. Finally I made it into a casserole when lots of people were coming to supper and my husband and I had large amounts of vegetables and unobtrusively left the meat on the side of our plates.

Thank God the third farmer restricts himself to a card containing a handy pen with the name of his fencing company on the side. He is probably cursing himself for being so slow and letting the other two bag the fun tree and chicken that we accept with such effusive gratitude.

I have been hoovering and cleaning for eight hours with only a miniscule break for lunch, (which was ruined by a cat sneezing suddenly horribly close to my plate). Some trivial woodwork repairs have weirdly spread dust and chippings over half the house and blown all over the garden so that as you drive up it looks sordid and crappy. My husband is driving the children down with all the presents bought in London. For some not-normal reason he is making them leave at 6.30 am and then he is going to put up the tree, cook the ham and then go back to London on the train for 24 hours before returning.... I sometimes feel as if 'The Movie That I Should Be Living In' is not Cinderella but 'Diary of a Mad Housewife'. Although I suppose they have a lot in common, except that Cinderella did not have a strongly developed sense of irony.
The children will be tired and ratty and for sure they will have left some crucial things behind.

My daughter asked me not to start decorating until she came because last year 'Getting all the holly and stuff was such fun'. Unfortunately this year it is pouring with rain and there is a vicious wind. I usually go out and cut down the greenery on my own and it is rarely a pleasure. One year there was a fog so thick I had to practically find the holly by touch and, (one of those times when you start to believe in Higher Powers), I was really fed up but forced myself out once more but in a pointless direction, never good for holly. Just down the track which I never normally use was a cat hanging upside down from a barbed wire fence. It had jumped over it too low and the barbs had hooked into the skin over its stomach and it was hanging there silently. If I hadn't walked that way on Christmas Eve no one else would have come for days. It was one of the half-wild cats that live in our barns and I feed at vast expense, so it knew me and after a short fight I was able to lift it off. The spikes had only gone through flaps of skin and the cat came back with me for outdoor supper and was completely fine.

I had a rather odd experience today. Last night when I was typing at the computer there was a tiny repetitive thumping noise. After a while I realised that a moth was bumping against the out side of the window and then I saw that one wing was caught in a thick strand of cobweb. It was fluttering and twisting and bumping for 2 hours and I could do nothing as the window is high up and sealed closed. It was really sad and horrible and I was glad when it died. This morning I came to the computer again to write to my daughter in India. It was raining hard and windy. I couldn't believe it when I saw that the moth was alive and still fighting to get free. It was 10 hours since I first noticed it. The whole thing was really upsetting and I suddenly thought that God is meant to see every sparrow fall so why couldn't he deal with this. I asked him firmly to do something about the moth. Whatever he thought best obviously. Nothing happened and I could see that the cobweb had wound round and was more attached than ever. I was thinking that perhaps the moth had to work through this to move on to another stage of being or had not done well in a past life, and naturally God didn't answer when you called on him randomly only when you wanted something. I glanced up, the moth was unchanged, when there was a sudden sharp burst of wind which snapped the cobweb and whirled the moth away. I was stunned. Did God answer or not? To me, he did.

I digress. I am going to give a recipe for Georgian Fairy Butter. This is an 18th.C. recipe from one of the National Trust books.

GEORGIAN FAIRY BUTTER. To eat with any Christmas cake-like things.

125 g. unsalted butter.
50 g. caster sugar.
3 hard boiled egg yolks.
I teaspoon finely grated orange rind.
I tablespoon orange-flower water or brandy. (or both).

Cream butter and sugar together. Mash egg yolks and beat into mixture. Add orange-flower water and/or brandy. Pass through a sieve, (preferably a hair sieve), and carefully pile into a pretty, shallow serving dish using two forks. This way you will not destroy the 'fairy' texture, (apparently). Scatter the finely grated orange rind over your Fairy Butter and serve.

This butter can be kept in a cool place for several days.
- posted by Iris @ 12/20/2003 11:08:00 PM comment