Today was nice, the stress of attempting to cook a Christmas dinner for the first time was actually quite good fun. In all fairness, my parents did all the prep on Christmas Eve and so all I had to do was:

a. Make sure the oven came on on time
b. Put the turkey in the oven at the right time
c. Look after the turkey, turning to breast-side up after an hour
d. Coordinate all the other shit

Parts a, b and c went really rather well, but when the bird’s juices still weren’t clear when it should’ve been cooked, I did start to panic somewhat.

Bird’s juices, there’s a blast from the past…

…anyway.

Because I’m a complete twat I forgot myself for a moment, I managed to burn my fingers off as I was trying to take the bird (once it had finally decided to cook, for fuck’s sake) from the roasting tin. This is SO debilitating when you’re trying to do anything at all. And painful.

There’s this great thing you can do with roast potatoes – cook them half way, leave them for as long as you need, then finish them off. Who’d have thought? You listening, Nigella? Are you?

Carrots and swede were lovely, apparently. My dog thought so too, but they’re the devil’s food as far as I’m concerned. Vile. Just bypass the middleman and put them straight into the bin.

Sprouts: delish, but sweet baby jesus and all things holy, my poor tummy. My poor little dog.

It was great, really wonderful. My mum and sister were fantastic at easing the pressure of getting it all served up. My brother, his girlfriend and my dad did a fantastic job of preventing my niece from wandering into the kitchen and receiving third degree burns. I think we all had a nice dinner, although my niece managed to eat about eight pigs in blankets and not much else. Saying that, it was a mistake to get her to try the parsnips, which had fallen victim to my forgetfulness and some of which had been essentially cremated.

I’ve spent most of the evening eating cold roast potatoes. They are fucking delish and I refuse to let them share the fate of the excess sprouts that are currently generating dangerous levels of toxic gases in my kitchen bin. No, I don’t bloody compost, for fuck’s sake. I have enough on my plate with all the sodding recycling that I have to deal with without having an explosive bin next to the petrol tank of my car.

Oh good grief, I should be asleep.

But I’m not because:

I got a telescope!
This wasn’t a surprise because I ordered it myself. I’ve spent years looking up into the night sky, wondering at the moon, smiling at Jupiter, annoyed at the cloud cover in this stupid country. I just wanted to see if I could see as much as I could see.

I assembled the thing this morning in a moment of quiet between turning the turkey and going into a blind panic over roasted vegetables. It sat there all day until I finally found myself without visitors and felt free to go and have a play outside.

The moon really is a beautiful thing and its craters appear in such clarity through whichever lens i happened to be using during the brief break in the cloud.

Deciding to capture the moment, I turned my camera bag upside down trying to look for the camera adapter lens that I’d bought a month ago. No sign. I hit myself about the head a few times, but this resolved nothing. All rather predictable.

Anyway, I must go. My eyelids are heavy ad the little feller is snoring.

Running buffet tomorrow. More washing up.