Lockdown Diary - Christmas Eve (Thursday 24th December 2020)

Christmas Eve! Have I been visited by the spirit of Christmas overnight? Nope! I got up early to find out how complete our Christmas shopping delivery is going to be, in case I need to go out shopping.  Let's have a check in the emails to see what news from yonder city? There's an email from the supermarket...

PTL! Despite there being about ten substitutions (all of the Christmas dinner accompaniments were substituted!), I am happy that we have all we have ordered and I'm not going to have to go back out.  We will make the most of what we have!

Think I'm going to return to bed until the carer calls around 7 a.m.

She's here and I'm up! 'Tis the season to be melancholy and I'm reminded just how much the carers mean to us and how much my own well-being is supported by them too.  The core set of carers have become a part of our family and if it weren't for the banter and laughs we have, I'd have probably gone mad(der)!

Meds given and feed pump set up and flowing, carer K leaves until lunchtime.  Before the next carer call (like all the other calls a double-up requiring two carers) I will exercise, shower and rustle up some breakfast (porridge does rustle prior to adding milk, if you listen very carefully!)

Not long after the carers leave the shopping delivery arrives and two out of three sons help bring it in.  The delivery guy tells me that the store is besieged and I breathe a sigh of relief that I don't have to go there. I wish him a Merry Christmas and then the task of finding a home for everything begins.

As son #2 is working, three of us eat lunch together and watch a Christmas episode of 'South Park' - it being 'South Park' the story involves both Satan and the anti-Christ - very festive!

After dinner I start making tomorrow's starter: celeriac soup.  I listen to some loud music whilst I clean and chop various vegetables.  Celeriac is always a fun thing to peel - it looks like a cross between a brain and the Ood species from Doctor Who.

Whilst the vegetables soften in butter, I clear up the mess and make the stock: 'make' being a rather grand way of saying 'crumble a couple of stock cubes and add boiling water.'  The celeriac was rather large and, though I chose our largest saucepan, the pan was full to the brim.  Luckily during softening it shrank a bit, so I managed to add the litre of stock without overflow.

Twenty or so minutes later the vegetables are cooked and the flavours have mixed, so it's time for the blender.  Me and the hand blender are old adversaries. I am wise to its tricks. As I'm wearing one of my favourite Acid Mothers Temple T-shirts (the rather rude 'IAO Chant from the Cosmic Inferno' one), which is fairly new, I decide to don one of the aprons.  Being bathed in scalding hot soup has become a Christmas tradition, but this year I am ready, so even if the soup erupts like Vesuvius, only the apron will suffer - not the T-shirt. I have managed to get it in my face in the past, which allows me to flex my Anglo-Saxon vocal muscle memory, so I am suitably wary.

Luckily I manage to blend the soup without incident and it tastes good: Me 1 - Blender 0!

Unfortunately, owing to a PEG mistake, my wife has bathed in Two-Cal for a couple of hours, so when the carers arrive in the evening, I am thrilled to discover I have another wash load to do.

Time passes, I'm not sure how I spent it, but it's now time to make dinner.  Tonight, however, we are only having party food: it just needs putting in the oven and heating up. The only complication is the timing, though luckily everything 'cooks' at the same temperature.

Alcohol poured, food cooked, we sit down together to watch the film 'Ghost Stories', which I've been looking forward to. It's based on the stage play of the same name, which my wife and I saw back when MS hadn't consumed too much of her ability to move. 

'Ghost Stories' was very enjoyable and luckily didn't follow the plot of the play to the letter, so it was full of surprises. (The film is being shown on BBC 2 later tonight, but too late for most of us, especially as at least one son has wrapping still to do!)

Only one song will do tonight.  Low. 'Some Hearts (at Christmas Time)'

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