It’s five days till Christmas (Eve!!) and I have to admit I’m having a minor panic; domestic incident has interrupted my planning, but back on track tomorrow, a head empty of any ideas at all for a certain nearest and dearest who sweetly says they really don’t want or need anything, and no game of the edible variety apparently available in the local butchers and other shops. Also, somehow in my countdown, I have missed the eighth day till Christmas, so in the normal twelve days of Christmas song about true love, their gifts, and a game bird and a fruit tree, it would be five golden rings today, but I have eight maids a milking to think about too!
We have our milk delivered by Jack our milkman. It’s wonderful to open the front door and their are pints of milk in their recyclable glass bottles waiting to be brought into the kitchen, plus other items we’ve ordered, such as eggs and dairy products. However, for some reason we hadn’t been drinking as much tea and coffee, or having as much cereal, white sauce, rice pudding or any of the other things we use it for and we found we had eight whole unused pints sitting in our fridge! How on earth can two people use eight pints of milk – those eight maids a-milking have milked in vain! I had an inspiration, make something with the milk and freeze it – white sauce, rice pudding… or… porridge! I made a gallon of porridge, froze it in single portions and now it awaits reappearing as breakfast.
Today there are only five days until Christmas, and thinking of the five golden rings, I notice that I habitually wear five golden rings. One is my wedding ring, one is my mum’s wedding ring, and also my mother-in-law’s wedding ring, what is known as a Russian wedding ring with bands of red, white, and rose gold, and my eternity ring. Thinking about the song, I remember seeing a tv version of it which I think was from an ice show. I have a feeling that Christopher Biggins was the recipient of the gifts, but I may be wrong. It was performed in comic fashion where on each day the true love gave an accumulation of the gifts, so every day they got a partridge and a pear tree, they received twenty-two turtle doves altogether, thirty French hens, thirty-six calling birds, forty gold rings, forty-two geese and forty-two swans, forty maids and presumable the forty cows they were milking, thirty-six 36 ladies dancing, thirty lords leaping about all over the place, a band of twenty-two pipers accompanied by drummers! I seem to remember the ice was full of people whizzing around, and the poor – or fortunate recipient of their stalker – I mean lover’s generosity, utterly beside themselves!
Lois Elsden 