Pie and Snow

So yes. Royal Mail has gone to pot. Three weeks after Christmas 2010 was dead and buried, Postman Steven is still delivering Christmas cards. And not just any old Christmas cards at that, but today, as I sat putting the finishing touches to this weeks Trash It Or Treasure It, a Christmas card dropped through my door with neither postmark, nor signature.
Heck yes. The universe has dropped me a belated festive greeting. Either that or one of you, so thoroughly demented by the rigours and demands of the jolliest season of all, took it into your lovely, pretty head to make me a truly scrumptious little snowflake style, diamante sprinkled doilie card and in your haste forgot to sign it, with either name, cross or throwaway best wishes! And heavens that would have been fine and dandy (I’m feeling the love regardless!) were it not for the fact that this extra special card managed to get itself from there to here without encountering the viscious stamp of the postal workers mark, and arrived as crisp and white as it set out.
Curious and curiouser, said Alice.
And I would be grateful. Really I would. But then I had a little thought: what if it wasn’t a harried housekeeper at all?  What if it was the universe dropping me pretty little notice of it’s snowy intention to ruin my day? Forewarning of buckets of the icy cold stuff? I’m really not sure I could survive another bout of that nasty wet, cold business. My wellies have sprung a leak. My thermals have got holes in. I’m done with snow  do you hear me?
It‘s just one trauma after another round here. Last night Richard arrived bearing gifts.
Close your eyes and put your hands out, he said.
And I did. Secretly hoping for a tiny puppy. Or the little Cath Kidston handbag I’ve been not so secretly coveting. But hell no. Not in this life. Not for me. I closed my eyes and put out my hands and felt something cold and round between them.
A PIE IN A TIN. Yes indeed. My beloved had bought me a pie in a tin. A Fray Bentos steak pie in a tin. Because after loudly decreeing the very idea of such a inedible horror, Richard clearly believed it was time he challenged my culinary snobbishness by gifting me something I now feel obliged to bake and eat if only to prove, once and for all, that I am not above convenience food, I will merely keel over and die after consuming it.
Dear me I’m feeling dramatic today.