Well I don't know about you lot, but i am full to the gills with good food.

Drove down to Barb's this morning after making sure the cats and the dog had their Christmas chicken wings and were not squabbling too badly about whose was which, and the chooks had food and water and ditto the geese. And off down the back road to avoid most of the mad drivers on the highway.

Arrived aroundabout on schedule for 11am and presented the cake (which tasted a lot better than I had expected) and a string of garlic bulbs from the garden before settling in to watch Barb cook. She does not require assistance while cooking so is best left to herself I have discovered and the table was already beautifully set and so all I had to do was sip on a Pimms and lemonade while awaiting my meal. And what a meal! Turkey, ham, potatoes, pumpkin, several different sorts of salad all followed by plum pudding and baked cheesecake (all on the same plate and with added whipped cream mmmmmmmmmmm).

Pastor Ben was on best behaviour and even turned the odd joke. Grandpa Tush was rather more mellow than was once the case, and Lucas whipped out some old family photos taken around Horsham where he apparently came from. Now had I known that years ago, perhaps we could have had a better relationship - but he used to be a real old bugger in his day. Now, a much nicer, more mellow sort of man so we had a long chat about places we both knew.

Just as I was leaving received a text from those two ALSers who had just sat down for Christmas lunch dining on their two boys that we dispatched the other day. Hope they enjoyed their meal.

Then home to the animals waiting less than patiently for my arrival, a run for Shadow and the cats (they join in with this sort of scramble), food for the chooks and geese, and more water (they really go through a lot of water when on layer pellets I have noticed), strawberries picked to go with my box of Cadbury Roses for supper and cats and dogs given their Christmas treats (liver treats for Shadow, a packet of luxury cat food each for the cats), and my Dog's Home calendar hung on a spare nail on the wall in anticipation of opening on New Year's Day.

Hope you all had as good, as blessed and as rewarding a Christmas Day as I did.