Just two more days to go, and here at Tribble Towers we are more or less ready. Family (mine) has been visited, gifts traded, pickles created and menus planned. I still have to wrap a couple of gifts and make some bread, but that’s all.

Last weekend in Cheltenham was tiring, and I’ve spent most of this week in bed recovering, but it was fun. It began on Thursday last week, really, when I had my hair cut:

As you can see, I have a highly skilled hairdresser. She’s cut it quite close in the back and shaped it so that it tapers down longer around the sides and the front. Even my sister – a hair snob – demanded to know where I had it done (I believe that she plans to visit my hairdresser in the unlikely event that she is ever free to spend a weekend with us).

My sister was a lucky recipient of a jar of my red onion and rosemary Confiturra, as she took down the recipe that a friend sent me but wishes to try it for herself before she gets to chopping all of those onions! The smell alone is incredible, and the mouthful I tried from some that wouldn’t fit into a jar was like a wonderful explosion on the taste buds! I believe she is saving her jar to go with cold meats and salads made from Christmas leftovers, as are we. My pickled cabbage and pickled eggs will come in very handy in making something tasty from cold cuts!

We also visited with my Mum, who is doing remarkably well since the operation to remove a cancerous tumour from her breast. We were scared for a while this summer, as this was a particularly aggressive form of cancer, but she’s coping brilliantly. I do wish she’d stop being upset about her weight gain from the treatment and the medication though. She’s even threatened to go down the same path as me and simply stop eating!

I ought to clear up one small issue here: the last epilepsy medication I was on made me anorexic, and I am still fighting this condition many months after stopping the medication. I have explained this to my Mum, and I suspect that my current scrawniness has helped to dissuade her from this course of action. It’s one thing to have a medical issue when it comes to food, but quite another to endeavour to starve yourself – and Mum wouldn’t lose weight that way anyhow, as anybody who has had to take steroids will know.

We gave Mum – aside from her Christmas gifts – a jar of chutney, a jar of Confiturra and a jar of Piccalilli. She requested Piccalilli as soon as she knew that I’d begun to pickle things and make preserves, and the first thing she noticed was that it looks nothing like that revolting green/yellow radioactive, textureless slime that you buy from the supermarkets. It’s full of chunky vegetables and is a wonderful honey-mustard colour. She wishes that it was ready to eat now, but she’ll just have to be patient!

As yet we’re not sure what time the festive cooking shall begin here on Christmas Day, but as usual it shall be just Tribble and myself, in our home, eating good food, exchanging gifts, watching Doctor Who and being grateful for each other.

I hope that all of you who I’ve been lucky enough to come to know are well, and that your festive holidays provide you with all the love and happiness that you deserve! Eat, drink, be merry, and have seasonal and new year celebrations that are out of this world!

Love, peace and blessings to you all from Tribble Towers.