During the weekend I went homeward for the simple fact that I missed it and I felt that I needed to check in with the parental unit.
On Saturday evening I watched my sister and mother meticulously weigh out, list off and prepare their ingredient for Christmas puddings. The raw materials were found from the stray cupboard in our kitchen which deals solely with dried seeds, berries and nuts.My brothers and I have never felt inclined to actually check this cupboard out as it seemed far to healthy. I imagine if it were to be opened for extended periods of time it would be part of that five-a-day all the people who fear fat children have been hammering on about.
I helped my sister open the bag of flour, I cracked open the can of Guinness and I went and found the special whiskey for the "soaking"- I say special, what I mean to say is, the only bottle of whiskey to be found in a house with pioneers as the leaders.
Once all the ingredients had been captured and brought to the kitchen table it was time to assemble the mess into something that would look adequate on a Rachel Allen's cookery time slot of RTE.My mother stood at the head of the table, my sister appropriately took place to her right and I stayed put in the far corner away from anything that required the tender loving knowledge of domesticity.
They worked quietly for a number of minutes- which was a surprise in itself given the fact that I am almost certain these two women breathe through their ears in order to get the last word in a conversation, and then they started to debate the instructions that was hand written by my grandmother.
This might not sound very unusual to the untrained reader, however, I have witnessed this debate on an annual basis and know that it can only end in my mother grudgingly going along with the written word according to her mother.
This year I decided to intervene before someone is killed, or worse, before I am asked to get involved with the task.
"Why don't you guys look up a different recipe? I mean I could have a quick look through the other books we have, or I could google it?".
I am not sure what language these two heard my offer in, but the grief stricken glares I was met with suggest that I had actually said; "fuck what Nana says, the old bag is so demented she hasn't a clue, lets go drown puppies in the Blackwater and shoot some nuns in the face."
The first one to splutter a response was the mother ship. Maintaining perfect eye contact- the woman doesn't need to blink in order to make her point, she just needs to be in the same room for the point to be and the message can be gotten loud and clear. I was told that there was nothing wrong with the recipe. They had followed them perfectly and without question for over ten years and everyone had enjoyed the pudding because of the fact. My sister mutely nodded, she clearly knows which side her bread is buttered on, or at least, which bowl her pudding should be mixed in.
I decided there and then that this was a warped tradition between these two. Like how I will always buy the Sunday Times and Tribune, but never read the same story in both publications. How I drink the first 3/4 of a cup of tea and never the rest and how I rarely end text conversations in the conventional words of bye, see ya or so long.
It seems that the mental apple doesn't fall far from the psychotic tree, and for that; I am happy.
