It’s now mid-September, and that means all things related to Christmas are now stocked in the British high street shops. In Britain, like many other parts of the world, Christmas is commercialized. But unlike North America, there is no Thanksgiving, therefore the Christmas-themed merchandise starts to hit the shops early and lingers on until the end of the year (and beyond). Soon, there will be dancing Santas on the shop windows, accompanied by those maddening tunes.
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without excessive consumption of excessively fattening food. And there it is, sitting in the corner of my room, all 4 pounds of glorious Christmas pudding: majestically ensconced in a box coloured in imperial purple and royal gold. I bought the pud from Fortnum & Mason a few weeks ago, when I dropped into the shop while doing some errands.
Fortnum & Mason was selling Christmas puddings from last year at a reduced price. If my recollections are correct, I paid somewhere between £10 and £15, a substantially lower price than what it would have cost in November 2008. So soaked in alcohol, the pudding will last until April 2010. The problem is finding a pot large enough to warm up this beast of a pud.