Happy New Year to you all, hope you are all somewhere warm rather than out in the freezing wind. I have spent several hours out there putting out stacks of hay and sliding down the frozen rivers in the fields.
We only have two extras in the house now – Josh and Alex. Tom and Matt went back to London yesterday in their little mini while James took the train and Steve had a long haul to Fort William.Thank you to Steve for the cheering thank you card of the lavender fields in Provence – obviously he was brunged up correctly! We had a very splendid New Year dinner eating ham smoked up at the Witheridge farm shop and simmered in a plastic bag a la Heston in the bottom oven. Tom and Matt made all sorts of marvellous canapes including amazing rice balls with cheese in the middle rolled in polenta and fried, oyster mushrooms given similar treatment, pigs in blankets with Palestininan dates and a modern take on the fifties cheese and pineapple but this time that Spanish cheese whose name escapes me at the moment with quince jelly. Pudding was steamed treacle pudding which seemed very apt on such a cold night. We bought a new Trivial Pursuit as we were bored with questions about the Sydney Olympics and played that between courses. I was denied my Fletcher Christian answer as I got the names round the wrong way – much hissing from my team. The others paid for it in the end as we won.
Our neighbours Paul and Jocelyn joined us and we all had to come up with two songs, one for pre-New Year and one for afterwards. So we started the New Year, after a spirited rendition of Auld Lang Syne with solos from Steve as he is Scottish of the later verses, with Twist and Shout followed by the Mika song with the chorus ‘I hate days like this’ very, very loud as Chas does not approve of quiet music. At some point one of those lanterns appeared and after much fiddling about it was finally lit and launched. It promptly dived over the hedge and into the lane and we thought all was lost. But no, it somersaulted out of the lane and shot up into the sky towards Pennymoor – absolutely wonderful. We danced until about half past three and then Chas and I fell into bed. Tom, Alex, Steve and James stayed up all night and launched another lantern with the dawn.
We were pretty quiet on New Years Day and feeling slightly sick as the giant heap of bottles at the back door will testify. No headaches though as we all drank gallons of water. In the evening the ebullient Charles and Miranda turned up who were down this way for a wedding at Cadeleigh. A serious games session started with the Hat game, the Book game and more Trivial Pursuit. My sister gave me a Joel Robuchon cookery book and I used his recipe to cook my saddles of hare. I was worried as Charles in a serious cook but it all turned out fantastically well and great praise was heaped upon the cook. However my team did lose Trivial Pursuit by a whisker this time – we was robbed.