I went delivering Christmas cards the other day – not something I usually do but it was combined with a dog walk, and that is something I have to do, come rain or shine.

This was rain.

I dropped one off at a friend’s.

Jess and I were what could charitably be described as more than bedraggled. ‘Look like you have been pulled through a wet hedge backwards,’ as my grandmother would have said.

My friend however answered the door in a glamorous black jumper, nicely made up, hair looking good, jewellery properly accessorised.

‘Well it is Christmas and it’s worth making an effort,’ she said.

Likewise, I got reprimanded by another friend for having no, not one, Christmas decoration in the house – at least not one visible from the outside ( and, dear reader, there was indeed not one inside.)

So I went up in the loft, went into the garden and got a bit of ivy, and scattered it along with a carrier bag’s worth of decorations around the house.

( Usually, the reprimanding friend decorates our house for our annual Winter Lunch but not this year….)

But, I can’t say that I went home and blowed dried my hair or put on anything glam – brushing the mud off my jeans was as far as that went.

This lockdown, unlike the previous two, has come as a bit of a depressing surprise. 

For those of us with charmed and easy lives (and I do know that is not true of many people), the first lockdown was all gardening, chatting with neighbours over the fence, organising NHS headband-makers, cooking for the village, and zooms.

November was predicted, and to be honest, didn’t feel much like a lockdown as the traffic was ‘roaring’ round the lanes as people nipped into Waitrose for an ‘essential’ or two, fewer zooms, not as scary, not as sociable……

This one has dark mornings and evenings, bad weather, a threat of a more contagious virus, and it is seriously muddy underfoot.

And there is the battle between ‘why bother’ and ‘keeping up some standards’.

As I spent part of this morning doing the ironing, there was a bit of me thinking why do I need an ironed white shirt when I get up every morning put on those (sometimes brushed) jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper to walk the dog. 

Somehow, I can’t bring myself to wear the white shirt, have to wash and iron it again – indeed there are a lot of clothes in my wardrobe that haven’t, and aren’t likely to, be worn in the foreseeable future.

But being an Aspinall, genetic heritage from my mother and grandmother, cooking carries on.

So, to Christmas lunch.

I asked a shooting villager for a brace of pheasants and in return made him and his family and steak and kidney pie.

In the end he gave me a brace of partridge which I failed to cook properly.

So, we had a (nearly) vegetarian Christmas lunch but ,I would like to point out, sauté potatoes, creamed spinach with nutmeg, sprouts with bacon, cider gravy – so some standards don’t slip in this household.