the apple grater

In this part of the world, the show started as always on Christmas Eve at 2 pm when the shops closed. Until Wednesday morning, 27th December, no real live consumerism.

There's the usual string of services (we abstained from) with various themes, for the children, the pets, the elderly,  the homeless and so on. Mixed in were recitals, Händel, Bach, lots of choir singing and a couple of nativity plays. Also without us in attendance.

We did our best. On Christmas Eve, I cleaned most of the kitchen cupboards and we argued discussed which useless gadgets we should get rid off. R made cauliflower cheese and we watched that apocalyptic movie with Julia Roberts. On Christmas Day, we cycled where possible along the flooded river, it was quite spectacular. The third flood in so many months. R cooked the goose and ate it, I stuck to a slice of toast with a ripe Spanish avocado as I was mainly still working on yesterday's cauliflower cheese. Then I finished cleaning the kitchen cupboards and found my father's glass Bircher apple grater, which was sitting in the box with my grandmother's wine glasses, the ones that took on a greenish tinge and according to R. contain uranium. They will have to go.

 

That apple grater has been in use in the household of my childhood. I vividly remember watching my father grating apples into our muesli while my mother was breastfeeding my baby brother.  

When I was finished with the cupboards, I washed the floors, listening to the Rolling Stones new album. In the evening, for lack of another apocalyptic movie, we settled for a Swedish thriller. 

Today, Boxing Day, 26th, I used the apple grater with my porridge and got sentimental.

In between there were zoom calls and old fashioned phone calls with family and friends and we shook hands with various neighbours the way you only do once every year.

In the afternoon, R checked on the river once more, still high, while my abdomen started its merry game of bloating and cramps and colicking and I resorted to the blessings of a heating pad and distraction aka reading the news.

This is what I found out.

The Kremlin is ruled by an autocratic gang led by Vladimir Putin, who has declared war on the entire West. Iranian-backed militias are attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea, Israel and Hamas are fighting a brutal war in the Gaza Strip and a conflict with the potential for world war is looming in the South China Sea. The drones and cruise missiles that are currently falling on Ukrainian cities could also hit Tallinn and Warsaw or Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. An unlikely scenario? Two years ago, a major war in Ukraine still seemed unlikely.

On New Years Day, I'll clean the oven and the fridge.