The sheer joy of a sherry trifle

Christmas brings out the best and the worst in me. It’s a chance to give in to my inclination to feed all my nearest and dearest at once, and also to show off a bit. I love the prep, from the shopping lists to the veg peeling, and I love the wind-down, from the leftovers to the decimated tins of chocolates. Am I controlling about Christmas? Yes, probably. But it all comes from a place of overexcitement.

This year, however, Christmas looks a little different. On Christmas Day itself, I am likely to be 40 weeks pregnant with my first baby. This means that not only am I not masterminding Christmas dinner and all the rigmarole that comes with it, but neither will I be able to do a lot of the things that have always made Christmas for me. I won’t be driving home to Newcastle, or partaking in our annual tradition of drinking the local pub dry on Boxing Day. I can’t sit through a pantomime, present shopping has been almost exclusively online, and I have yet to stay awake through a whole Christmas film. A pram now stands where we might otherwise have had a tree.

I am trying to embrace simplicity in our festivities, and focus on the smaller parts of Christmas that are still open to me. But it would be wrong to say that I am relinquishing control entirely. Ho ho ho, no. I have majored in delegation, and there is a substantial cheese board on order that I expect to be brought to me as soon as the baby arrives, along with just enough of the Christmassy essentials to ensure that I can be kept in leftover sandwiches. I intend to be sustained by freezer canapés until well into the new year.

That said, I am making a trifle.