Christmas Day

After such a late night last night it was very difficult to get up this morning for most members of the family.  As I was on duty at All Saints Church this morning as Intercessor, I needed to get up.  I made tea (putting in some of Adam's Thai spirit in it to give it a kick) and made myself a light traditional Christmas breakfast of cold ham and boiled egg.  The children opened their stockings on our bed - as has been the custom since they've been born - but Sara and I left ours until after I had returned from church.  The service was the usual 9.30 a.m. Eucharist and I recited the same prayers of Intercession as had been used in the Cathedral last night - in fact I had already decided to use them before I went to the Cathedral - they seemed very appropriate. I had a swift chat with one or two people whom we don't often see at church before driving back home.  I made a wood fire and prepared bucks fizz for us all before Sara and I opened our stockings and then all of us opened our numerous presents.  The highlight for me was opening a really large present from Sara to find that it was a still life pastel drawing I had done sixteen years ago, which had laid ignored somewhere in our family room, and which Sara had now had framed. It looked great framed and I didn't recognise my own work at first. It reminds me of some of the works of Van Gogh which Thom has described as being something he would give away to a charity shop.  Anyway you can judge for yourselves from the picture above.   Christmas lunch consisted of prawns and smoked salmon for starters, roast duck with all the trimmings including plum sauce and finally Christmas pudding.  We phone Mum just before The Queen and she seemed quite happy to be spending Christmas Day on her own.  She had had visitors which was so a good thing for her.  The day went extremely quickly and in the evening we played a game of "Captions" - a game we received as a present from my sister Heather and her family.  Tonight we watched a couple of Carry On movies and all went to bed quite exhausted.