A Photo an Hour – Christmas Day 2016

Well hello there!

Some people are back at work today (and about 99% of them are NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT AT ALL) while others seem to have about 5 weeks holiday over Christmas and New Year. Myself, I’m in that self-employed middle ground. Normal service has resumed, but I’m kind of only half paying attention. Secretly planning to finish work early and still slipping chocolate liqueur into my coffee.

This year I decided to document Christmas Day with a photo an hour. I first did this back in June, and I love the little snapshot of a day in the life it offers. I thought I might do it every 6 months, then realised that made it the 23rd December, and as blog posting around then goes a bit weird, I thought it might actually be nice instead to document Christmas Day in this way instead.

For 10 years my Christmas Days have looked almost identical, but this year I went back to visit my family on Christmas Day. So while this isn’t at all a typical Christmas, it’s nice to have it documented for posterity!

8am

These days I don’t wake up *quite* as early as I did when I was little, but by 8am I am drinking coffee in bed and opening the Christmas presents in my stocking. Mr Chick and I exchange Christmas stockings every year containing a number of small and often silly presents. This year I have Ladybird books entitled The Husband and The Wife, Pin badges of a duck and a pear wearing roller skates (obviously) some Gotham Girls, Harley Quinn themed badges, a mini colouring book and a very small farm with all the poor animals and the farmer and the farmers wife all stuffed inside a plastic barn. I feel very sorry for them. I also have Christmas bedding because my Mum bought some for me specially. I already feel very spoilt.

9am

My parents have already been up for hours. They run a Working Mens Club and at about 6am the intruder alarm went off. Fortunately it seems the problem was a faulty alarm, rather than a burglar, but not really the start you want to Christmas Day.

At 9am we all sit down together for breakfast, and, because it’s Christmas, Bucks Fizz. My family have sensibly bought the 4% ready made stuff, instead of making it with fizzy wine like I do every Christmas, which is why I’m always in floods of tears at Doctor Who by 6pm.

10am

MORE PRESENTS!

These are the “real” presents and I was a bit shocked to get literally EVERYTHING I asked for when I gave my Mum some ideas. I expected maybe one thing. I even got an extra present of a Kindle Fire to upgrade my very old Kindle. I got skate shop vouchers, chocolates, smellies (because it’s Christmas and that is the law) and an AWESOME Drag Race cushion cover. What I did not get was a surprise email from ASOS with another voucher, which I could tell disappointed my Mum as she had arranged for it to be emailed on Christmas Day.

In fact, I didn’t get those vouchers till the evening of the 27th. My Mum also didn’t get an email response to her enquiry, and when I did get a response from ASOS on Twitter it was all glib “Hey, don’t worry, our IT guys are on it and it’ll be with you soon!” which isn’t really the point. Frankly they’ve annoyed me intensely, which is a shame as I love ASOS.

Still, lets focus on the Christmas spirit. It hardly ruined my Christmas, it’s just ruined ASOS.

11am

My parents head off to work and we decide to watch Elf before we go up and see them at the Club. I attempt to rent it on iTunes so we can watch it through my Parents Apple TV. Only apparently you can’t stream rentals from the Cloud, so I have to delete almost the entire contents of my phone to make room for the download, which then takes nearly an hour.

We watch The Croods instead.

12pm

Still waiting for Elf to download. Better have a beer to numb the pain.

1pm

Elf is finally downloaded, but it’s too late now. We walk up a very steep hill to drink a mince pie martini.

Being outside on Christmas Day is always slightly odd. It’s like a very festive Zombie Apocalypse. So quiet and the people you do see are often very merry, covered in glitter and slightly tipsy.

My Nanny allegedly ordered snow for this Christmas, but it was stubbornly warm and bright.

2pm

We enjoy some peace and quiet while waiting for my Sister and her husband, 2 children and 5 dogs to arrive.

The table is set with gold and white and looks all pretty, before a 4 year old, a 10 year old and 6 adults all throw food and drink over it.

3pm

Dinner is served.

This is my first traditional Christmas dinner in a while. At home we have started having slightly different things for Christmas ever since the terrible gas cooker in our old rental house failed to cook an expensive free range chicken after 5 hours and we had to throw it away.

We’ve had fillet steak, venison and cranberry stew and fancy pies, but this year we have the full works. Broccoli and Stilton soup, turkey, gammon, brussel sprouts, stuffing and a million different types of veg, all drowned in gravy.

I eat it all as I am a pig and it was delicious.

4pm

Time for more presents for the people who weren’t there this morning. So mostly for the children. Some of them are broken before we leave. One of the presents is a Stretch Armstrong, did you know he was back?

Despite the many entertainments my 4 year old nephew discovers that putting ice cubes down peoples backs is way more fun. He doesn’t put any down mine as I threatened him in an apparently convincing manner.

5pm

Apparently all the children *really* want for Christmas is for Aunty Gemma to get hit in the face with squirty cream.

Apparently they have been waiting an entire year since last Christmas to play this again, and me getting a face full of dairy is a must.

They do not get their wish.

I am not sure if I should be worried by how hilarious I found it watching a 10 year old get smacked in the face with a handful of cream.

6pm

Even the dogs are sleepy.

We tidy up the mess and head home where there are pyjamas with elasticated waist bands. We all swear that we won’t need to eat for days.

7pm

On Christmas Day it is acceptable to drink caffeine at 7pm. My Dad is very proud of his fancy coffee maker. From memory this is a choccocino. It was delicious.

8pm

We finally watch Elf, and drink the Prosecco my sister got us for Christmas.

We also spend about 20 minutes trying to take the perfect photo of my glass in front of the TV in a scene containing Buddy. It only kind of works.

9pm

Apparently there is always room for Ferrero Rocher.

This is a fact.

10pm

I am not hungry, but when offered a pork pie and some sausage rolls shaped like Christmas Crackers I am unable to say no.

It was really nice and I don’t actually explode. I decide I am definitely skipping breakfast tomorrow though.

We watch the Doctor Who Christmas special on record and it doesn’t make me cry for the first time in ages. I do enjoy it though, who doesn’t love a super hero.

11pm

At 11pm my parents are snoring on the sofa so we take ourselves off to bed. I did not take a photo.

Still, I don’t think forgetting to take a photo on just one of my waking hours was too much of a failure.

And that was how Christmas 2016 looked!

How was your Christmas?