Christmas trees and beer barrels

Yesterday, Andy and I got things done. Oh yes, indeedy, we had a most productive morning. Andy dropped me at Sainsbugs to get the weekly shopping whilst he went in search of a pressure barrel for his Christmas beer venture. The Christmas beer is fermenting nicely, with a big frothy head of something or other developing atop it. It is also making the downstairs bathroom smell like a brewery, but I am assured this will be a temporary measure. I rather think that coming from a long line of hop-growers and publicans as I do, with a great-great-great Grandfather who invented Pimms, that I should be more amenable to the brewing and alcohol industry but I'm not. It all smells yuk to me and tastes even more yuk. I am clearly the token tee-totaller in the family. Well, someone had to be.

Still, Andy located his barrel. There is a sticker on the front which reads thus:'During secondary fermentation in the barrel, production of CO2 is unpredictable. This product must not be stored where damage to furnishing or property could occur. Do not store in airing cupboards, lofts, next to radiators, in direct heat or anywhere that extremes of temperatures are likely. Check the tap is screwed tight into the barrel before filling. HAPPY DRINKING!'

I'm still not liking the sound of this pressure barrel malarkey. Especially the 'unpredictable' bit.

'The trouble is,' said Andy, 'that the instructions pretty much preclude most of the storage locations in both the house and the garden.'
'Indeed,' I said. 'It'd best stay in the bath then.'
'And we can always repaint the bathroom should any explosions occur,' said Andy.
'We can,' I said.

Back home, we dropped off the shopping and the barrel, then went straight back out to buy a Christmas tree. We tried somewhere new this year for our Christmas tree hunt, which involved travelling down a country lane which got progressively narrower and wetter until we were driving through what amounted to a narrow stream of watery mud and meeting many four-wheel drive monsters coming the other way.

But the place we found had a gazillion trees from which to choose, along with a nice little gift shop where I found a couple of cute Christmas plates and a proper tapered advent candle so I don't have to keep hacking bits off my current pillar advent candle every evening so the edges can keep up with the wick which is fast disappearing down the centre of the wax.

We faffed around choosing a tree until my arms started to react to the tree sap and go itchy and blotchy. Then we took the tree home, put it in the greenhouse to keep dry, and then it was back out to visit our friend, Jane, who had a chest of drawers to donate to Chris and Leane. We collected the furniture,which just about went in the back of the car, took it over to Chris and Leane's, dropped it off and came home.

And it was barely lunch-time! What dynamism!

Today, we have attempted to make Christmas cards. I have failed abysmally to come up with an appropriate chicken poem for the inside (partly because hens go 'cluck' which can lead to all sorts of rhyming inappropriateness), and Andy has been swearing at his printer a lot which is failing to play ball with his instructions and keeps turning his beautiful drawings into weird modern art daubs which no doubt would go down a bomb at the Tate Modern, but would flummox the receivers of our Christmas greetings.

But we shall strive on, because that's what we do at the Manor. We never give up. Sometimes we should, but we don't. We're stubborn like that.