A week already?

It has been a frantic week - which is good from one point of view as at least I'm selling books, which all helps. Lovely though it is to have shelves of immaculate and expensive books, the Co-Op are strangely reluctant to take them, preferring good hard cash, so it's handy that the immaculate-but-expensive (as well as the used-and-cheaper) are being converted into cash. If this year's like any other, it will be frantic up until the middle of next week, when trade will suddenly die. Any orders there are will usually be by telephone, and the people who place them will start to have that stressed urgency in their voices which doesn't generally surface the rest of the year. Just before Christmas it is quiet, quiet, quiet, but the thing I have found over the last couple of years is that I get a lot of good orders over the Christmas period itself.

I have a few theories over why this is: people haven't got what they wanted or hinted for, so are making good now; they've decided to treat themselves as a reward for putting up with their vile relatives or are in holiday mood and have decided to indulge themselves. Still I don't mind why they order as long as they do, and a book is a lot less fattening than all those Christmas goodies. And love food though I do, I get fleetingly irritated by the way stuff I normally buy in the supermarket moves to accommodate a whole load of stuff I know we will never eat (yes, Waitrose, that's you). The Co-Op, I have to say, is much better and manages to integrate the Christmas stuff into its normal stock.

Although my son's and daughter's chocolate consumption shoots up to danger levels over Christmas, generally we don't eat much more than we normally do, and I would love to know if people actually do eat all that extra food. Every year I buy one of those rather nice boxes of chocolate biscuits from M&S and we're always so sodden with food (1001 ways of getting through the turkey.....) we don't actually eat the biscuits until well into January.

I am, however, very much looking forward to my sister's Christmas cake which last year was fantastic.... Eating Christmas cake chez Badger though is a strange affair involving careful dissection. My daughter doesn't like the cake so I eat hers, I don't like marzipan so my husband eats mine, which he will generally swap for the icing. Son wisely avoids the whole thing.

I am wavering off the point, though, so will stop.

Comments

Vanessa said…
You have the slightly rambling air of a woman with a long to-do list and a lot less time than she needs in which to accomplish it all! I can empathise with that...

This year I've informed my out-laws that either they cook Christmas lunch or we're off out ot arestaurant as the 25th is my first day off and I plan to spend as much of it as possible reading, watching the Dr Who special with Magnus, eating chocolate oranges and snoozing. My FiL will cook lunch however and as he is such a dreadful cook I think that sherry will feature in my festive plans...
Jane Badger said…
Oh Vanessa you are so so right... and I know it is the same for you. Your Christmas plans sound much like mine (except self, OH and sister will be cooking). Don't you just love chocolate oranges? It's the way you have to whack them to start off that I like, and then there's that twiggy bit in the middle.... What do you say to chocolate orange marinated in sherry?
Unknown said…
What do you say to chocolate orange marinated in sherry?

Come here, my darling clementine...

Hic !
Jane Badger said…
Gillian - !!!!!!!!!!!!!
winnie said…
I love Christmas Day but that is only because we never have any visitors and we never go anywhere. This is mainly because we live a long way from our families. So we get to have a lovely quiet day, we don't buy in a mountain of food and we can please ourselves. Of course, there are the inevitable hitches - like the Christmas Day we lost our electricity in a thunderstorm and nearly had NO dinner at all!
I too enjoy whacking a chocolate orange once in a while...
Susan in Boston said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Susan in Boston said…
Lots of business is a good kind of frazzled, so I'm happy for you! I can vouch for the pattern...I too splurge on a special book (or two or three or...you get the picture) for myself at Christmas.

Your post reminded me of how I miss the Marks and Spencer cookies (biscuits to you) that I used to pick up at Brooks Brothers in Boston...they were twinned with M&S for a while, and had all those gorgeous tins (I remember a big round one with coaching scenes in particular)...and they all went half price on Christmas Eve...I used to zip in after work and pick up a tin for the family on the way to the train station. Sigh....it's been years now since they carried them...sigh.....

(deleted and reposting because of silly typo...I hate that blogs don't allow you to edit posts!)

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