Christmas at the Quinn's: Part 2

Christmas Eve

Well If I woke up on Christmas eve-eve still pissed, I definitely woke up on Christmas Eve hungover. I felt shocking and extremely guilty that my wife had done most of the graft the day before while I was in bed. I got up to make a start on what we affectionally call 'the food prepathon'. An extremely smug tradition where we prep everything ahead of time for Christmas dinner - down to blanching the veg and parboil the potatoes. It means we can enjoy the day and get drunk while playing the forth round of Pictionary. I made soufflés and Yorkshire puddings (as seen on my time lapse on instagram) before my wife even got up. Then I did a last-minute food list for our obligatory Christmas Eve food shop with the masses (fresh bread, fresh herbs, flowers for the table etc).

Queue the first thing to throw me off. With Christmas day being on a Monday, Sainsbury's didn’t actually open until 10am on the Sunday. What madness was this! Did they not know that it is tradition to get up unnaturily early to beat the crowds, anxious dads and hyper kids!?

Never mind, a quick comment to the sleeping wife so she knew just how long I'd been up and we were there. 9:55am revving our trolly like a boy-racer, wheel to wheel with every wife and mother in the village on their own personal mission to get around that supermarket quicker than Dale Winton can say 'beep beep'.


First thing's first - the list. Where is it? Pocket? Car? Stapled to my forehead? No!! I'd forgotten the fu**ing list. Suddenly my hangover felt a hell of a lot worse and my wife made some under-her-breath comment about maybe not being done for 10:30. I swear the women around started chuckling like hyenas, as though the competition had just been disqualified prematch and bought them a free pass to the next round! One less person in front of them at the check out!


So that is how, on the busiest day of the year for us my wife and I found ourselves at 10:45 am in Sainsbury's cafe, drinking coffee and trying to cobble together some form of list. We were, now, well off schedule. According to whiteboard we should have had half the veg blanched off by now- we hadn’t even started shopping for it!

The rest of the day went by in a bit of a frenzied blur but somehow we managed to get everything done and were tucked up in bed waiting for Santa by 11:30 pm, only 2 hours behind schedule.