the adlards

Not that that was necessarily the highlight of the season of course. It was also the first Christmas in about six years that the intermediate-level Adlard brothers had been together. We ate together, drank together and even occasionally talked to each other. It was fun to have everyone together – for the first time counting spouses and children. My American brother hadn’t yet met Sophie and my recently de-emigrated Australian brother is always fun to have around.

One of the highlights (of the year, I think) for the Three and me was the rehashing of most of our kitchen in the week preceding Christmas. The most wonderful thing about this kitchen is how well it fits. It fits our character so well it’s almost like an extension of us, it fits the house, it feels good and right and like the centre of the home should. There are things we bought on our honeymoon that were precursors to this feel and so many contributory things that we’ve collected or just admired on the way. It should be obvious that we love the kitchen – and it all came together in a couple of weeks. We found freestanding units at Kims – one of our favourite places – remotely in mid-December and got the appliances we’d had our eye on the next weekend. Against all odds Kim delivered the units two days before Christmas, so we ripped out the old kitchen (and had it taken away by two men with a horse-drawn cart) and put the new one in. After a few protracted kitchen remodellings in previous houses it was refreshing to have one come together in two weeks with a total of about seven hours of work.

We had everyone round for dinner on Christmas Eve in the new kitchen, which was wonderful. The culmination of dinner (which had been spectacular in its own right) was the production of a flaming Christmas pud – the first I’ve made from scratch and delicious btw. Unfortunately I had given no thought to the capacity of the dish I had placed the pudding on before pouring a ladle of burning brandy over all …
Ladle in his left hand, platter in his right he poured. As he did, Grandpa shifted his seat back bumping a plug which tripped the electrics plunging everything into appropriately theatrical darkness as rivulets of flaming brandy began to run off the plate and down me arm. I’m glad I wasn’t wearing my spandex reindeer suit because I would.have.been.toast.

‘Twas a bitter-sweet experience. The pain has outlasted the pudding. The story will outlast the pain.

Now Granny and Grandpa are in Gauteng to celebrate Uncle Ted’s 60th birthday on New Year’s Eve; Ben and Anna returned yesterday from a visit to friends in Mamelodi; Pete and Ros have driven up to East London to visit the house they’ve poured so much heart and soul into and to decide whether to stay for a bit. We’ve enjoyed a weekend on our own recharging and preparing for the year ahead.

Here’s to a wonderful year ahead – may your houses and hearts and lives be full. Happy New Year!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 8:23 am by james and is filed under Family, Food, Friends, House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.