OK, so now it's time to briefly touch on my Christmas balls-ups.
We begin on Christmas Eve when, for the past few years, I've been trying to establish a tradition of me cooking "Daddy's Special Christmas Eve Tea Which Everybody Loves." And, once again, it didn't go down well.
The clues were there in the beginning when I almost burnt off the end of my finger with hot fat whilst singing along to Alan Simpson's equally hot tracks on BBC Radio Ulster.
But the real failing was in my choice of dish - homemade steak and kidney pie - which, thinking about it, is not really a huge favourite of kiddiewinks. So we'll have to do another revamp for Christmas 2013, possibly involving a greater degree of family democracy and maybe even including a family meeting. We'll see.
Fast-forwarding to Christmas lunch, when I committed that age old cardinal sin of leaving the giblet bag inside the turkey. And it was because of total incompetence rather than absentmindedness.
I'd had a good rummage inside Tyrone the Turkey early on Christmas morning and found his neck inside. Nice. (To be fair, judging by his build, I did think he used to be taller). But there was no sign of any plastic bag. So I carried on.
What I didn't realise until I started carving Tyrone up was that some nice butcher man had in fact lodged his giblets where his discarded neck used to be, as helpfully indicated by a star below.
When the giblet bag did then fall out, I'll be honest with you, I said a bad word. I also had an immediate decision to make, namely, did I tell Vanessa? I made a quick inspection of the bag to find that it appeared to be fully in tact. This was a shock, albeit a pleasant one. I also checked Tyrone for signs of melted plastic and found none. My decision was made - I was saying nothing, through a now worried grin, although I have since confessed
There are therefore two new pieces of information to be gleaned from this episode:
- Best check your turkey's neck for giblets; and
- Marks & Spencer's turkey giblets come in bomb-proof, unmeltable bags.
Then we all headed off to a wider family gathering less than five minutes' walk from our house, where I moved on to more Guinness, red wine and Dagenham Dave's Seasonal Mulled Wine. I got a lift home.
The consequences of my over-exuberance were particularly catastrophic as, the following morning, I was forced to crawl out of bed, put on my shorts and set off on a seven-mile race to the top of the humongous Otley Chevin and back.
The event was won by World Triathlon Champion and Olympic Triathlon Bronze Medallist Jonny Brownlee who managed to pip me to the tape by just over half an hour.
However, much closer to him than he was to me was my old Coleraine mate Paul Gaile who ran in a Santa suit.
Looking back, I'm glad I did the run but not the drinking.
UPDATE: Sorry, pointed out to me - I also forgot to cook the pigs in blankets and the stuffing on Christmas Day. Still, my neglect gave the kids even more to leave on their plates come Boxing Day.
