An English Christmas - Part 1

Merry Christmas!

It's been a long time since I set foot on English soil. I left the UK for Portugal on August the 1st, 2011 and have barely looked back. And so a trip to England this Christmas was almost overdue.

The flight here was awful. Truly mind numbingly absurdly terrible. The traffic on the motorway to the airport was busier than I'd ever seen it and so my family and I arrived at the airport later than we'd planned to. After queueing for ages to check in our suitcases we eventually proceeded to go through security where we then had to empty out most of our hand luggage so that the officers could verify that our children's electronic games were indeed just electronic games. Thankfully passport control went without a hitch and then a member of the hi-vis jacketed ground crew escorted us across the tarmac and up the steps to board the plane. Phew! We'd made it just in time. Well, just in time to sit and wait while the crew patrolled the plane checking everyone's boarding passes to deduce the identity of a missing passenger. To my mind, in the sensible and technologically advanced world that we live in, I would have expected the crew to have walked the aisle on the plane with a hand-held barcode reader, scanning everyone's boarding cards, which would have taken fifteen minutes. But no such luck here. An hour and a half of people checking and re-checking printed lists ticking people off with ballpoint pens. Fortunately that was the last of the problems and the flight went without further incident. We landed, collected our luggage, picked up our hire car and set off through the stormy night towards my wife's brother's house in Sussex.

Yesterday I took my family out for a gentle walk in the local town, just briefly, in the cold, along the high street of the local town to look at the festively decorated shop windows and simply enjoy walking along an English high street. We visited a couple of haberdasheries and finally a bookshop, where my children enjoyed perusing the shelves of English books. And I must say it was rather strange to hear English conversation going on. Driving back was also strange. My wife had driven from the airport and this was my first attempt at driving on the wrong side of the road, and indeed in a car with the controls on the wrong side too. In that very short journey I hit my right hand against the drivers door three times in attempting to grab the gear stick! I'm sure I'll get used to it just in time to return to Portugal and then have to re-re-adjust to driving on the right side (in every sense!) of the road again!

Today, I've had a lazy family day, with the children playing games and watching a variety of cartoons while my wife and I have continually checked the weather reports for flood warnings along the planned journey to Wales to stay with her parents for the next leg of our English Christmas. While I was at it I also took the liberty of checking the Portuguese weather and it looks like Lisboa will be enjoying a balmy sunny 15 degrees on Christmas day; I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous! Tomorrow's UK weather however does look like it's going to be much brighter than it has been for the last couple of days and the rain will be easing off from this very stereotypical English downpour. So, with that in mind, my family and I plan to set off bright and early tomorrow morning for Wales.

It's Christmas!

Well, that festive time of year is upon us once again. The shops are full of silvery tinsel and cheesy seasonal muzak. And customers! Lots of customers! At least that was my experience last weekend when my family and I hit the shops in force to wrap up (Geddit?) our Christmas shopping. In the shopping centre, glistening stars hung from the roof and the nativity scene was so much bigger than last year that it even included it's own wishing well area in which to deposit your small change. Adjacent to the nativity scene was a makeshift barred off area where one could queue up to see Santa, who for reasons unknown was not at that time sitting on his splendid red and gold throne. And all this was dwarfed by the enormous decorated tree reaching up through the space next to the second floor food court, and rising majestically up into the glass roof above. It was all intensely festive.

A new Christmas tree was, as it happens, on the very top of my own shopping list. You see, last year I bought a ten euro tree from the supermarket. A branch fell off when I put it up. Another branch fell off when I took it down. And would you believe it that a third branch fell off as I took it out of the box this year. So, a new tree was in order. To be honest my wife and I had talked about giving the whole tree thing a miss this year since we would be spending most of the Christmas holidays staying with relatives in England. But that was not to be however, and under the pressure of screaming children I was coerced into buying a new tree. First I went to Continente, which is where I bought the tree last year, only to find that they had sold out of all except the 69 euro ones, and I'm not paying that much for a fake tree! Next I went to Conforama to see what trees they had, but alas they'd nearly sold out too, having only small white trees left. You can call me a traditionalist if you like, but as far as Christmas trees go, green is the only colour. At this point I left my wife and the two eldest kids in the shopping centre while my youngest and I got in the car for a quick trip to Aki, which is basically Portugal's equivalent to B&Q. A-ha! Success! Just inside the door, on the right hand side, was an area devoted to all that is Christmas: Trees, tinsel, baubles, fairy lights and even Christmas wreaths for your front door! A quick scoot up and down the rows of trees to look each one over for build quality and price and it was done. Number 6 was the one. My wife had instructed me to get a few extra lengths of tinsel and I couldn't resist getting a new set of fairy lights too, and so my son and I made our way to the checkout to pay for our glittery purchases.

Back at home and I set to erecting the tree. I opened the box, removed the instructions, glanced at them, threw them to one side and then set about putting it all together. I assembled the base, slotted the sections in the correct order and then spent then next hour fanning out the tinsel branches. Talk about tedious. I was starting to think that it would have been a good idea to miss out the whole tree thing after all. The children helped to decorate it with various baubles from the box and a collection of colourful paper stars and other decorations they'd made from a craft book courtesy of the grand-parents.

So the tree is up. The "wreath" is hung on the front door and the children's advent calendars each have a daily decreasing amount of festively shaped chocolates hidden inside. Christmas day will be upon us with all due haste, and probably before we think. There's still plenty of jobs to be done before Christmas though. Gifts to be bought and wrapped. The children still need to write their letters to Santa. (They're late with this every year, but I think Santa is a very understanding guy with an excellent rapport with the postal services of the globe!) Christmas cards need writing and posting. And it all needs to be done before we head back to England for the holidays.

Personally I'm not really looking forward to one or two aspects of returning to England. Driving on what is essentially now "The Wrong Side of the Road" fills me with utter terror. I'm completely paranoid that I will try and go anticlockwise around a roundabout! And what about the weather? I'm really not looking forward to the cold weather. And driving on those icy roads? Crikey! Of course the children are getting excited about it; more and more so with each passing day. (That is after all the whole point of advent calendars, isn't it?) They're excited about spending Christmas with family in England. And of course they'd like it to snow so that they could build a snowman and throw snowballs. (If memory serves me rightly, the last time that they built a snowman was Easter Sunday of 2011!) I suppose in all honesty, I'd quite like it to snow too and have fun helping them build the their snowman. Yes, to have some snow would be nice. One of the other things I am looking forward to is a walk out to the country pub for a delicious pint of real ale, and that would be so much more festive if the walk was through a crisp blanket of fresh snow.

I might have chance to post again before Christmas, but if I don't, here's wishing you a "Feliz Natal!"