The snow finally vanished a few days before Christmas, but not before it turned the already unpleasant experience of last-minute Christmas shopping into an ordeal akin to being tortured with knives and the music of Justin Bieber. This post is split into two parts, because I didn't really want to devote another two posts to snow.
Part One: December 23rd 2010
The 23rd of December was the day that we hiked (almost) en famille into town, after realising that there were just two days until Christmas and we had yet to buy any food. It was also the day that I decided that snow was an evil and malevolent force, that should just go away and annoy other people, (ie people who are sensible enough to realise that you can't make anything out of bread, two carrots, and a packet of crisps, and practical enough to realise that they should probably do something about it.) These two events are probably linked. Things got off to an inauspicious start when my dad informed us that he would be staying at home, ostensibly so he could attempt to stop our pipes freezing up. In hindsight, I realise that he probably knew what a terrible idea it was to brave the snow and pre-Christmas crowds, but he let his family channel the spirit of Captain Oates anyway because we really needed to buy food.
The next problem arose when it was time for us to put our hiking boots on. Despite the fact that there were seven pairs of boots dripping icy water all over the hall, none of them appeared to actually fit anybody. It transpired that the boots that I am wearing in all the photos in previous entries actually belong to my mum. My own boots had seemingly vanished into the the ether. My brother's genius solution was to hand me a pair of size seven boots and tell me they were mine. I knew I was a size five, and so did not fall for his deception. He persisted with his attempts to make me wear the boots however, as he firmly believes that if you say something enough times, it will become true. Our conversation went a little like this:
His unshakable belief that I was nineteen left me seriously questioning my own date of birth, but I decided to file that problem away for a later date, because I still had to find a pair of shoes that wouldn't make me look like I had clown feet.
After some frantic searching, I found a pair of boots and we finally headed out. My mum insisted that the easiest way to get to the supermarket was not to walk along the partially clear pavements, but to to walk across the park. Unsurprisingly this turned out to be a bad idea, as the snow reached almost to our knees, making walking a very slow and tiring process.
We finally reached the supermarket, having made a brief diversion to the pond after we saw what we thought was a dead duck. It turned out to be a duck shaped stick. I'm not really sure what we were planning to do had it been a dead duck, but it concerned us all enough to make us stand and look at it until we were 100% certain it wasn't a duck corpse. The first stop on our trip was Marks and Spencer, for cakes and custard. The queue stretched halfway round the shop, so I decided the only way that I could justify joining it was to buy as much food as possible. It was this logic that lead to us arriving at my uncle's house on Christmas Day armed with five different desserts, several bottles of wine, and at least fifty cows worth of cheese. After finally paying for our purchases, we headed to Tesco.
Tesco, being a far larger shop, was much easier to navigate and didn't require us to karate chop old ladies just to get a loaf of bread. We were in and out in record time, though we had to persuade Mum that buying more dessert was unnecessary since we already had enough to feed the whole street. We made it home to discover that my dad had constructed a Friends-style Giant Poking Device and destroyed all the icicles hanging off our roof. This was incredibly upsetting, since I had been trying for days to get a photo of the icicles that looked vaguely artistic. All I'd managed was several black and white shots which were slightly off-centre, or contained visible bird droppings.
Part Two: Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve was memorable for two reasons: a blackout and a story about gay porn. The gay porn tale was regaled to us by my mum over dinner. Christmas Eve dinner at our house is traditionally a buffet-type meal; however it's all served on our kitchen table, so you end up accidentally dipping your elbows in hummus and eating with one hand while holding a lump of brie in the other, because there's no room to put it down. I always feel that 'special meals' like this should include sophisticated conversation about politics and literature, but the closest we get is usually a discussion on whether David Milliband would beat Ed Milliband in a fight to the death, and a tirade from my brother about why Shakespeare was an 'artsy-fartsy idiot with stupid hair'. It was no surprise therefore, when my mum decided to tell us about the time her and her friend wandered around the gay porn section of a San Francisco Blockbuster. She then listed several of the titles on offer, before my dad changed the subject. This was quite a strange experience for me, as I generally avoid using words like 'wank' in front of my parents for fear of being told off. If I'd known that my mum used this kind of language during anecdotes at teatime, I'd have started swearing like a longshoreman years ago.
After a delightful meal, during which we learned rather more about my mum's past than we would have liked to, we settled down to watch Master and Commander. My dad had been attempting to watch this film for several years, and had had his viewing interrupted every time. This time was to be no different. We had just got to the part where Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe are arguing about something or other, when we were plunged into darkness. There had been a power cut, once again dashing my poor father's hopes of ever finding out whether the intrepid crew of the HMS Surprise find the Acheron.
I was quite excited by the power cut however, as it gave me an opportunity to use the many candles I had lying around my room. I'm not sure where all these candles came from, but I seem to have an abundant supply that have never been lit due to my slight fear of fire. I brought the candles down, and we all sat in the living room commenting on how pretty it looked in the candle light. We also opened a box of chocolates, which due to the fact that we couldn't really see what colour the wrappers were, turned into Chocolate Russian Roulette. I don't know if you've ever bitten into a caramel chocolate, only to discover that it is in fact mint, but it gives you quite a shock. You're all prepared for sweet caramel, then BAM! chocolatey toothpaste. When you have no electricity and your mum won't let you go upstairs in case you fall down in the dark, this game becomes incredibly enteraining. It was during this blackout that I let my mum play Bejeweled Blitz on my iPod. This may have been a mistake. You see, a few years ago, my mum had become addicted to a similar game on my brother's phone. She would ask to play it all the time, and the phone was always being charged up because she eventually became quite proficient at it and was able to reach level twenty, which took a lot of time and even more battery life to achieve. Unfortunately, technology is not my mum's strong point, and I spent the next five minutes showing her how to operate the iPod while cursing the fact that I kept getting nutty chocolates in Chocolate Russian Roulette.
Eventually the power came back on, but by now the plot of Master and Commander had advanced to the point were we didn't really know what was going on. We spent the rest of the evening trying to find enough boxes to hold all the food we had bought that day, as we would be driving to my uncle's for Christmas dinner. As it happened, we had so much queue justifying food that we abandonned most of it at his house the next day, so it wasn't our responsibilty anymore. I feel that it was a fitting way to thank him for inviting us over and cooking for us.
So there you have it, the final chapter in the Snow Saga. It's like the Twilight Saga, only I think sunlight would probably reflect off snow and cause Edward Cullen to do whatever it is that Twilight vampires do when exposed to light. So people would know he's a vampire/he'd die/whatever. Anyway the book would be over quite quickly, which may be a good thing. Yeah, I'm going to shut up about Twilght now.
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