Christmas highlight: redemption by family

Our three day family Christmas marathon is over, and we are back to our funny little holiday routines of sleeping in, working, painting the back fence, and in my case, watching the father-son holiday project — painting a complicated historical time line covering 2,500 years of human history all down the corridor — taking shape. Pictures will follow soon.

My holiday highlight was the kris kringle exchange of gifts at my sister-in-law's place on Christmas Eve. I'd drawn my other brother-in-law, who is an art curator, so he was easy. But who had drawn me? As luck would have it, mine was almost the last present to be given. We did one at a time, and everyone made a little speech. My sixteen-year-old nephew, who had a terrible year, really, having left school, and left home and been in all kinds of trouble (we weren't even sure he'd come), got up, went to the tree, picked up the present, and said, "I've never given a present before and don't know if this is right, but Merry Christmas", came over and kissed me (I see him once or twice a year, no more), and gave me a bag with a card, a ribbon bow, and inside a fridge magnet and computer cleaning cloth from the Mornington Peninsula art gallery, and a fine red cooking apron. I think everyone was just holding their breath. Perhaps just a temporary moment of redemption by family, but a powerful one, all the same.

Happiness again

Here beginneth the 2011 annual blog post about Christmas puddings. Each year, I make them later and later: we have just taken them out of the bain-maries this morning, but they are ready to go. I toyed with experimenting with a new recipe, but decided not to mess with perfection (thanks, Vogue Entertaining Guide of the mid 1980s whose cover has now been ripped away after so much use: maybe this year I'll make the sweet potato souffle once more), and the only little variation was to bring out the flavour of the grated orange peel by using Cointreau instead of the last dash of brandy, and we'll take the bottle to flame them with on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have also just bought a two million year old Wollemi pine (complete with its own certificate) in a pot to decorate.

This time last year I asked people to spare a special thought or wish for my friend Hypatia. I visited her briefly in Cambridge in April. She looked fragile, but was taking small steps forward. She's now back teaching and writing, and while there's still a way to go, she is still facing in the right direction, as far as I can see. 

In previous years I blogged about the ritual of making the puddings, and the year my father came and helped me skin the almonds and mix up the puddings when I was too weak to do it on my own. This year, I got Joel to help me, and we happily squeezed the gleaming pearly white nuts out of their warm wet skins, shooting them around the inside of the bowl.

Later we all sat around drinking tea. We are still celebrating Joel's VCE Year 12 piano result (nothing wrong with an A+, in any language, especially when it was really not expected); we had Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" playing, and the cats were madly chasing each other around the house to that long, initial build-up in "Tusk"; and this time it was Joel who had one of those little rushes of happiness, so clearly associated with home, with security, with family tradition.

Hard to write this kind of thing without sounding complacent and self-congratulatory. What I'm aiming to do is to treasure those moments when they come, not take them for granted.

Christmas, St Agnes and Hypatia

About four years ago, I blogged about making Christmas puddings with my father, because I was too sick to stand and cut and grate and chop and mix and beat and stir. Two years ago, I blogged about feeling much better, and being able to do it on my own. This year, I'm a little late in making them, but am hoping a liberal extra dose of St Agnes's finest will make up for this in flavour.

Each year we stir and make a wish. And while a wish is supposed to be secret, I'm writing to invite my readers to make a virtual pudding wish. The puddings are currently boiling and simmering away. It's too late to stir them, so it won't hurt if you add your wish in the comments box.  I'm hoping you might think about adding a word for my friend Hypatia, who is having breast surgery on Tuesday, rather sooner, and more radically, than either she or her oncologist had hoped for. She is such a fierce thinker, is Hypatia, and so keen to get back to work and be with her students and colleagues, but she has a few trials to undergo first. So I hope you might, in even just one word, wish her courage or health or strength or concentration or peace or calm: whatever you would wish for yourself should this ever come to you. And even if you don't want to log on or write anything, please spare her a thought or a wish or a prayer or a blessing.

I realised a moment ago the tremendous irony, serendipity or unconscious convergence in my mention of the not-particularly-special brandy, St Agnes's, that I used in the puddings, since many of the legends of St Agnes describe how this third-century Roman martyr had her breasts torn off with pincers before her eventual beheading. She is now the patron saint, among other things, of breast cancer patients.

I can't find a text on line, and don't have a copy at home, either, but I do recall the thrill of reading Lampedusa's account of the little St Agnes cakes —  white icing and red cherries? —  in The Leopard, too.

Well, it's just getting weird, now, so to bring you back up into my world, here and now, here's a clip of the fabulous Ben Winkelman trio. Ben here is playing keyboards, but we had the CD of him on piano and this track filling the house as we breakfasted and as I tied up my puddings. Ben gave Joel half a dozen lessons before he headed off to New York to make his fortune, so we think of him as ours, of course.

And a partridge, etc.

I don't want this to sound like a rehearsal for my annual performance appraisal (coming up in January), but since, like everyone else, I have worked to the point of exhaustion this year (damn! and I really meant not to), I thought it was time for a kind of reckoning. So here goes:

Number of articles published: 1.5 (already below the recommended level, because of a delay in a journal that was meant to be out before Christmas).

Number of articles (extra ones) finished or finalised this year: 3 (the last one sent off, to meet the deadline, last Friday: phew!)

Number of chapters written on the Garter book: 1 (completely from scratch, and pretty much polished: it's my favourite so far, and is called "Dressing Up")

Number of extra bits and pieces written on the Medievalism book with Tom: a few (must start turning these into chapters now)

Number of conference and seminar papers delivered: 7 (Melbourne, Perth, Leeds, Swansea, Riverside, Melbourne, Hobart [and only one of these was a partial repeat of one other])

Number of public lectures given: 2 (Heraldry Society and Friends of Baillieu; Lyceum Club)

Number of PhD students successfully being confirmed: 3 (congratulations to Anne, Anne and Duncan)

Number of MA students getting their results: 1 (congratulations to HerOverThere, recently sighted buying coffee at Baretto's)

Number of PhDs waiting to be examined for other universities: 2 (will be on to them straight after Christmas)

Number of plane trips: 2 international; 6 domestic (inside US and Australia). Very bad for carbon emissions: am about to be promoted back up from Bronze to Silver frequent flyer.

Number of teaching awards: 2 (ahem)

Number of literary awards and scholarships judged: 2 (plus 1 more to go over the break)

Number of resolutions about email and internet use broken: countless

Number of days missed morning walk: growing

Number of "Sing Your Own Operas" with Richard Gill and Opera Victoria: 2 (as of yesterday: a blissful Messiah with four friends. Head still ringing from the high A's: feel sorry for those sitting next to me).

Number of Christmas puddings made: 3

Number of Christmas trees decorated: 1 (just as soon as I post this blog post)

Sum total of weight gained and lost: 0 (which, given the combination of one's medication and one's time of life, is No Mean Achievement)

Number of doses of Tamoxifen: 365 (didn't miss one, even when travelling)

Improvement in topspin backhand: 100% (especially since last week, when I had a whole lesson with Larry on my own, and when he told me in some respects it was better than Paul's, after which I promptly sent the next six into the net).

Other statistics (difficult meetings attended; jobs at risk; curriculum reviews) are too depressing and confusing. And in any case, I'm trying to resist the way our Faculty now just counts everything. And besides, it's Christmas. Or the holidays. Or the end of the year. So it's time to let go of all the counting. I'm still "on deck" at work, with the exception of the Christmas break, till the end of January, when my eleven months of leave (sabbatical plus long service plus annual: not that I'm counting) begin. But right now I'm going to put up the Christmas tree, clean up my desk, and head up to the tennis courts to work on my backhand.

Three-day event

Chez nous, making Christmas puddings is a three-day event.

Day One: buy brandy and fruit. Sultanas, currants, raisins, apricots, figs, ginger, peel, cherries, dates, and a handful of the prunes soaked in port I keep in the pantry. Chop and soak.

Day Two: assemble other ingredients: butter (I can't abide suet; and there are vegetarians in each family, anyway), sugar, flour, spices, eggs (free-range, collected by hand from under the chickens who laid them in the nests at the Ceres co-op), carrot, breadcrumbs, orange rind, lemon rind, almonds, beer and more brandy. Mix with fruit, and get assembled members of the family to stir and make a wish.

Day Three: pack into bowls,



Wrap with layers of foil and tie with string; then juggle various saucepans until you come across this extremely satisfactory arrangement for the two big ones.




There's a third smaller one in a saucepan bubbling away on the stove now.

Every year I make three: a big one each for Paul's family on Christmas Eve (his parents, aunt and uncle, brother and sister and their partners and children), and one for mine on Christmas Day (my parents and sister).

I have blogged about making the puddings earlier, under much more difficult circumstances. Very good, this time, to feel healthy and strong and able to stir with ease. I'll try and remember to take a photo at Christmas and update: this recipe makes a very rich and dark pudding, which we flame with hot brandy, then serve with lashings of brandy butter and fresh berries and cream. The little one we are supposed to eat mid-year, in mid-winter, but last year's is still lurking in the fridge. I checked it yesterday and it looks fine. Must find an occasion to eat Christmas pudding soon...

Christmas lunch for 15? not a problem. Or is it?

Every Christmas Eve, Paul's family takes it in turns to go to his brother's place by the beach, his sister's in the country, or our place in the city. This year it was our turn. Photos aren't particularly good; posted here for the benefit of non-Australian readers who wonder what Christmas might look like in summer. Actually it was a bit chilly in the morning, but by afternoon warm enough to sit outside. For the first time since Joel, Angus and Sarah were born in the same year, there were only five grandchildren present: Nick, 18, was visiting his girlfriend's family.

We went all out with the food, since it's the first time for months our dining table didn't have my computer on it, and it was fun to put three tables together, bring in the garden chairs, and scrape the drawers for enough forks and spoons. Also, one child has a severe nut allergy, and another is vegetarian, so we had lots of options in addition to the paella and baked ham you see here. I can't believe I don't have a photo of my pudding, but it was glistening with butter and fruit, and the blue flame of the brandy. Note also the festive lights decorating the fishtank.

What an opulent display, though. At the time it felt like a lovely thing to do, to work and cook and clean for the family, but seeing the food in all its lavishness is a bit ghastly now. This family is very restrained with presents, but even so, I can't help feeling some of the best gifts we were given this year were a chicken for a Philippines family and a vegetable garden in Mozambique. Must make sure I shop at Oxfam next year.