How to have Christmas
Ingredients:
One London terrace house, Victorian era (next to a park, if possible)
One tiled fireplace (must have proper mantlepiece)
One Christmas tree (Blue Spruce is recommended)
Sundry decorations (buy some from the V&A if you can; their selection is lovely)
A garland for the fireplace (may have to be ordered off the internet as they're VERY hard to find)
Ilex or holly or other seasonal flowers, as desired, from Columbia Road
Assorted friends to come around and drink red wine and eat roast pork and admire all of the above
Method:
Purchase Christmas tree, bring it home by any means necessary. Wrestle it into the living room, release it from its net and set it up in its stand. Fill stand with water. Decorate tree with lights and baubles and lovely gold lametta.
Liberate garland from the over-large box it arrived in and unbend all the tips. Hang from brass hooks in the underside of the mantlepiece. If you should discover that the mantlepiece is actually metal, and brass hooks cannot be screwed into it, wedge the hooks into crevices and hold them there by sheer willpower and reverse gravity. Decorate garland with decorations from the V&A.
Invite friends to celebrate St Nicholas' Day. Buy pork, apples, parsnips, potatoes and other vegetables. Buy pudding, brandy sauce and double cream from the Channel Islands. Buy wine.
Serves four.
6 comments:
I have them all saved 8-) Abnormally beautiful.
These pictures are beautiful, and familiar... ;)
Well, now, wait a minute: what if, for instance, I can't procure a Victorian terrace house? I think I could probably manage the rest of the items (for instance, I do have a brick fireplace with an actual wooden mantel), but those terrace houses are in notoriously short supply. Over here, anyway. Will there be consequences? Is that going to be part of our grade, miss?
:P
The most perfect Christmas recipe i have ever come across - however you missed out the addition of the sublime hostess and the perfect welcome!
EXQUISITE photos! Just EXQUISITE.. nothing more I can say about that
But what about OUR recipe...
One Elizabethan house (that's Elizabeth II) built 35 years ago (next to a main road)
One slow combustion heater with no mantelpiece at all
One artificial Christmas tree - $5 from Coles at the after Christmas sales but VERY sweet. (Blue Spruces are unfortunately disallowed due to sneezing and weeping eye allergies)
Decorations made by hand when we were just married and poor
No garland because no fireplace
Plenty of Christmas bush, Agapanthus and Hydrangea
Lots of friends
Do you think it will work??
KH, you forgot funny Christmas cracker hats, 'frosty the snowman' a la bing crosby, lamp perched on the circular saw and MIRROR IN THE WC. love, anita (i have to be baker st jones because sam and becca are also london jones'. please tell me i did that apostrophe right...although i have seen jones's and joneses...)
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