Guest blogger - Merry Christmas from the cook

Christmas – a time of good food, good cheer, letting out the belt one more notch and trying out novelty hangover cures in the desperate hope that something, anything, will work, even if it involves using half a bottle of very-out-of-date tabasco.

The big event at the big house is the Christmas Feast on Boxing Day. Looking round at the kitchen following the Christmas Feast at the big house, one cannot help but feel an odd combination of pride and disquiet.

The Christmas Feast is not exactly what one would call a comfortable environment for vegetarians, or nutters as they are known locally, as the remains of the carcasses (or ‘off cuts’) of various beasts lay strewn about the place, and cauldrons, pots, pans, glazing tins, scrapers, prongs, tongs, prodders, pokers, chafing dishes, warming pans, peelings, leavings, doings, makings, letfovers, plates, side plates, adjacent plates, ladles, bowls, and platters lie variously stacked, scattered and slumped around the place.

The atmosphere though can be said to be one of mellow contentment as the kitchen staff rest in the knowledge that the guests have just consumed the last course and there is nothing more to do for the next two hours, when a cold buffet and sandwich platters have to be prepared, and I as head cook have no chore other than drink an entire bottle of cooking sherry and reflect on a job well done.

Christmas is always a very big occasion at the house and hence requires a great deal of preparation in the kitchen. Luckily the Master does not believe in vegetarianism or any other form of faddy eating, to the extent that he simply refuses to acknowledge their existence. Thus he has decreed that the only ‘special request’ that may be made of the kitchen is for second helpings, which eases things tremendously.

This still leaves a huge amount of work to be done, not just in the securing of the produce, including those things only ever consumed at Christmas, like sprouts, Christmas pudding or emu, but ensuring that the various pots, vats and cauldrons necessary are all ready for us and not, as was discovered one Christmas, being used by the second under-gardener to distil his illegal (though delicious) holly berry gin.

And of course one has to set the traps. It’s all very well for a house guest to think it terribly amusing to wander down into the kitchen in the wee small hours and help himself to something tasty from the fridge in the form of a midnight snack, but that can also be described as a pissed up pest helping themselves to the last of the brandy cream to be had in three counties in the mistaken belief it’s very soft cheese. Nothing discourages midnight snacking quite like an enraged badger being launched by a small compressed-air catapult across a room at a now screaming reveller who has just activated a pressure sensor at the kitchen door.


Luckily, as well as the vegetables coming from the kitchen garden and the more ‘exotic’ herbs from the greenhouse, the Master insists that the Feast consist as much as possible of animals killed on the estate. Unfortunately, given the Gamekeeper’s drinking, perverse sense of humour and almost psychopathic hatred of any animal that might either dig a flower bed, give another animal TB or go through his bins, this has meant scouring the internet for festive recipes for fox, badger and, on one desperate occasion, rambler.

The Christmas feast is, by tradition, twelve courses, all of them featuring some sort of meat – something of a challenge when it comes to the cheese platter but the sort of challenge I relish, which coincidently also forms part of the cheese platter. It would take too long, and probably be incriminating, to describe all the dishes in full, but suffice to say that this year not only were guests required to use the usual assortment of knives, forks and spoons, but also had to employ a small lance for one course, a tiny fishing rod for the fish course described as ‘so fresh it’s frisky’ and, the most talked about cutlery of the night; the table trebuchet.

Happy eating and Happy New Year

Guest blogger – Merry Christmas from the vicar

As the vicar of a small parish church in a picturesque village, my role is, of course, primarily to fleece the tourists who pitch up to look at the world-famous rood screen that graces the church (at least it became world-famous thanks to Wikipedia; did you know that anyone can edit Wikipedia and it becomes a source of authority. This means, for instance that an informed scholar can correct the misconception that the rood screen here at St Barnabus is not in fact a Victorian reproduction but is instead an authentic relic from the Middle Ages. Nobody could have been more delighted than myself at this development and I would like to use this opportunity to thank that anonymous scholar – ‘VIC007’ – for helping to put the church on the tourist map) and then to explain exactly what a screen is, and what a rood is.

The rest of the time is spent writing to publishers of GB travel guides requesting that they include an ecclesiastic glossary to spare overworked clergy from answering basic questions like ‘what’s a trancept exactly?’ and ‘isn’t a font something to do with typing?’ and of course ministering to the parishioners and preparing for the major Christian festivals.

Of which the most important is Easter, but try convincing anyone of that.

Instead, the focus of the Christian calendar in the village is Christmas. Indeed I would say that the entire village considers attending church at Christmas to be a very good idea, and I know that all the villagers are profoundly grateful to the very small proportion that actually did turn up to worship.

Just as I know that the faithful rather enjoy the tradition that has grown up in recent years of the dawn three hour bell pull on Christmas Morning, known as the ‘Hangover Clap’ or the ‘Peal of Thunder’, it brings happy shrieks of misery from all those who have overindulged the night before who live within donging range of the church and are now faced with the awful reality that an enthusiastic collection of campanologists has no snooze setting.

Of course, being an inclusive church, we are quick to welcome those of different faiths who wish to dip a toe in the waters of the font so to speak at Christmas time and see what all the fuss is about. They may have seen clergy on the news, but we are quick to remind folk that we are not of the faith that appears to make a habit out of touching choirboys and appearing some time later leaving the magistrates’ court with a blanket over our heads. No, while many in the church are going to Rome at this troubled time, here in the village we remain of the view firmly held for a few hundred years that ‘catholic’ is just another form of heritic solid fuel.

Still, as I say, all are welcome. Why some young folk even make sulky remarks about becoming pagan and, of course, one has to sit them down and give them a jolly good talking to, explaining that faith really does require devotion and that it takes rather more than some black eyeliner and clanky jewellery to make a decent pagan. Once one explains to them that of course the village has a thriving pagan community and all that is required to join it is to dance round naked all night during the winter solstice, which is in December, while somebody films the whole thing sniggering from the bushes before posting it on Youtube titled ‘world’s smallest cock’, they begin to see the attraction of belting out a psalm in a cosy church of a Sunday.

Modernity and modern fashions have their place, but here in the village we like tradition. That’s why we have ten generations of the same family in the same tomb; tradition. And inbreeding. And inherited genetic disorders. But mostly tradition. But we embrace modernity. Why, we even have women priests here sometimes and the only time there is friction is when there is an insinuation that they look rather better in vestments than I do.

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful New Year.