[Update completed circa midnight. ]
I really had to pester Alice to get this done before the New Year!
But better late than never, as they say.
Ba was thrilled to bits to have her name as the first on this - but since she's at the left, it seemed just logical to me. She really liked the little Nativity scene, and I liked the clear glass bauble, so we were both happy with the rather hastily contrived photo shoot.
Update
Ba seemed upset that you can't really see the tiny Nativity
scene properly on the card above, especially so as we took ages to choose it, with much deliberation, from several
similar ones at the Christmas outdoor market, several weeks ago. So Alice created another image for you to look at the detail. Click on it to get the bigger version. [Same goes for all the photos here.] It's even smaller than you might think, its base is just the green bit, but we set it on top of an artisitic slice of branch - elm, I think. And that's too long a story for today . . .
So here's a before one instead. There's stuffed chicken breasts (insides revealed in due course - pun!) lots of veg to roast (I like the golden beetroot and the parsnip best) bacon rolls with stuffing, venison sausages (posh!) and pork chipolatas (traditional). There's green veg (healthy) to put on later. You can just see the onion and mushroom gravy in the red pan. Should the full stops come inside or outside of the brackets?? Oh dear, never mind.
Does Ba's precarious perch on the handle remind you of anyone? That's a literary poser (pun again, hee hee!) from our favourite author (hint). Answer further down.
And here's the after one: deliberately cooked extras as "left-overs" for Boxing Day. Now you can see, if you click again, the chicken breasts were stuffed with fresh herbs, a slice of onion, and a slice of orange. Pretty, as well as extremely tasty. You should try it.Why Boxing Day? It's nothing to do with that nasty pugilistic sport. Traditionally, the 26th December was given to servants as a day off, because they had to work on Christmas Day. As they left the house their employers would give them a box of goodies, which they would then share with their families. See Wikipedia.
We watched rather more TV than usual, not only the Doctor Who special (that Peter Capaldi is quite sprightly, despite the wrinkles, isn't he?) and the sad end of Downton Abbey (sad it's ended that is, not all of the content) with our wonderful Maggie Smith, but also a new Shaun the Sheep movie.Alice said we were obliged to see it as he's a relative of Ba's. Actually she really loves these all these Aardman stop-motion productions and wouldn't have missed it for anything.
Here's the final stage of the feasting: some yummy special cheeses with a small glass of Late Bottled Vintage Port, and a couple of those heavenly M&S Cherry Liqueur dark chocolates.
Answer to the question above? In Through the Looking Glass, Alice takes hold of the end of the White King's pencil and places the words "The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly" in his memorandum book. As she is invisible to him at this point, he is most alarmed, and tells his Queen, I really must get a thinner pencil. I can’t manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don’t intend!
See the whole chapter on Lenny's wonderful site about all things relating to the Alice books.
We'll update you with even more as soon as we can - promise.
