Tomorrow, as I’m sure you all know, is Stir up Sunday, the day when families traditionally gather to ‘stir up’ the Christmas pud. Here, we’re starting to wish we hadn’t spent so long lovingly establishing the family traditions over the last umpteen years - nowadays the logistics of getting everyone together seem to bring more grief than joy. Long gone are the days when I’d put the youngest on the island and the others on stools and we’d measure out (sort of) and stir up and get covered in flour and all the bits, and everyone would go to bed groaning, full of raw, boozy cake mixture. Now, the process begins in about July when I put the date on the family calendar - thank you Google - and negotiations begin. Who can get leave? Who can commit to hurtling up the A1 (responsibly, of course) in time to have a brief mix and then hurtle back? Who will fall on their sword and allow the whole thing to happen without them because they really can’t get there? Who will allow me to get on with the job without them? (The answer to that last one is ‘nobody’.) And then of course we have the issue of the coin to be buried within – 50p? £1, £2? Isobel is certain that one year she managed to get food poisoning from a dodgy pound – the consensus seems to be that it was probably just too much of the surrounding stodge. Ah, Christmas. Such a time of peace and joy.
STIRRING IT
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