It’s the last Sunday of 2025, I almost typed 2024 then! It’s time for another Sunday Thoughts blog post, and I’m lucky to have dragged myself away from Ancestry – more on that later.
I hope Christmas was everything that you wanted it to be. I know it’s not an easy time for some people. I’ve had my own experience of awful Christmases in my younger years, I might write about them one day. Today is not the day though.
The buildup to Christmas seemed so long this year. It started around October, and in the end it crept up quickly. The lead-up to Christmas day was busy; working and shopping mainly. I decided to go to ‘Carrick-on-Shannon’ for the ‘big shop’ for a change. I treated myself to breakfast before I tackled the supermarket, and I went for the chocolate lovers pancakes. I put a picture up on social media, and I triggered some of the people who think I get food for free. It does get exhausting sometimes. I’ll always say on the odd occasion that I’m given something for free, it’s a rule from the advertising standards, and I’m always authentic.
Anyway, it kind of took the goodness away from my breakfast, and stopped me treating myself to a final Christmas sandwich the following day. My waistline thanks me.
The shopping was grand, although Tesco was wedged, and it was very hard to get to some of the shelves. So I ended up having to go into Sligo on Christmas Eve, which was actually blissful. I was in town early and I’ve never seen the ‘big’ Dunnes so empty. It was very calm and civilised.
Himself has been banging on about having a turkey since the first advert came on the TV. He’s the only one who really likes it. I bought the turkey and he decided he wanted to cook it. Which was wonderful! Hopefully my turkey cooking days are behind me. Anyway, he had a notion that he wanted to cook it on the rotisserie, before anyone thinks that we are posh, we have a little table top oven/grill yoke, with a built in rotisserie. Of course, it’s really just meant for chickens, so after about twenty minutes of the turkey flailing about and the rotisserie groaning under the weight, it ended up being cooked in the oven. Himself was delighted with the outcome though! I do have to share the video though!
We had a lovely Christmas Day, it was very relaxed and chilled. I got some amazing presents – even though I’d already got my main one (a Marillion ticket). Lucy if you are reading this – save yer money! One of my presents was an Ancestry DNA kit, so I’m firmly down the family tree rabbit hole once again. I’ll know more once I get the results back, but I know a bit about some of my family already. I think the coolest thing I discovered this year is that my Great-Grandmother – Bideach McDonagh was painted several times by artist Charles Lamb. She’s in the painting below – The Quaint Couple in the Crawford Gallery in Cork. It’s all so fascinating.
The countdown is on to the great New Year’s Eve Celebration, if you’ve seen the photos from previous years you’ll know that our house is party central. Before that I will do another blog post looking back on 2025, and looking forward to 2026. I hope you are all well, and I’ll speak to you soon. Thank you for reading.
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