Cocktails and Carols - do they go?

Today was very much an at-home day for the most part, in which I finished a scrapbook page of Nick and started one of Aaron. At 5 pm we had supper and then got ourselves ready for the Cocktails and Carols evening at Plantation House. Nick looked dashing in his suit with a gray shirt and red tie, and I had a bit of spare material to make him a pocket-kerchief thing, so we matched well. We were ready to leave by 5.45; I asked Caleb to take a photo of us before we left, but um…it wasn’t a great pic.

We got to Tammy before 6 to drop off the boys, then left straight away – I guess we were anticipating chatting for a few minutes because we had built it into the driving time, but we ran ahead of schedule and got to Plantation House way too early. We sat waiting in the car for about 15 minutes! We were welcomed at the door by the Governor and Mrs Gurr before making our way into the library with a glass of fruit juice. After a short time of chatting, those of us in the library were invited to join the others in the diningroom for the singing of the Carols. There was quite a crowd in there and it was stuffy! We sang five or six carols, interspersed with some jokes by the Governor and even a little ditty of his own composition which was amusing.

Nick and I agreed that we didn’t enjoy singing carols with people who had glasses of wine or beer in hand, who were changing the words to amuse themselves and then laughing at their own cleverness, or who were simply singing songs – it is OUR Jesus they are singing about, and they shouldn’t do it without meaning! But that aside it was a lovely evening. After the singing we made our way back to the library where we chatted to people we wouldn’t normally mingle with – I spoke to the Bank Manageress, the wife of the Chief Secretary, and one of the ladies in IT who also happens to be Miss St Helena (when I put it like that it sounds impressive, doesn’t it – but there are no celebrities on the island). Nick isn’t much into chit-chatting so it was more laborious for him, but the mini pizzas, chicken nuggets, sausages, samoosas and other finger foods kept him going. At 8.45 we joined the queue of leavers, bidding farewell to the Governor and Mrs at the door. We had been standing around for over two hours and my legs were aching, but it had really been very good. The boys were still awake at Tammy’s house, having had too good a time playing with their friends to bother about sleep!