What now....?

Right, that's Christmas over with. I shan't bore you with the details of yet another Christmas meal, but suffice to say, it was fabulous. MCD and I went up to my parents in Warwickshire where their snow made the garden look festive as you please. The lunch - or dinner this year as we got all rebellious and defiantly had the Meal in the evening - was perfection as always. We got our bird from Adlington Turkeys - highly recommended: free-ranging birds practically sung to sleep - you can tell they are cosseted from the large sign that reminds you as you drive up to turn off your headlights so as not to disturb them. I wish I had a sign like that for MCD's 6:30am starts.

I have also been introduced to the wonders of freshly ground coffee. One of the things I wanted this year was a year's subscription to Union Roasted Coffee. I opened up the parcel and was most dismayed to find that MCD had purchased the coffee as beans - and we don't have a grinder. But then, silly me, of course he'd added a Cuisinart coffee grinder to the pile and I have been grinding beans like gangbusters. Top tip: They recommend quite a coarse grind for cafetieres, but I found it was so coarse it didn't brew, so I make mine nearly as fine as for an espresso and it works perfectly.

It's now tipping it down - they promise more snow for New Year's which seems just the thing to round the year off. I shall leave you with the above picture of Sam, my parents' last baby. I have to say, I don't usually hold with dressing dogs in clothes (having said that, we've often put past dogs in their Christmas ribbons and even shocking pink Hair Flair wigs on occasions and I remember Sage, our only girl flatcoat, put on a star turn as Bullseye for the Dickens evening in the village some years ago, but then maybe it's just that Flatcoats look so dashing). Anyway, Sam received both a set of legwarmers and a set of Churchillian collar and cuffs and a squeaky cigar which he perfected the angle of holding incredibly quickly. Of course we had to put them all on at the same time.