"It smells like Christmas!"

After a decent lie-in this morning, I decided to give the bathroom a deep clean. I'd soaked in the bath yesterday and could see it needed some attention. I rarely venture into the bathroom, much preferring to shower, but I was itching to tackle the bath, sink and loo and get them gleaming again!

While I was doing this, Keith prepared a huge amount of vegetables, stuffing and Yorkshire pudding batter mix for our Sunday lunch of roast chicken. Sophie hoovered the house, and by 12pm, we were all done. The house looked lovely and cosy; outside, it was grey with rain threatened and strong winds forecast for the evening. I looked up the weather warning in place and was amused to notice that now the three colours - yellow, amber and red - have sub-headings: yellow - possible, amber- likely and red - expected. Have others complained, I wonder?

We decided to eat our roast early, so Sophie and I volunteered to cook the whole meal and wrote down a list of timings. For some reason, we had decided to go all out, and it was like cooking a Christmas dinner! We had seven different vegetables, including parsnips, roast potatoes, stuffing, chipolatas wrapped in bacon and Yorkshire puddings. We were going to add a cheese sauce to the broccoli and cauliflower, so everything had to be carefully timed. Oh, and Sophie wanted to cook the Brussels sprouts with bacon!

We popped the chicken in the oven, and I'd already cut up a lemon and stuffed it into the cavity. We approached the meal with military precision, and after managing to get everything into the two ovens and cooked, we sat down at 5pm. Phew! It had been hard work, but Keith was impressed with our efforts and even praised the Yorkie puds and gravy, traditionally his domain!

Sophie and I had been sipping our Biddenden sparkling wine while cooking, and it was heaven to relax afterwards, when everything had been cleared away and the dishwasher was purring quietly, with the remainder of the bottle. Outside, it was pouring, and we managed to get two bedraggled cats in and get them dry. Gomez had been out for most of the day, and we had no idea where he'd been!

Keith and Sophie watched the Manchester Derby, and I had a long, hot shower, washing away all the cooking smells that lingered in my hair. Afterwards, we watched more of The Last Night of the Proms, listening to the rousing songs and feeling very patriotic!