The sweet taste of oranges

December 10, 2008

Typing in six layers, including a substantial wool coat, isn’t a peach as sudden movements are restricted (leaping to stop the dog swiping my chocolate biscuit, for example ) but it’s good to feel so wrapped up and cossetted. I suppose I’m being frightfully eco and saving on heating bills by being my own living radiator. But we have to go a lot further in this hot-bath-and-shower-addicted household to make a decent dent in costs. I swoon with motherly pride at the 17 seventeen year old’s top notes, soaring upwards from the shower, but accompanied by fifteen minutes of steaming and pelting water sounds makes it a pricey performance. I’m wondering where to find an automatic shower time-out like the ones in the gym, where just as you start to feel properly soaked, it cuts out. Curmudgeonly? I hope it’s not some sort of lingering vibe from the grumpy old man persona that comedian Jack Dee plays in Lead Balloon, the series filmed in our house last summer.

Meanwhile, I’m making up the beds with all the blankets I can lay my hands on including the special no-dog-and-cat-allowed velvet ribbon- edged one. This reminds me that adding a trim to something like a plain tea towel or cushion cover is a simple way to customise a Christmas present. And on this subject, my head is spinning. You’d think that being a stylist and professional shopper, I would be resistant to the frisson of panic induced by the beguiling and glossy gift lists in the magazines. Well, I’m not.
I am pleased though with my more humble DIY Christmas hamper idea: small wooden crates, which clementines come in, lined with tissue and filled with goodies like homemade membrillo; a bar of Green and Black’s chocolate; a packet of frilly white parrot tulip bulbs; or a good read, perhaps Francois Sagan’s classic coming of age Bonjour,Tristesse, for one of the teenagers, or Zoe Heller’s, The Believers. I shan’t forget some gorgeous Christmas delicious scents too, like the intoxicating sweetness of a pot of paperwhite narcissi, or for complete indulgence, a tuberose candle from Diptyque.

AROMATIC ORANGES
Oranges remind me of Christmas in Andalucia: the bulging nets of ‘navelinas’ (they’re the ones without pips) sold at the roadside on the way out of Seville, and the sweet heady blossomed air floating in the half-opened car window as we swept by neat sunlit orange groves. I learned that a tree can fruit and flower at the same time, and that an unwaxed orange is so much more appealing than the artificially shined and waxed ones in Tesco. I also learned how to carefully slice the peel off with a perfectly sharp little knife, cut the orange into wafer thin discs, and chill in the fridge with a little lemon juice, a tablespoon or two of cointreau and a few fresh mint leaves.

At Christmas lunch and the meals to come we continue to enjoy the clean fresh taste of sliced oranges, against the stodge factor of the pudding and mince pies.