When Christmas came early

Table Favour/Place Card

Christmas came early, read all about it in FyldeStyle December/January edition, in newsagents mid November.

On Thursday last we had a Christmas Dinner Party; this in itself seems strange enough it being the middle of October and all. Worse still it was arranged for 4:00 O’clock in the afternoon, now our neighbours already think we are completely barking mad, but I think “All I want for Christmas is you” blaring from our house festooned with Holly, Ivy, Christmas door wreath, seasonal lanterns and a very obvious fully illuminated Christmas tree in our front room has finally put the seal on our crazy behaviour, the odd thing is no-one asks me any more what’s going on, they simply accept our nutty ways.

In the summer if you remember we had the live band in our postage stamp back garden debacle, I’m sure they haven’t forgotten! When Christmas appeared to be arriving early I imagined them all to be afraid of a re-run of the borrowed “Blackpool Christmas illuminations” (Mark as a surprise decorated our house and front garden, he did this mainly because he knew how much I would hate it!) we had a life size Santa, six life size reindeers and a sleigh, we had a Star (previously used on the top of the Blackpool Tower) on the Apex of our roof with strips of lights running to the ground, we had people coming to see them from neighbouring streets, towns and cities. The lights were bigger, brighter than any domestic lights, not only this but they used an awful lot of power and when our entire close suffered a power cut on Christmas Day we were quietly held responsible (It later transpired that the power cut was in fact wide spread and it possibly wasn’t our fault, but the damage was done!).

So on Thursday Libby Gomm from The Gazette arrived, http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/

the week before she’d asked me to arrange an evening to support the idea that “staying in this Christmas is the new going out”, we invited our closest friends and Mark of course, they were told to dress in a festive manner, they were asked to be good dinner party value, regale the assorted guests and journalists with tales of our greatness as hosts, they all without exception lived up to expectation. The photographer had to be away early, so drinking bubbly began early, the more we drank the more eager we all were to pose ridiculously. My house looked lovely, Creative Cover Hire’s Dawn & Lindsey http://www.creativecoverhire.co.uk/ had been and magically transformed the chairs borrowed from The Lindum http://www.lindumhotel.co.uk/ into nothing less than thrones (we had considered the usual emergency chairs for comedy value Mark on the lowest one is quite funny) we ate, we drank and we were very merry and it was still only 7:30 Rachael from “Be My Guest” Rachaelwilk@gmail.com was absolutely phenomenal, she kept an eye on everything in the kitchen it was like having a Sous chef she even took over Claire’s usual job of pot washing (we did buy Claire some fabulous leopard skin, diamond encrusted rubber gloves for these occasions but they weren’t required).

The picture above is the table and beautifully covered chairs and the picture below is after when the table has been as good as demolished and the candles are practically burned down.

The flowers were sensational, the food (Even the veggie option, recipe provided by my Auntie Maureen) and wine were fabulous but to be really honest all of these things are pointless without wonderful friends to share them with, so many many thanks to our very special friends Susan & Mike McKenna, Claire & Mark Smith, Sally & Martin Wilkinson and Libby Gomm without whom our reputation amongst our neighbours could be in tatters.
On Sunday evening we came back from visiting Rebecca on our door mat was our very first Christmas card from one of our neighbours, you see it’s all about keeping up with the Thompson’s!.