The Great Escape...

My husband and I are going abroad for Christmas.

Not to somewhere warm with sandy beaches, palm trees and coconuts. No, we are going to Norway where it will be colder than it is here, but hopefully with SNOW.

Remember singing ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’? Well, we are always dreaming. One year we had 20 minutes of snow in Somerset during the whole winter. What good is that?

In 1962 we had a cracker of a winter. We lived in Kent then [with no central heating till the 1970s BTW]. By gum we knew how to survive in cold weather, with frost on the inside of the window, huddled over a small electric fire in the middle of the bedroom trying to do homework. There was a fire in the front room but the hall was so cold all you could hear during the evening when people went in and out was ‘Shut the door!’.

Anyway, I digress. In Norway it is colder [outside not inside] but we are not going for the dip in temperature. Apart from seeing our grandchildren I am looking forward to experiencing a scenario that looks like Christmas. White lawns, gently falling soft snowflakes, the scrunchy sound as you are the first one to walk down the drive in the morning leaving your footprint behind on the previously unmarked swathes of pristine white...

This means that we leave some of our kids behind in the UK to sort Christmas dinner, presents, decorations etc themselves. They can do that. They are all big enough. I will just say that again – our kids can sort Christmas dinner – does that not sound good?

I know I will help out where I will be, I can lay the table, I can load the dishwasher and peel potatoes – but it’s a lot different to being responsible for everything. Most importantly, I won’t be responsible for organising the clearing up after every meal, for checking the table has been wiped properly, making sure that stuff which needs to be defrosted has been taken out of the freezer and that all the leftover meat has been put in the fridge.


The housewives among us may understand why I am referring to this as The Great Escape.