I hope you all had a lovely christmas. We had a great day here in London. The days have all run into one, christmas eve we went to Gabriels mums house for an early dinner and some pressies before the childrens service at the local church. That was brilliant. Full of screaming kids and off-tune adults singing their hearts out or humming as the case may be if you didn’t know the words (which judging by the output was most of us…) Christmas day was a big day for presents from Santa. With two children aged 2 and 3 ‘le pere noel’ is still a big deal around here. It was great fun, paper everywhere, plastic toys everywhere, boxes turned over everywhere and not an instruction sheet to be found anywhere….

Milene has been cooking for days. We had roast goose, with it’s legs having been confit’ed the day before, roast veges, jerusalem artichoke soup and an amazing chocolate and meringue italian gateau – not in that order of course!

Boxing day was spent with some close friends of the family and their kids. There were 8 adults and 5 children tearing about the house, playing football inside, fighting over balloons, chocolate cake, cars and music, and that was just the kids. The adults were sprinting through bottles of good red, courtesy of Gabriel and the most delicious shoulder of pork that had been cooking since 10pm the night before…. slow cooked with a brief spurt at the beginning and the end to ensure that the crackling was really crackling. It was amazing. Finished off with hand-made truffles (now that’s a story – chocolate up to my elbows) it was an amazing meal. All this started around 12.30 and by 8pm we were all ready for bed. That is, except the kids. Moselle and Jonathan must have eaten about 16 truffles between them and so were spinning about unable to sleep despite being desperately tired. I know, because Gabriel and I did the same, we all went to bed about 10pm but by 1am we were up, wide awake, reading, surfing, anything but sleeping.

So a great christmas had by all down here and from the early reports I’ve received from Michelle she also had a good time in Courcelles – plenty of snow, plenty of fun, plenty of family.

I’m off to a gallery today, I’m not sure which yet but I’ll keep you posted…