Day of the Dead

What is the Day of the Dead? Good question and from my research I have come across the following. It is held around the same time as Halloween but is not a Mexican version of Halloween. It does share some traditions, including costumes and parades. On the Day of the Dead, it’s believed that the border between the spirit world and the real world opens. During this brief period, the souls of the dead awaken and return to the living world to feast, drink, dance and play music with their loved ones. In reality, it is a very nice way of remembering those we have lost. I would not go so far as leaving the deceased’s favourite foods and other offerings at their gravesites, as seems the custom in Mexico. That will just feed the foxes, slippery characters. A celebration with other family members will be a good way to celebrate their lives and to offer a toast to our love for them.

It is interesting that the most prominent symbols related to the Day of the Dead are calacas (skeletons) and calaveras (skulls). Those Mexicans do strange things.

Nottingham City Council has declared itself effectively bankrupt, meaning it will stop all spending other than services it must provide by law. Well, we can only marvel at Robert’s ability to spend big. Robert is doing his PhD at Nottingham University and does frequent the academic block most weeks.

We have had our Halloween and now have our list of events for the next 4 weeks which will necessitate the partaking of fine food and noble wine, everything one needs over this most trying of times.

The first event was to all go over to Michael and Matilda, to decorate their Christmas tree. Matilda decided it was a better idea to come to us so we changed plans. Originally everyone was to bring a plate and come celebrate the start of the festive season and decorate our tree.

Matilda baked a chocolate brownie and was planning on making small Christmas trees with Alex, good fun and also great to have with ice cream and cream. I prepared a very Italian-styled chicken dish in honour of the Italian members of our family and Michael prepared the best eggnog I have ever tasted, with no alcohol as Alex is a wee bit too young.

As with all plans, they do change and it ended up with Michael, Matilda, Susan and I. But what fun it was, the eggnog was consumed at an alarming rate and the chocolate brownie tray was magically converted to a dozen or so small chocolate Christmas trees. The loft was raided and the tree was erected after a search for the base plate. I did feel it needed more red bows, never have enough red bows.

Food, was a tray of sliced Coppa, salami, cheese and warm baguette. This we followed up with Italian season grilled chicken, pigs in blankets, quarter-pound beef burger patties and french fries.

To the tree, such fun was had finding our favourite ornament to hang on the branches. Much debate ensured on what decoration went where. The string of Christmas lights untangled and the red bows hung with abandonment. Back to the eggnog and the chocolate Christmas trees, which we covered in cream and ice cream. In all fairness, all four of us hung a favourite ornament, bonding our joy of Christmas together.

All too soon the night was over and we all reflected on what a special evening it turned out to be.

L-R Our Tree, Robert and Laurens Tree and finally the Dickens Tree

In keeping with this tradition, Angela, Matthew and family, decorated their tree on the same day, as did Robert and Lauren. While we were quite content just to take the odd photographs, Angela produced a 20-minute video, complete with voice-over and music, she is quite the creative merrymaker and does remind me of those epic movies on Christmas 24.

Robert and Lauren adorned their tree with white lights and snowflakes, quite beautiful and what I would expect from a girl of her talents.

Next is the gingerbread house-making afternoon on the 9th. As is the custom, it will extend into the evening. I must start thinking about what to cook, could be 14 people. We are planning a trip to the Bournemouth lights and we also have Kingston Lacy pencilled in.

Getting back to the dead. I heard that Shane MacGowan died on Thursday. He was the lead singer for the Pogues, famous for Fairytale of New York, which he sang with Kirsty MacColl Kirsty. His wife said she hopes his song Fairytale of New York will be Christmas number one in his memory. I will be streaming the song every day until Christmas and hopefully, it will end up number one.

The weather has taken a turn for the worst, the day temperatures struggling to get over 4 degrees C and that cold wind does offer a challenge when going for a swim. We are still swimming but it is getting harder and harder to build up the courage to enter the cold water with all that the weather is throwing at us. The good news is that Matilda is also swimming on a regular basis, not sure about Michael, the pressures of work and it does get dark at 4:30 pm. He has never liked swimming in the dark and rightly so, one never knows what demons frequent the water after dark.

Just to finish off, I will be adding a new section to my blog, called Stories, in the top menu. I have over the years written many short stories and have decided it is time to let them see the light of day.