Nina Stibbe - An Almost Perfect Christmas

Also, Ive had it drummed into me never to say gifting but I allow myself because of re-gifting.

These were acquired from a bargain barrel in a gift shop in North Wales as a bulker-upper and soon became the most travelled stoneware since the Midland Railway opened its Ripley Branch. To receive the Powys Castle mugs is to feel initially disappointed and unvalued, and even hated, but then to come to your senses and realize that youre actually very loved indeed. This is how I handle it, anyway.

Nina Stibbe was born in Leicester. She is the author of Love, Nina, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2014 National Book Awards, and the massively acclaimed novels Man at the Helm and Paradise Lodge, which were both shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. She lives in Cornwall.

FICTION

Man at the Helm

Paradise Lodge

NON-FICTION

Love, Nina

Nina Stibbe

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AN ALMOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

India | New Zealand | South Africa

Viking is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2017

Copyright Nina Stibbe, 2017

Illustrations Lauren Tamaki, 2017

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

The following pieces appeared in different form in the following publications. The author would like to gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce them in this book: Turkey and Me in the Guardian; Going Home for Christmas in Psychologies; Christmas Shopping in Sainsburys Magazine; The Christmas Lunch: A Story in the Spectator, and Timothy the Christmas Turkey: A Story in the Stylist

Cover design: gray318

ISBN: 978-0-241-98136-8

For Kate Nunney upholder of Christmas tradition

I vowed from a young age to never cook a turkey, and I never have unless you count turkey mince (which I dont). I mentioned this early on to my partner, along with other possible deal-breakers such as my laziness, love of , and plan to have six children and he seemed fine with it all.

Later, when I was pregnant with the first of the six children, I told him that parent-wise I was planning to model myself on Jill Archer, fictional matriarch from The Archers who Id have chosen as my own mother, if you could choose. I mustve inadvertently mentioned this to my actual mother because ever since then she hasnt missed an opportunity to say how awful Jill Archer is, and how badly she compares to other such as Joan Crawford or Wilma Flintstone.

Some months later, one evening at the very end of turkey as soon as possible.

Did you hear that? I hissed, grabbing my partner by the sleeve. Jill Archer just said its only eight weeks until Christmas.

And I reminded him that if he wanted a turkey hed have to buy it and cook it himself and not involve me in any way or make heavy weather of it.

I was in a maternity hospital bed at the time, surrounded by women trying to get their brand-new babies to latch on. I stopped liking fictional matriarch Jill Archer (briefly). I felt anxiety rising inside, and my partner could sense it too. The whole ward could sense it all the brand-new babies began to cry, and those that had latched on, latched off. My own baby daughter who hadnt, according to the midwife, ever officially latched on bawled and began to hate me.

We dont have to have turkey, said my partner, lets just chill with a chop. And because chill with a chop was a really hip thing to say in 1999 and all the women in the beds around me could probably feel Christmas looming, too a quiet little cheer went up (quiet because of the babies, but loud in spirit). A competitive male at a neighbouring bed said hed do chops, too, and then another said they might have ready-made beef Wellingtons from Waitrose. And soon not a single one of them was going to be having turkey, and a great sense of well-being descended on the ward.

Years later, my turkey-cooking phobia remains and weve had chops every year since except for the year we had Dairylea sandwiches. Why am I so turkey-phobic, you might wonder. Well, its because Ive seen the damage turkeys can do and the tyrannical hold they have over otherwise robust, rational people and Ive been affected. It goes back to childhood.

My mother is not a foodie. She hates all and would even hate that Ive written foods like that with an s. She would prefer that all meals be taken in pill form and avoids cooking at all costs and, as far as I can tell, she only eats peanuts, raw carrots and the occasional plum. But once a year, every year, she becomes possessed of a deep and profound need to serve up a roast turkey. Its some kind of grim personal quest.

After leaving her children to survive from day to day on sugar sandwiches, and toast and Blue Band, suddenly at Christmas the turkey would appear and our mother would almost kill herself in the kitchen, trying to please it; to provide the trimmings and keep it moist, only for it to roast itself dry and then be gone from our lives for the next twelve months.

Shes not alone many are afflicted in this way only, in my mothers case, it seems so unfair, her being not only food-shy but a rebel and a free spirit in everything else.

For as long as I can remember, the idea of Christmas dinner would pop into her head in early autumn, when she was supposed to put in a Christmas meats order at the local butcher. Not fully knowing who might be with us and requiring turkey on the day, and faced with a into the village, though, she might think Oh, fuck it and just get one at Sainsburys on December 23rd with the main shop. Then, on December 23rd, not wanting a fist fight over a fresh one in the supermarket, she might opt for a frozen one from Bejam (or later, Iceland) and leave it to defrost in the downstairs toilet for not quite forty-eight hours.

Before dawn on the 25th this was when resentment might begin to creep in before .

Still in the early hours of Christmas Day the bird more or less thawed the cooking preparation would begin. The methods have varied over the years, all with a view to combating . Moistness being the main objective and coming only slightly behind non-toxicity and hugeness.

It goes without saying that all manner of liquids were tried out in the baking tray and various fatty meats laid over the breast. And, oven-temp-wise, my mother has tried the high-then-low, low-then-high, constant-medium and the fast blast. And, timings-wise, the quick, the slow and the very slow. And usually cooked the separately for a more even finish and crispy topping and to prevent it preventing the bird cooking through.