It started off as one of those beautiful family moments that makes you feel all warm and bubbly.
‘Mum, I’ve to give a speech in class about our family traditions,’ announced nine-year-old Low the Younger.
Aw, so cute. I immediately thought of all those quaint little things we do every year. Putting the tree up while singing along with Now That’s What I Call Christmas 5,675. Hanging up the Christmas stockings. Donning my Santa suit and revelling in the fact that it’s the only day of the year that I don’t have to hold in my stomach. Opening the pressies one by one in strict rotation, dragging the whole process out for so long Santa is already halfway through a post-festive fortnight in Benidorm by the time we’ve finished.
‘That’s lovely sweetheart. What are you going to talk about?’
I said a silent prayer that he didn’t mention our more controversial traditions – the Pictionary draw to the death and the standard ructions when my over-competitive siblings get out the Trivial Pursuit, then deny they’ve been memorising the answers since October.
His wee face lit up as he listed his subjects. ‘Our tree…’ Tick. ‘Our presents…’ Tick. ‘My stocking…’ Tick. ‘…and how you destroy the dinner every year.’
The latter was accompanied by hoots of hilarity from my wee elf and his eleven-year-old brother.
Woe. Holy Wolfgang Puck, it’s a sad day when the offspring are using my culinary inadequacies as fodder for classroom hilarity.
I’m a forty-four-year-old, capable woman. I manage to hold down a job, raise a family, keep abreast of global affairs and follow the intellectual intricacies of CSI Miami.
Yet every year I go to battle with a turkey dinner and every year I slink away, defeated, clutching a handful of chipolatas and a hastily heated-up slice of emergency deep-pan pizza.
There’s more chance of me rigging up another Hadron Collider in my shed than there is of mastering the complexities of the traditional festive feast.
There was the year that one too many Buck’s Fizz (that’s the drink, not the burdz that whip off their skirts while singing a Eurovision hit from the Eighties) resulted in temporary amnesia and I forgot to switch on the oven. Cue a phone call to summon chicken kormas for twelve.
The following year I managed to burn the whole thing to a crisp.
Then there was the time that the trimmings were perfection. Just a shame they were ready an hour and a half before the turkey.
None of which was as embarrassing as the time that the homemade soup somehow went off, and tasted like stewed reindeer dung.
Or the legendary year that my dearly beloved broke two veneers on my chipolatas.
And yet, still they come. At noon on the 25th, I’ll be setting fourteen places at the table. I’ve realised that it’s my family’s equivalent of extreme sport – unpredictable, adrenalin-fuelled and potentially hazardous to health.
This year, I’m determined to succeed. I’ve written a list. I’ve checked it twice. I’ve banned the Bucks Fizz, and organised everything with the logistical detail of Santa’s delivery schedule.
However, if it all goes wrong yet again, I’m going to remain positive and focus on the educational aspects of the day. We might celebrate the occasion with a non-traditional mighty meat feast, but at least Low the Younger will have another story to tell his classmates.