The Nigel Slater Christmas Chronicles Readalong 2024 Part 2

[RainbowZebraWarrior]

Welcome all new and old friends.

The journey continues.

@RainbowZebraWarrior your pasties sound right up my street! I'm all for "cheat" cooking so long as the end result is tasty.

We had a child's tea tonight. The incredibly NVN chicken nuggets, chips, and beans 🤣. Promise I can cook properly but I am very tired & couldn't be bothered to think about it.

I love a beige tea from time to time. In fact when dh is out sometimes I treat myself to some party food from Tesco and have a selection for my tea. (He is a snob about food and won't eat anything beige). Couldn't be less Nigel really

@RainbowZebraWarrior I had soup this evening too as I couldn't be bothered to make anything more exciting! Yours sounds lovely though - love Mutti tomatoes they are so worth it make a big difference I converted to using mostly their Polpa after discovering in a Gousto box.

Yum @RainbowZebraWarrior that sounds gorgeous.

I finally got my treatment a little late yesterday due to the shenanigans of a cyber outage, the bloods hospital losing my samples and an emergency dash over first thing to redo them. Yay so the landmark of halfway through the first prescribed drug. I’ll be halfway through the full course in two treatments’ time. As an added bonus, this week I had the after effect of feeling like I was halfway through a bottle of sherry. DH was treated to a rendition of the reworded works of ABBA, in homage to the general side effects I experience! He is lucky he didn’t get Northern Kate Bush Songs, something I like to sing when walking with a best friend in the Spanish Mountains. Yes I’m a trained musician but the stage is not ready for these skills!

Aside from stagecraft, we had a very merry fire and I see that the temperature outside is currently -3°. DS made us a wonderful Japanese curry.

Christmas holds the promise of singsongs around the piano and listening to ds2 play the violin. Ds1 learned ‘cello and will take my spare ‘cello to his house as he wants to refresh his skills. I had a better one made for me by a luthier and plan to do the same refresh as I haven’t played properly for a while. My main instrument (& life’s work musically) is the piano - I have a lovely grand, a Blüthner, which has a rich, soft tone. Singing is part of life and I need to find some intermittent choral group projects when I’m through treatment, but jazz piano and love songs (Gershwin, Kern, show tunes and occasional Northern Kate Bush) for my dh will have to continue to suffice. I usually get co-opted into the church choir for Christmas, which is lovely, but sadly not this year.

Anyone else have music as part of their Christmas?

I don't have music as such at Christmas @Bimblesalong but I am looking forward to DS's piano recital early December. One of my great regrets is that I never learnt to play and I love hearing both DC play.

Yesterday was the school disco in the village hall. Walking home was beautiful - crisp cold night, clear but not moon, just twinkling stars.

Just three more days until I get to put it my (NVN artificial) Christmas tree! There's a long backstory to my Christmas tree somewhere on MN but the short version is that we spent 2019 living in temporary accommodation after ex DP's mental health made the house unliveable. He was a hoarder and every room was full of rubbish. We moved back in time for lockdown and that just sent him into a spiral, he was controlling and emotionally abusive.

I had a thread on here about how much I loved Christmas and Christmas trees but I had nowhere to put one because of the Hoard. He moved out in November, I got a restraining order on 11 December and a house clearance team came on 16 December so I finally had somewhere to put my tree. Every time I put it up I am reminded of how far we have come and how much happier the children are. Hard to believe that was 4 years ago, life has changed so much since then...

28 November

Christstollen, Dresden and the Butter Letter

The flavour is of distilled Christmas. Candied orange, Cinnamon, raisins, rum and cardamom. The texture is poor man's fruit cake. Fruit bread. Many have a sweet ribbon of marzipan running through the middle - a layer of buried almondy treasure, and a deep coating of icing sugar covering their craggy surface.

Gosh @Bearsinmotion I've just read your story there. Your Christmas tree certainly holds much significance. You've come a long way

@RainbowZebraWarrior @imp2007 I’m a big Mutti fan too, have just ordered them in bulk from Amazon as they’ve got a good Black Friday deal on.

@Bimblesalong glad you got your treatment and the music sounds like fun. We are not a musical household, we have very little talent, I learned piano to Grade 5 as a child but found it really hard, however if we had space I’d have one in the house to tinkle on but we don’t, in fact when DD learned keyboard for a bit we struggled to find anywhere to put it up. I have joined a local choir recently though, it’s all nice and informal (no auditions) and it’s fun so far, we are in the middle of a few Christmas fair performances.

@Bearsinmotion that’s quite a journey for you, your family and your tree ❤️

Properly frosty here today, the garden was all sparkly by about 10 last night and still is.

@Bearsinmotion what a journey. Wishing you peace and happiness this Christmas.

@Bimblesalong wishing you music and song and hopefully a break from the treatment?

@Bearsinmotion your Christmas tree wins the best tree award then in that case and I salute you. May it always be an emblem of what you have overcome.

@Bimblesalong my FIL is a very good pianist snd sings in choir. He also writes songs. When dh and I first got together I think he was so pleased I was normal and clearly loved his son, (after the horror of dh's very abusive ex wife), that he wrote me a song and he always plays it on special occasions. He put a sort of church bell effect on it (tinkly bit at the end-I'm sure there is a technical pianist term for it), because I do bell ringing, and it sounded like an 8 bell peal. Always makes me cry a bit when he plays it .

Lovely chapter today. The nearest I will get to that sort of cake today is an Almond croissant, but tbh that's not half bad from our local bakery (Symmonds, if you know you know), so I will take it.

Disaster yesterday with my masters application when it transpired I need my original GCSE maths and English and degree certificates. They were lost in our huge house fire 2 years ago. Certainly my degree and a level ones were, I can't even remember if my GCSE ones were there but they also wouldn't be anywhere else-if not they were lost years ago. I am 44 and can't even remember the exam boards to try and contact them, if they still exist. I've tried old school Facebook contacts and my old secondary school who had no clue. I called Leeds uni who will hopefully give me a replacement degree certificate (for £45!) but as for the GCSE Maths and English-I'm sunk I think

Oh no @piscofrisco this must happen all the time, people losing them, maybe you could try contacting all the exam boards, there can’t be that many?

On the upside DSS and I spent a lovely hour or so last night painting our new Christmas house. We do one every year, with the aim of making a sort of christmassy village high st on the window ledge. This is our biggest to date. I expect he will lose interest soon-he will be 11 next, but for now it gets him off screens and he seems to enjoy it so it's a win!

@piscofrisco the Govt say there are only five main boards depending where you lived. Sorry if you've already tried this page.

www.gov.uk/replacement-exam-certificate

@ExpertlyDecorated I did a Google yesterday and at least one that offered exams in my school in 1996 (!) is now defunct and two more have merged and are now something else. I emailed that one yesterday but I can't even be sure it was them that offered the Maths or English. Old school friends are trying to hunt out their certificates to see which board it was.

Gosh @Bearsinmotion something very much in my eye. What a beautiful space we have here to share. I’m so glad you’ve got your home back although what you went through was so hard

@HannahDefoesChristmasHamper I’m powering through as I want to be finished for
spring. If my bloods play ball I have treatments Christmas Eve and New Year Eve. that will bring me to one more of the current drug in the new year and then I’m moved onto something delightfully know as Red Devil for four entertaining rounds. We’re not going to think about that …

@piscofrisco yum almond croissant! We have a lovely bakery in the city that does pistachio croissants and I dispatch dh early at the weekend to get one before they sell out. What is your masters in? You’ve prompted me there as I’m sure ds2 has mislaid his certificates which I foolishly gave to him to look after. He is undiagnosed but self confirming as ADHD and whilst he hyperfocusses well on his computer games designing independent job (out earning me and his dad whilst at sixth form!), his organisational skills in general need work. One of our tasks is to go through his paperwork and find these precious documents.

The deadline is Monday ( serves me right for my bloody procrastination!!) so it seems unlikely that I will get them in any way before then.
I spoke to the masters people yesterday and they were adamant they needed the originals.
It's annoying as I've been a social care manager for 23 years-the masters is in a different field of social work-so switching from mental health to Family work-it's a sort of paid programme for two years (low pay but at least something) to get the relevant qualification-you can't just switch codes so to speak. So you would hope they would take the relevant experience as evidence-but rules are rules I suppose.

See my previous post for the govt page and scroll down to where it says 'if your board no longer exists' I'm slightly older than you, but my certificates came from the Joint Matriculation Board. In any case, the main point of contact seems to be the AQA.

@Bimblesalong yes to the documents. I've got all of DD's in one, fireproof box, except one of DD's which she did in year 10 before changing schools, which we mislaid. It's chemistry and she doesn't want to be a chemist or scientist, but I'm haunted by it so I'm going to try and chase it up after this!

Thankyou @RainbowZebraWarrior that's who I got in touch with yesterday. But even if it works, time is against me (own fault). It's complicated by the fact that I got a d in the maths the first time and had to resit the following year to get my c).

@piscofrisco that sounds a great qualification. I hope you find the evidence. universities need the students to run their courses so there should be some investment in getting you on. If you can’t find the evidence in time for admissions then contact the course leader to confirm your wish to apply and the temporary hold up in evidence. I was a p/t lecturer along with my main job (in SEND), delivering SEND and assessment masters courses and we worked hard to ensure those applying who met the requirements were able to enrol.

@piscofrisco isn't that ridiculous. One would presume you needed said GCSEs to do your A levels, which you needed to do your undergrad degree ... wouldn't you think a bit of lateral thinking could be applied!
@Bimblesalong which bakery does pistachio croissants? I need to know. We have many fabulous bakeries in our city, as you know, but I am allergic to (but absolutely love) almonds, which are two a penny, whereas I can happily eat pistachios, which I have never seen. Our village has an excellent if tiny farmers market every Saturday, and the lady from Fika brings her delicious sourdough and cruffins - and fougasses - but I might make a special early-morning trip to town for a pistachio croissant. The Fika bakery's prices would even make Nigel wince, I think!

@bigbadbarry I somehow thought this name belonged to a fabulous ginger cat , not realising it was a children’s character!

Kookaburra. Look them up on insta and they give details of bakes daily. Bread is great - I’m sure you know the place. I usually message to ask them to keep a certain item as when they’re gone they’re gone - pistachio goes early and they do other pistachio items. Otherwise you can drive round to their shop if on an earlier school run and have nowt else to do in the city. There were also pistachio donuts at the makers market but I missed those.

May I also recommend the st Ives Yellow Canary bakery salted caramel croissant roll.

Thanks, @Bimblesalong ! I don't usually do school runs but on Wednesdays I have to drop off early as DD3's music lesson is before the school bus arrives - and their school is literally 3 minutes from Kookaburra so on Wednesday I shall have a pistachio croissant! Kookaburra not on my usual circuit due to NO CHAIRS 😂 - but they helpfully supply other, more enlightened, cafes in town so I am familiar with their work