Winston is in BIG trouble……at 4am he wandered into my bedroom having slept in his own bed in the lounge during the night so thinking he wanted to be ‘let out’ to do his ablutions, on went the wellies and the big coat and into the garden I went. Winston however stood just inside the patio doors with that look on his face as if to say what on earth are you doing? I don’t want to go out I want to go into mumsy’s bedroom. Ok, Angela…..do not swear! Be kind and courteous, even to small dogs!! I closed the patio doors, I took all my outdoor gear off, I picked him up and plonked him on Maices bed then went back to my own bed and….. did some admin! And why not? I was now totally wide awake!
We had a 9.30am FaceTime appointment scheduled in our ‘admin’ diaries with Helen and Nicky, the criteria being to bring your own champagne to make a toast for Christmas Day however, neither Maice or I had remembered to put the champagne outside to chill but hey, not to worry, we’re go with the flow gals and we always have a plan B or C or D so we didn’t let it worry us. I mean we did arrive with 17 bottles of alcohol to choose from so it’s not like we didn’t have any alternatives. So we chose our favourite …Canyero salted caramel run! We FaceTimed the girls, raised a toast to Christmas Day, had a chat and then retired to the kitchen to cook breakfast.
So, what was on the M&A menu this morning? On the menu was cheese infused scrambled eggs with lemon infused smoked salmon, warm croissants plus a glass from our now chilled Bollinger Champagne. Hey this was no ordinary Christmas Day breakfast, this was an M&A Christmas Day breakfast and it was scrummy. After breakfast we retired to the lounge to open our presents. Between them, Maice and Winston had ten presents to unwrap, and I had one, a small one, in fact it was rather minute and it was from Winston, but hey, its not how many presents you get, it’s the thought that counts. And a very nice lip balm it was too…….from the Miranda range I do believe! Unbeknownst to me however Abi had given Maice two presents for me so I did get to open two more. Maice had a range of lovely gifts and Winston had a ‘wobble wag giggle ball’. OMG he absolutely loves it and went completely mad playing with it. Honestly the noises that emanated from both giggle ball and Winston was highly amusing and the speed with which the ball was propelled along the floor was quite something. All you dog lovers out there, you need to go out and buy one now, not only is it hilarious it’ll drive you completely mad!
The weather was no different from the previous day, in fact there was probably less visibility today due to the mist hanging low but we were not to be deterred. We’d made a pact that other than our travel days we were going to a) do our daily yoga every day and b) we were going to walk in excess of 10,000 steps per day, which so far we have achieved. Today we were going to explore the Mumbles Hill Local Nature Reserve which is literally on our doorstep then walk along the promenade to see if anywhere was open where we could perhaps by chance get a cappuccino. We know that pubs are usually open so fingers crossed. Maice and I set off at a brisk pace but Winston had other ideas and minced his way to the left, to the right and backwards and did anything in his power to get out of going forwards. We had to give him a talking to, told him to stop being a Diva, it wasn’t all about him and to behave himself, otherwise we’d confiscate his wobble wag giggle ball!
We made our way into town and came upon the Waterloo Stores, a pub which just happened to be open. We went in to see if they did coffee and hey guess what they did, but unfortunately their barista machine was out of action. The two lovely bar staff suggested some other places that were open that could accommodate us with a coffee but we thought, what the hell, it’s Christmas Day let’s have a drink. I plumped for a Baileys and Maice had a double sloe gin on the rocks. What a lovely friendly pub it was. We continued on along the promenade and came across the Bistro Pierre which was open and did take away coffees so in we went, purchased two cappuccinos and made our way back home. It had been drizzling ever since we’d walked through the nature reserve which really surprised us at how large it was. The views over the sea would have been quite amazing had it not been so misty…… as it was we could see nothing from the viewpoint.
We returned home at 2.30 pm and once again Winston found himself in the sink being rinsed off. Poor love, he’s so low to the ground his undercarriage gets so wet and muddy as does anything he’s wearing so he has no option but to be put in the sink for a hose down. We didn’t have our showers before we went out as we didn’t see the point considering it was drizzly so we had our showers when we got back after which we made ourselves comfortable in the lounge, me on the sofa, Maice on the chair and watched Cold Comfort Farm and proceeded to finish off the champagne.
Maice, who was in charge of cooking our alternative Christmas dinner took herself off to the kitchen to prepare our Christmas Day ‘feast’. Our original menu of a lobster Thermidor starter served in an open scallop shell and a salmon wellington mains accompanied by purple sprouting broccoli tossed in butter and red cabbage cooked in a a red wine jus became a shrimp tempura for starters and fish cakes for our mains. Was it a lovely delicious Christmas Day meal? Well let’s look at the facts, the cooking facts that is, remembering who was in charge. So, the prawn tempura, ‘cook for ten minutes’ was actually left in the oven for twenty minutes so was rather on the crunchy side. The broccoli was overcooked and soggy but worry ye’ not as the fish cakes fared much better as did the red cabbage jus which to be fair only needed the film piercing before being heated up in the microwave! Overall our Christmas Day meal has ranked a lot lower than previous years but we made do; it was edible, which was the main thing and remember if it hadn’t have been for Maice noticing the puddle on the floor the other day we might have been eating sausage and mash! Mmm, now that’s not a bad idea, we’ll have that on Thursday for supper!
After supper we retired to the lounge to watch Vera where we subsequently both fell asleep at various times throughout the two hour episode. Tomorrow, Thursday is Pink bin day or is it? We wondered if there would be a bin collection so decided to walk the streets and see if anyone else had put their bins out. We took a very reluctant Sir Winston with us who was not a happy doggy as he’s been pining for his wobble wag giggle ball ever since we had to confiscate it from him. We literally had to frogmarch him around the streets but thankfully three things happened on the walk a) Winston had a wee b) Winston had a poo and c) there were no bins placed outside anyone’s house confirming that tomorrow was not Pink bin day. Just to clarify, we googled the council website which stated that Pink bin day was now on Sunday so we don’t need to worry about putting the rubbish out as we won’t be here!
As we were out on our walk Tara, Maice’s sister FaceTimed us from Canada so when we returned we settled ourselves on the sofa and FaceTimed her back. The other day she gave us a walking tour of her new pottery studio aka her converted garage and today we were being treated to Tara’s son Kyran’s new abode who he shares with four other guys. OMG it’s huge and the kitchen is bigger than our bungalow. They were in a dilemma as to how they were going to cook the turkey due to a) it being a small oven in comparison to the size of the house and b) there were knobs galore so which one/s worked the oven. Good luck to them is all we can say! We wished them a Merry Christmas, closed the call and took ourselves to bed.
Tonight we should both get an uninterrupted night’s sleep due to Winston having done his ablutions although he’s still sulking about his wobble wag giggle ball. Tomorrow Winston, you can play with it tomorrow…
We’ve had such a lovely Christmas Day, we hope you’ve all had a lovely day too.
Nadolig llawen…
M&A and Sir Winston xxx
Glad you had a good Christmas. We did as well at Kyran’s house in Black Mountain.