Having a hygge moment...it's not rude, honestly. Although, the way I do it, it might be.

I'd heard about 'hygge' a few times, (it's pronounced 'hooga', but more like 'Huga' than 'Who-ga' and there was even a programme on the radio about it, just before Christmas, which just reinforced what I'd thought up until then.

...I am secretly Danish.

'Hygge' is a Danish concept, which translates (very roughly) to 'cosiness'.  Only, of course, if you're Danish you have the added inbuilt advantages of long dark nights and snow, which we all know add to the general 'cosy' factor.  But, what with all the rain and the general 'blurghness' of the weather lately, I have been trying to indulge myself in hygge, and I have found it to be a most satisfying thing.  It's not just 'being' cosy, near as I can understand, it's more about 'experiencing' the cosy.  You know that lovely moment when you snuggle down into a warm bed on a cold night and listen to the wind howling around and think 'I don't have to get up in the morning'?  I think that is hygge.

Two of my dogs, getting the concept.

So, for the unititiated into the whole 'cosy/hygge' thing, here is a small list of things I have found necessary to fully immerse myself into the experience:

Onesie - or other garment unsuitable for actually wearing outside either for reasons of practicality (ie, totally made of fleece or some other fabric that lets the wind in) or decency (bits of food, general tattiness)

An open fire - if you don't have one, try setting fire to the curtains.  It gives you long enough to toast a marshmallow, if you're quick.

A good book - can I recommend one of mine? Or a magazine or something on the telly.

Hot chocolate - this must include whippy cream, marshmallows and a flake.

Cushions - honestly, how did I spend so much of my life not knowing about cushions? Anyway. Cushions, Loads of them.  If you don't have any, use a cat.  If you don't have a cat, I'm not entirely sure what you're doing reading this blog, but anyway.

Now.  Just lie back and indulge yourself.  Listen to the wind, preferably outside, but, you know... embrace the snuggletudinosity of the moment.

Yes, I know it won't last.  But, we tried...

Picture from http://www.thehyggejournal.com/2015/12/24-days-of-hygge-for-christmas-day-10_10.html. Yes, there are whole blogs about hygge! It isn't just me, for a change.

Come on, 2016, do something...just not that.

All right, so I'm a couple of days late, but I'm just surfacing from the rigours of Christmas. In this house, Christmas is a little bit like white-water rafting, only with more turkey, so it takes a while and a lot of deep breathing to shrug off.  And anyway, I hate to judge anything on first acquaintance, so I felt it was only fair to give 2016 a few days to get its feet under it before I started making judgey-pants comments about its weather and general demeanor.

So....  Here we all are, then.  How is everybody?  I know some of you had truly dreadful 2015s, so I'm hoping 2016 will be an improvement...it's a lot curlier, so that bodes well.  I like curliness in my dates, so I'm really looking forward to 2018, anyway, we're all here now, and there's that to be thankful for.  Anyone for a marshmallow?  Or some cheese?  I seem to have seriously overbought this year, probably due to the transitory nature of my children, who sometimes descend all at once and stay for weeks, rather like locusts, and at other times they sort of hover in and out of view, like ghosts, manefesting only occasionally to lick the middles out of cherry liqueurs and drink the milk. Since this year has been more of a manefesty year, I have a serious backlog of foods that it's going to take me well into March to eat my way through.  Sigh.  I'm sure I'll manage...

Now I feel that 2016 and I are sufficiently well-introduced to one another, I do need to take it round the back and ask a few pointed, Jeremy Paxmanesque questions about what it's doing with itself...I mean, I hate snow and cold weather as much as anyone who can't afford to put the heating on, but, honestly?  On Christmas Day it rained so much that the dogs shrank, (I know that I have 2015 to blame for that) but now we've had three days to get a bit of chilly winter sunshine into the house, and what is it doing?  Well, nothing, is the answer to that. There is a total absence of any weather at all, and, as someone who spends the majority of their time working behind a till and making conversation in thirty-second chunks, a lack of weather is simply not good enough.  What am I meant to say?  How can I chat about the weather when all there is to say is 'I see it got light again this morning'.

It's not thick enough to be fog, it's not raining, there's no sunshine, it's just sort of...hanging there.  And this means I shall be forced to make conversation about my Christmas socks and my Christmas Eve rendition of YMCA (with moves), whilst standing behind the till and fully spotlit.



Hang on...a branch moved!  I'm sure I saw a branch move, and it wasn't because a rook was doing its New Year exercise regime...oh, thank goodness!  I am saved! 

"It's getting a bit breezy out there again, still, good for drying the washing..."

My Christmas Secret....

Oh dear.  I have a small confession to make.

I don't know much about wine, but I have friends that do.  No, that's not the confession, I mean, lots of people have friends, it's not something one generally has to confess to. Unless one has friends of a Dubious Nature, which you don't usually confess to, so much as just pretend that you really believe their story of being given a car that someone didn't want any more.... Anyway. I have friends who Know About Wine.

One of those friends was kind enough to give me a bottle for Christmas.  I left it sitting on the worktop on Christmas Eve whilst I went to work...(no, you don't know where this is going; besides, it was red wine and nobody in my family really drinks red wine apart from me.  And I don't so much 'drink' it as...well, you've all seen sword-swallowers, you know how it goes).  So, anyway.  Picture the scene, if you will....

I headed off to work at quarter to eight on Christmas Eve morning, and returned, exhausted and with my cheeks aching from smiling at people, at quarter past five in the evening, to rush out and walk the dogs and start sorting food for Christmas Day.  Food, including a large joint of beef which had to be roasted over Christmas Eve because there wasn't room in the oven to cook it on Christmas Day.

It looked a bit like this. Before it was cooked, I mean, we didn't sit down to a large lump of pink meat on our plates.  So.  There I am, it's nearly six o clock on Christmas Eve and I have been at work for nine hours and my brain is fried (come to think of it,. we could have served my brain for Christmas dinner, it was already cooked and I would barely miss it at all). I have to cook the beef.

I think we can all see where this is going, can't we?

There was a bottle of £4.99 Merlot bought expressly for the purpose of cooking the beef in. This bottle was Somewhere.  My brain was not capable of searching for Somewhere, not when there was a bottle of red wine sitting right there on the worktop... Yes, I did wonder, when I had to hunt down a corkscrew (I mean, I haven't had to open a bottle of wine with a corkscrew since about 1990)...

Well, that beef was delicious.  I'm sure the wine - which turned out to be a really nice 2001 vintage - added immeasurably to that deliciousness.  I sometimes wonder what the wine would have tasted like had I drunk it?  Probably delicious too. But we will Never Know and neither will we Ever Tell the Person Who Gave It To Me...

It wasn't actually this wine, but I can't bear to google the one it really was.  My nerves, you know.

You all know how to keep a secret, right?  There's a glass of £4.99 Merlot in it for you, if we ever find it...