Christmas Day 2018 1120

Disaster looms.

Firstly, even after taking the ham out of the freezer yesterday morning it is still not defrosted properly! It is currently sitting in my office where it is warmest, hopefully six hours being “basted” by the fan heater will rectify matters.

Secondly, what a great Christmas present I got from Alice. She emailed me to send the message she received from Trip.com telling us our train to Chengdu has been cancelled by the rail company! They helpfully advised us to book another train. There are no trains with sleeper berths left, soft or hard.

There is only one way now to get there – fly. That's great but it has destroyed my hope of making Alice's first flight that little bit special because we will have to sit in economy. Business class tickets would cost me more than a return trip to London so there is no way I can justify forking out that much. At least her second flight will be what I intended.

I can but hope dinner later is a success. I still have to go and get the spuds, sadly still the awful Lanzhou specimens, the ones that prevented McDonald's from opening here for years because local government insisted for a time that they use them. Stephanie will arrive early to clean and prepare, due to there being six of us my dining table needs to come away from the wall for the first time. The pea soup I made last night is a little watery so I need to rescue that with a potato and thankfully I have a tin of processed peas (and cornflour if that doesn't work!).

Whatever happens, this Christmas is one I shan't forget for a long time!

Now, where's my jing jo..............