December began with shopping L Kiew for the exotic: mint and apple sauce, imported rosemary, cranberries, candied peel and blocks of English butter. It began with baking, the Christmas cake drenched daily with dark brandy until it oozed from the lightest finger-flick and emptying jar after jar of Robertson’s mincemeat into pastry. Cinnamon gold-dusted everything. After the final Advent window, we opened all our doors, welcoming hungry occupants, their cars filling up the driveway, aunts and uncles, cousins in greater and lesser iterations, the generations dressed in batik, bearing gifts. The kitchen was ever at the heart of it. My parents cooked together. Crackling, perfection an inch thick on the side of pig that Dad roasted while Mum beatified the oven-pan, red wine gravy, bliss of roux. Cheerful, family sat where we could, plates heavy in heady heat, heaped meat, golden potatoes, peas, carrots too. Our hands were full. Still there was more, glasses, cups, Anchor beer and Sunkist,
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