Yesterday was the day of the long anticipated Christmas party but we had to get going a little in the morning before the festivities in the afternoon. After breakfast, we walked down the hill with weather which just a tad less cold than the day before and picked up our copy of 'The Times' Then we started to make our way up the hill and, very fortunately, bumped into our Irish friends when we were just outside their house. for a reason best left to the psychoanalysts, the following image I think would make a memorable Christmas card/cartoon. If I were anything like a decent artist, I would draw Rudolph the reindeer with. lot of Christmas bling wrapped round his nether regions and particularly his testicles singing his heart out. Then I would have Santa on the sled complaining into his mobile phone :'Its no good, I have told Rudolph scores of times that the song is meant to be Jingle BELLS - but you just cannot get the staff these days!'Towards the top of the hill and progressing at a fair rate of knots, I was approached by a gentleman who I very vaguely know by sight and he informed me that he had often witnessed my pushing Meg up the hill. He insisted that he take over. and push Meg the last 100-150 yards towards the top of the hill. I then showed him where we live and invited the kind gentleman and his wife to pop in for a Christmas drink any afternoon in the forthcoming festive season. Soon after we got home, the midday carer arrived and as soon as she had departed shortly after 12.00pm, I started to think about the preparations for the party itself.
I decided that I would arrange all of the drinks 0 some alcoholic but the vast majority soft drinks - down one side of the kitchen, together with an assortment of glasses, bottle openers and corkscrews. Then all of the food, which was mainly different varieties of mince pies, I arranged on the other side of the kitchen. I had intended to out everything into dishes but in the event, merely opened the boxes so that people could make an informed choice. The youngsters had very kindly clubbed together and brought along a large and tasty cake with some Viennese whirls biscuits and then the system was that having been greeted, the carers could just go and help themselves. This little system seemed to work out fine except that i think I had bought far too much stuff not knowing how many people were going to turn up, how long they were going to stay and how many drinks they intended to consume. I started Meg off with a fairly large glass of fino sherry and then she and I proceeded to drink some prosecco which I suspect that Meg really enjoyed (not having had any alcohol for as long as I can remember)Then we all jollied ourselves, using Alexa on our Toshiba TV to sing some silly Christmas songs as well as more serious ones. I might point out that I had donned a Father Christmas outfit in red flannel on top of my normal cothes and it was enormously hot but I knew it would be like that from previous experiences and I did not feel like removing my normal trousers. I had taken the trouble to obtain some mistetoe (all the way from an apple orchard in Kent as it seemed almost impossible to get locally) This I then split into thee, hanging up two portions in our Music Lounge and a further one in the hall. In the event, though, nobody bothered to kiss under the mistletoe so I wondered if this tradition is dying out. The carer who hailed from Cyprus was totally mystified by the whole notion of mistletoe and it evidently only grows in temperate and not in Mediterranean type climates. At one stage we had about eight of the caring staff in attendance including a couple of the managers but we did have to restrain people from talking about work the whole time which I suppose is inevitable. As always happens in every kind of party, there was a natural gravitation towards the kitchen but that after all is where the food and drink was laid out. In the late afternoon, people started to drift away but I think a good time was had by all. I had already prepared some Christmas cards for every one attending and to make sure that there was no discrimination of any kind, each carer received the same card which was a Picaso like 'Dove of Peace' and a message of thanks to everyone for their care and attention throughout the year. For my part, I had prepared a little blank booklet with a Christmassy type front cover and then I invited everyone at the party to write a few words in it of whatever they wanted to say. When all of the care workers had left, Meg and I were very touched by reading the messages written inside.
The previous evening, and before I came to bed, I was thinking about the email client that could be installed into the little tablet which is a sort of advance Christmas present. I already had a subscription to Microsoft's Outlook so I cleared out the junk that accumulates when you do not use an email client very often. I was a bit disturbed to find a couple of emails thanking me for subscription to some sort of video downloads and thanking me for the last payment made and the next one anticipated. This sent me scurrying towards my online bank statements where I was relieved to discover that no money had left my account. So I sent off an email to the company, indicating that their email clients were scrambled or malfunctioning and could they sort it for me as soon as possible. Later on, I did get an email from the support department indicating that their customer who had a name almost identical with mine but with a different middle name had probably made an error and quoting the incorrect (i.e. my email address) to the company. But at least the mistake has now been rectified and I can breathe a bit more easily. The thing that I rather like about Outlook despite its apparent complexity at first glance was that it was very easy to set up a forwarding service to ensure that any emails received by Outlook were immediately transmitted to my principal email client. Another feature is the provision of five aliases which are incredibly useful if you need to supply an email address to an organisation but are fearful about your principal email address being used for spam or other nefarious purposes.