Christmas

We've enjoyed Christmases when the number sitting down together to the main meal was in the teens, and we've enjoyed Christmases when Mrs MW and I have had each other for company. This Christmas and Boxing Day were of the latter variety, the lack of visitors being exacerbated by Covid.

That we don't see our nearest and dearest at such times is the consequence of our society's peripatetic existence, so different from the days when most people lived their whole lives in one place, surrounded by their family. So, at Christmas, our children were in Scotland, Wales, England and Canada. Yet we 'saw' them all, for they gathered on Boxing Day for an hour and half's chatter and laughter courtesy the wonders of Zoom. Compare this to the years when, as young boys and teenagers, my brother and I were in England for Christmas while our parents were in Kenya, when there was no chance of speaking to them on the 'phone.

So we had Christmas by ourselves this year but we didn't stint on the celebratory meal, washed down by a bottle of Lidl's very acceptable St Emilion.