I bought eggs as the shop opened at 7am and commenced some festive baking. Not sure if CJ liked gingerbread I made him a giant Christmas tree shaped lemon biscuit then made another batch of gingerbread stars to ice for presents. Suin and 10 year old Ben called by to ask if I would help tie their lines when they moved further into the marina and Ben’s eyes lit up at the mention of icing biscuits. He stayed with me while we waited for Suin to call on the VHF. I cleaned the cooker, I sorted and cleaned and eventually we decided to start icing. Of course, the call came soon after and we had to frantically cover everything up against heat and flies. With Ben’s ‘help’ it only took a few hours to finish our festive treats and we packaged up his biscuits for his parents.

   After washing the walls again I turned my attention to the Christmas cake. Simon had dug my pre-baked Christmas cake from the bilges and after a layer of marzipan I whacked on some ‘snow scene’ icing. The holly leaf run outs I made didn’t exactly come off the paper very well though and the crumpled green blobs now resemble a ring of mushy peas! Great!! I iced a Christmas message on CJ’s biscuit, decorated it with silver balls and finished packaging up my star shaped biscuits hanging them from the grabrails between candy canes down the boat. A dentist’s dream!

   As the sun went down and I suddenly didn’t feel well, I realised I hadn’t eaten but worse still hadn’t drunk hardly anything today. I guzzled a litre of cranberry juice, a litre and a half of water, had a half hour power nap then got to grips with defrosting the fridge and freezer. My only break came when Ami Skyped from Australia and for a short while I relived all the places Simon took me to last Christmas. Exhausted I fell into bed at 2am.