18:30 After an earlier-than-usual dinner, Ali, Ed, Josie, Rosalind Isaac go off to the 16th century Chawton House, associated with Jane Austen's family, to see a performance of Christmas Carol by Dickens actor, Dominic Gerrard.
Later, Alison sends us pictures of the family taken earlier in the evening: arriving at Chawton House, which was built in 1580, for tonight's performance:
20:00 Lois and I are left to our own devices this evening, and Lois is anxious to make use of Alison's family's Netflix subscription, so I see what I can do with the simplified remote control. Luckily they don't ask for a password, otherwise we'd be "stuffed" as they say haha!
Lois and I wrap up well for our big
"grandparents' night in"
She chooses A Castle For Christmas (2021) starring Brooke Shields, her of the terrifying big red mouth. Brooke plays a best-selling American author, Sophie Brown, who annoys her public in the States by killing off one of their favourite characters from her books.
The atmosphere between her and her fans starts to look ugly, so Sophie decides to escape to her father's former castle in Scotland till the heat dies down. Whilst there she meets, and falls in love with, the grumpy and hard-up Scottish duke, played by Cary Elwes, who lives in the castle now. Sophie buys the castle, pays off all the debts, and gets rewarded with a husband - the Duke - with a duchess-hood for herself thrown in.
See? Simples, isn't it!
I have to say, I've never seen a film before that's so completely lacking in dramatic tension. Admittedly the grumpy Scottish Duke doesn't like Brooke Shields to start with, but you kind of know he's got a heart of gold underneath all the grumpiness, and so it proves.
And, as Lois says, you don't want a lot of tension and conflict on the night before Christmas Eve, do you, so fair enough!
The film boasts a nice background Scottish atmosphere in the nearby village, with lots of highland jigs and fiddle-playing in the pub, but how authentic it is, and to what extent it's all a pure Scottish Tourist Board fantasy I'm not qualified to say!
21:00 Ali Ed and the children arrive home, happy but tired, so it's early beds all round. Ed has to get up early tomorrow morning to go for a run with his younger brother Tom, who lives in nearby Haslemere.
22:00 Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!
10:00 Lois and I finally appear downstairs after a lengthy sleep-in and shower, designed to make us fit and ready for Christmas Day. Ali has already made a yule log.
Josie, seen here admiring the yule log
that her mother has Alison made early this morning
When I get down from the breakfast table I suddenly become aware that Ali and Ed have an "Alexa" that they can talk to and which supplies them with answers, but I don't immediately have any desire to "join the conversation" as people say nowadays.
This is probably wise - I don't want to repeat what I read happened recently to a man in South Carolina who has access to a "Siri", a story reported on the influential American news website Onion News:
LADSON, SC—Accusing the automated
phone assistant of failing to do her research, local father Greg Fahey
reportedly engaged Siri Thursday in an argument about WWII.
“Siri, what was the turning point
for the allied forces?” asked Fahey, who, after Siri responded that the turning
point of WWII was the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, scoffed and stated that her
answer was incorrect, citing the Battle of Midway and the Battle of Guadalcanal
as key turning points against the Japanese in 1942.
“Actually, Siri, the tide really
started to shift in 1940, with the Battle of Britain, which was Hitler’s first
real defeat. Siri, why did Hitler lose the Battle of Britain? Wrong. It was not
due to the Royal Navy and the Nazis facing difficulties at sea. It was due to
their inability to destroy the British air defences! Come on, Siri. This is
just embarrassing.”
At press time, Fahey had placed his
phone aside after getting into a heated discussion with Siri about why Hitler
should have won.
11:00 The rest of the day is then lost in a whirl of baking and decorating madness!
13:00 Luckily, however, there is a short break for lunch, which is nice!
a short break for lunch
18:00 Alison, Ed, Josie, Rosalind and Issac pop next door for early-evening drinks with their neighbours Charles and Virginia, Charles and Virginia's son Guy and Guy's wife Sabine, and Guy and Sabine's three sons.
Guy and family live in Luxembourg, so they all speak French and German, as well as English, and Luxembourgish of course.
At first Lois and I are left to our own devices in Ali's house, so we settle down in front of the TV, but at around 7 pm we are summoned to join the party next door. At first I feel slightly annoyed to have to go out in the cold and meet a lot of new people.
This feeling dissipates, however, as soon as we get talking to all the nice folks next door, and we have a really interesting evening, including - for me - the first alcohol of the holiday season, which is nice!
20:30 We all come home, and watch a Christmas film, "White Christmas" - the 1950's one with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, plus Rosemary Clooney. By chance this was the first film I ever saw at a proper cinema. My father took me and my sister Kathy to see it.
the old Curzon cinema in the London suburb of Colindale,
where my father took me and my sister Kathy to see "White Christmas" in the 1950's
To my knowledge I don't think my mother ever visited a cinema in her entire life - I'm not sure why. It could have been for religious reasons maybe when she was growing up in the strictly "chapel" South Wales before the war? But the jury's still out on that one.
It turns out that the film isn't really suitable for Josie, Rosalind and Isaac, and they soon start falling asleep. There are a lot of song-and-dance numbers plus buckets of "adult humour", not in the salacious sense, but in the sense that it helps with getting the jokes if you're over about 70 or so.
Madness, though, isn't it!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
