Today I made my first-ever Christmas pudding. I feel simultaneously elated with the joy of creation, yet curiously let down by the fact that I can’t just serve it up – it has to just sit quietly till the 25th and then be steamed for another 3 hours before we’ll discover if it’s actually any good. It does seem to smell pretty good, though, from what I can tell with my nose all stuffed up. And the little bit of mix I tasted gave me hope that perhaps this will be a recipe I might be able to tolerate (my general attitude towards Christmas pudding is “ew yuk, take the horrid thing away!”). For those who are interested, I’m doing the Nigella Lawson Ultimate Christmas Pudding from her Nigella Christmas book. I was supposed to do our family’s traditional pud recipe, but there was confusion because the recipe we were supplied with called for “a packet” of cinnamon. I’m pretty sure I know what sort of packet this would be in Australia, but spices don’t come like that here and I’d hate to guess at the spice quantity and then mess the whole thing up. Nigella, on the whole, seemed safer. I shall take a peek under the lid tomorrow to see what it looks like and find out whether the whole thing’s been a disaster.

Still tearing my hair out over the Remembrances score I was supposed to send off earlier this week – it’s been dogged with annoying problems – everything looked fine, then I discovered the voice part was entirely in the tenor clef. After much poking at Finale I got this fixed, re-exported, re-trimmed, re-imported into InDesign… to discover that when I fixed the clef, the vocal line had dropped an octave. So now I’m re-re-trimming and hope to have it finished tonight.

Quintet is not happy. I think I may need to add something in the middle. This makes me also not happy.

I introduced my parents to my trifle though, which seemed to go down quite well – brioche slices, a touch of Napoleon brandy, fresh raspberries, custard, whipped cream, slivered almonds.

Oh, and posted a new blog post too. The Digital Dimension: 1. Programme notes, which then received a response post from Killing Classical Music, from whence the incentive to write the original post came. All very incestuous!