Let’s do this together

I’m already regretting allowing The Dark Lord to make her Christmas presents for family and friends this year.

Over the years we’ve had many “makings” at Christmas until I couldn’t take any more paint being sprayed around the room and glitter everywhere except on the cards.

“I’m sorry, Jesse, but no more gold and myrrh – this year the three kings will be bringing pencil, crayon and colouring-in pen,” I finally snapped over the annual festive craft torture.

Eventually she was old enough to go to the pound shop and buy really useless presents instead – eyelashes for her aunty’s Fiat car, musical tie for her uncle, gardening glove for granny… the right hand was extra.

“So now you’ve banned landfill presents,” my daughter huffed. “The only thing left to do is make them homemade fudge – but you hate it when I go in the kitchen.”

“I don’t hate you going in the kitchen as such,” I fibbed. “I just hate it when you start baking and I find cake mixture on the ceiling, and the mixing bowl licked clean rather than put in the dishwasher. It would be easier to clean up after Krakatoa in a disaster movie!”

Eventually I gave in as I hoped it would at least get her off the sofa now that school’s finished.

Finding a recipe online, she read out the ingredients list: “Milk, butter, deme–what?–rarara sugar and condensed milk, whatever that is.”

I got a tin out of the cupboard and let her taste it. “Urgh, warm sweet milk – that’s disgusting,” her face was a picture.

Laughing I said: “You would never have survived the 1940s and 50s. We literally won the war on this stuff.”

Then my heart sank as I remembered she needed to boil the fudge mixture with a sugar thermometer and my visions of a kitchen Krakatoa coming true.

“Oh no, we don’t have a thermometer,” I said, quickly hiding it under a pile of metal serving spoons in the drawer.

“We’ll do it next week when we go to visit Aunty Jess for Christmas,” I told her, making a mental note to tell Jess to hide her thermometer.

We’ve loved hearing your funny tinsel tales and memories of a bygone Christmas. Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

Yours, Siobhan

Families in the market town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire seriously lit up their streets with Christmas decorations this year – their glow can be seen from outer space! Resident Julie Exton came up with the idea to brighten up the town this year to make up for all the bad news. She put out a call on Facebook and hundreds signed up and strung out their fairy lights. And for those who can’t get out to see the town’s lights, there’s no escape for you because a film has been made of all the flashing life-sized reindeers, angels in windows and sleighs in gardens. And it’s been posted online at malmesburyandvillages. weebly.com. Well done, Malmesbury – you win the town with the biggest and best electricity bill this year!