Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

I know it’s early to be thinking about Christmas but I am. I have to. This year it’s the turn of the Flying Martinis to play host for Meeester’s ever growing side of the family on Christmas Day.

I’ve only ever cooked Christmas dinner once and I can’t really remember a damn thing about how it turned out, I was that nervous. It may have been okay; no-one died.

But it’s a fraught affair isn’t it, this Christmas lark? And this year I am booking us into the local hotel for lunch to ease the general fraughtness and re-introduce some Christmas spirit back into the proceedings by way of paying other folk to clear up our mess.

So, since Christmas is on my mind, I am going to treat you to a top ten list of:

Flying Martini Fraught Christmas Moments.

1. It’s Boxing Day at Meeester’s brother’s house. His now long-gone girlfriend (now replaced by an infinitely better model) shrieks loudly and manically in the kitchen in earshot of assembled family members, “If they think they are getting a fried breakfast they can think again. They’re like a swarm of locusts!!!” Car ignitions are put into action a mere ten minutes later.

2. Snowed in at Misssy’s parents’ house. It's Meeester's first Christmas as a married man, and his first at the new in-laws. The assembled family decide to go round the table and ask each family member to sing their party piece. Meeester seals his reputation with my aghast aging grandparents when he launches into, “The Hairs on her Dickie Di-Do”. Cue Christmas tumbleweed. Snow plough ignitions are put into action minutes later.

C’mon everybody, you know the words!

“The hairs on her dickie di do

Go down to her knees!

One White One,

One Black One,

One with a bit of shite on,

And one with a fairy light on

To show you the way!”

Very festive, I think you’ll agree.

3. Back in Meeester’s brother’s house, other brother in law opens 20 year-old vintage bottle of wine, uninvited from wine rack. Tears are shed privately. People are not invited back.

4. Twin sister in law sits down triumphantly after serving sumptuous first ever Chrissie dinner. At that very same second a marital barney erupts between another couple. Tears are shed. Car ignitions are in action before party games can even begin.

5. Misssy’s drunken and now deceased grandfather wanders disorientatedly downstairs in full view of living room full of revelers, completely naked. Misssy’s brother describes his little bottom as “You know how a balloon goes soft and wrinkly after a few days…like that”

6. My darling mother in law (no, really she is darling) and her new husband dress up as snowmen in white chemical protection suits and silver wigs and perform “Frosty the Snowman” for the kids. This was three years ago. The kids have only just felt calm enough to approach them again. Scary. Evil clown scary. We’ve got it on video but it would be like showing you that video tape on the film, “The Ring”.

7. My dad fashions a penis out of the plasticine used in the game “Cranium” and my elderly Gran asks him what it is. My mother immediately sends him to bed like a naughty child. And he actually goes!
   

8. My brother in law, dressed as Santa, is violently ill on my parents’ lawn after liberating the contents of a whisky bottle. Grass doesn’t grow on a 5 inch patch for over two years.

9. The same brother in law that drank the vintage wine tips the two-hours-in-the-making raspberry coulis for desert down the sink whilst washing up the main course plates. Misssy stifles tears.

10. There’s a power cut on Christmas Day at Aunt and Uncle’s house, and the turkey has to be cooked on the barbecue in the snowbound garden. That bit was fun. Entertaining the telly-less grandparents is less so; an impossible task. Uncle reaches in desperation for the guitar to play “House of the Rising Sun” (his only song) as the lights come back on and we are all saved.