Country Living – Pizza & a pink flamingo

I am aware that Christmas has long since been and gone, however, that is where my last column ended and it is where I now intend to start. I feel a need to do this only because I spruiked off about my wood-fired oven and my cool sounding Christmas lunch, and the fact that it was an epic failure is a story that needs to be told. Looking back, I should have started that fire myself but instead the husband decided to burn all the household rubbish in it first then stoke it up to near bonfire status (this proved to be a fatal error of judgment). The first few pizzas were burnt to charcoal and had half the Herald newspaper stuck on top of them! It seems I wasn’t content with having one failed pizza so this silly fool continued to do it two more times! Why was it that I didn’t do a trial run before the big Christmas lunch? And why did I think I was the world’s best wood-fired pizza cook anyway? Luckily for me I live in a modern home with this amazing appliance called an oven and that trusty old girl saved the day. And, while I’m sitting here being brutally honest about culinary failures I might as well mention I curdled the cream for the blackberry ice cream, so that just basically meant that the dogs got sweets and we didn’t!

I managed to score myself two Christmas presents which were an added bonus. After spending my whole life sucking back cheap Nescafe instant coffee in the bulk tins, I was fortunate enough to receive a shiny Italian coffee machine. It’s honestly so beautiful it resembles a piece of jewellery on my bench. All those years of that watery black stuff have now been replaced by glass cups, fluffy white clouds of froffy milk and heavenly aromas of Brazil wafting throughout my house. Overnight I have become an amateur barista and a complete coffee snob, but that’s OK, I can live with that.

My second gift (from my eldest daughter) was a “doozy”. Picture this: a giant blow-up inflatable pink flamingo! Exactly what I need at 45 with no swimming pool, LOL. Now this thing measures over my height and five times my width, so what on earth does one do with such a thing? Well, I’ll tell you, take half of your holiday attire out of your suitcase, stuff in the giant blow up flamingo and drag it halfway around the world on six international flights and two ferries, of course! Apparently, if I truly loved my daughter’s gift, I would take it. Which, as it turned out, was teenager speak for, “I really want to take Instagram shots of me with it on tropical islands but I can’t fit it in ‘my’ luggage so you have to take it in yours!”

So, for the love of that dear child, I jammed that flamingo into the suitcase and took out half my husband’s clothes instead … ha ha. Men don’t need clothes, do they? So, this is where my next column begins, one giant blow-up pink flamingo, five kids, six suitcases and a whole “Lemony Snickets” series of unfortunate events culminating in one crazy family summer holiday.