Jolly rum balls and Christmas carols

Good day my strange group of lovelies,

Seasonal Warning!!  Remember that Nutmeg is a hallucinatory substance, so be careful how much you add to your eggnog this year. We would hate for you to see psychedelic reindeer or weird Santa elves cavorting. Can elves be weird? Or Grandma trying to grab flying chocolates. Anyhow, on another note, alcohol and Christmas are usually synonymous with each other. Making trifles that had a trifling bit (or a lot) more sherry than was necessary. Tipsy tarts that almost fell over by themselves and staggered onto your plates and heaven help the rum balls. They did a jig of jolliness from serving tray to bowl with very little effort. Well, that was the scenario of my childhood Christmas memories. But let's go to something a little less hard core and discuss the humble beer. Yes, I used to drink the stuff in my youth, mainly as a shandy. Not sure what constitutes a shandy? Mine consisted of a third of a glass of beer and topped up by lemonade. Auntie P's shandies were a little more alcoholic and it was beer topped up with wine. Lethal and disgusting tasting. Did you know that Women used to brew all the beer? In fact it was women who brewed beer until the 1500's when a smear campaign started saying female brewers were in fact  witches. Their witchy ways were supposed to enslave men with alcoholic beverages to have an unfair advantage over them. After that laws were passed to prohibit women from brewing beer and only men were allowed to create the drink. And today it's supposed to be a very masculine drink. Nope, not for me. 

And all this waffling leads to my having gone to watch the latest 'Wicked' movie. No, the Wizard of Oz did not have his witches standing around a cauldron of beer brewing happily while the flying monkeys tasted the tipple. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie but can honestly say that my husband would have hated it. He would have put his head back and nodded off to sleep, waking every few minutes to ask what was happening in the scene. And who was that green faced woman? Or why was Dorothy not portrayed as the simple farm girl he had grown up with. I loved the little twist at the end and no, if you haven't seen the show or the movie, I will not reveal it. But it was very self evident to the discerning movie goer. Loved the over the top glamour of the outfits and the friendship between the supposedly good and bad witches. And even the way the cowardly lion blamed the person who saved him from a life of captivity and complained that he had been thrown into the cruel world without friends. Thank you to the author, Gregory Maguire, for his imaginative back story to the original Wizard of Oz. Lots of positive messages in the story and lots of lovely singing. As a young woman I watched the movie "Zardoz" set in a post-apocalyptic world where very few books remained.  1974, Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling. Real heavy hitters both in talent and looks. But it was a seriously horrible movie. Awful. Rotten Tomato gives it a 46%, I give it a 99% on the yuk meter. Anyhow the whole thing is based on a half destroyed book and all that remains of the title is zard oz... yup the total title is Wizard of Oz. Avoid it at all costs. Not least that Sean Connery's hairy chest needed a weed whacker taken to it. 

Talking about things that should be thrown into the sewer, did you know that the Romans had a goddess of the sewers? Cloaca Maxima. She was worshipped for cleaning up Rome of all its wastewater and the awful smells. The Romans built this sewer in 600 BCE and it was about a mile long. Originally to drain the marsh land around the city and then developed from there. I suppose it was to get rid of mosquitoes etc in the beginning and by the end of it's useful life it has become a tourist attraction. Barry and I visited Rome a few years back and no, we did not go looking for the Cloaca Maxima. In fact we didn't even know it existed. I suppose you need to be a very different type of tourist to be interested in sewers. I have seen people taking wax rubbings of manhole covers, which I suppose is adjacent to being fascinated by what flows under cities anciently. Cloacina is the 'cleanser' and is considered a minor deity. Water was considered to have healing powers and I can totally agree with that. I think I could become a worshipper of Cloacina and clean water. In my childhood we had a long drop at the bottom of the yard. Nestled under the guava tree with its resident spiders, snakes and creepy crawlies, we were visited about once a month by the sewerage man who removed the smelly stuff in a big truck with a long suction nozzle.  Thank goodness for bidets and indoor plumbing. And by the way, a cloaca is the final bit of the digestive tract before the excrement exits the body in animals. 

We sang our first Christmas carols last week. We ate our first slices of ham and now all I need to do is find a tasty mince pie (spiced and minced fruit in shortcake crust for those who are not fortunate enough to have tasted this treat). No Christmas cards this year, funds are tight and postage is expensive. Last year I delivered a whole lot of gifts and a few folks sent their thanks, but it is a thankless effort on the whole, so this year it's a no from me. I will hunker down with my family and enjoy their company. My physio asked me for my physical goals this year and there is only one. To be able to walk along the beach and into the surf without crying in pain. Yup, it's been a few years since I could walk on sea sand without the tears. Simple pleasures.  Three weeks to Christmas and I had better continue with my exercises. Wish me luck.