On Christmas morning, I am usually – or, at least, have traditionally been – woken up by my younger sister coming to lie on top of me and staring into my face until my eyes open straight into hers. Scary, but as her warm body snuggles under the covers next to mine, or bounces off to check on the progress of tea and toast up from the kitchen, not altogether unpleasant. Of course in recent years, the desire just to sleep has replaced the excitement of getting out of bed and rushing downstairs to open presents and get stuck into a bag of chocolate coins; but this year, without even my sister to answer my Scrooge-like “What day is this?” I woke up to the terrifying thought that surely I must be late for work, swiftly followed by “Where am I?” and the dawning realization that I was home and in bed and very hungover.
Note the clothes strewn on the bed, quick check to make sure my purse had come home with me and into the kitchen to make peanut butter and banana on toast (as I hear this is good for these eventualities) and tea, the memories of the night before start to fall into place.
It had begun sensibly enough when, meeting my friend after work, we'd taken my cold Gingerbread Latte on a walk through IFC mall to see the Christmas displays and get some cheesy photos of ourselves in front of them, only to be met by a huge crowd that had assembled to watch what can only be described as a Toy Story-esqe Christmas Panto, replete with prince and princess, fairy godmother, Santa Clause and a troop of shiny green US army-style soldiers, who would've been actually quite terrifying (think: the PLA wrapped in green cellophane) but that their feet were strapped to boogie-boards, reducing their movements to forward and backward jumps.
As we watched on from two storeys above discussing dinner options and raging against the machinations of evil (for me, ex-)employers, purple and green lycra leotarded trapeze artists performed balancing, swinging and catching movements and an English and Cantonese commentary blared out, doing really very little to reveal its significance to the plot of the play unfolding before us. But it was amusing. And many photos of the enormous, twinkling Christmas tree later, as the acrobats walked off ‘backstage’ - but seen by us from above - in flip flops, with only the Prince keeping up the illusion by gallantly taking aloft the hand of his Princess to escort her away, we too departed in search of food and that first, oh so good and oh so innocent merry glass of wine.
Two hours later, fed and 'watered' we could be found getting stuck into the mulled wine in the small and intimate SoHo institution that is Joyce is Not Here. The host was, as we found out within minutes of arriving, there in body but very much elsewhere in spirit: ‘homeland’ spirits as it turned out, as shot after shot of highly flammable brew was handed round to the party and downed. By midnight we were ready for dancing – well on our way, as they say. Only, and this is where the record of the evening breaks down, I seem to remember tequila – that oh so traditionally festive of drinks – entering into the equation, followed fairly quickly by the desire to sleep and the conveyance, by the joint efforts of a kindly onlooker and a taxi, of myself to my ferry and then somehow home. Now, I must stress, that oblivion is a state I rarely – if ever in my previous follies – reach. I used to know where the limit was (and it was normally at the sobering thought of paying 9 Great British Pounds for a shot of inebriating cactus juice), and pass my drinks over to less witting subjects while I danced me and my liver back to the realms of sobriety on Evian. Ah, for the return of those good old days, when Joyce was ostensibly not there, and nor were forty-eight hour working weeks to severely reduce an English girl’s tolerance to alcohol or her willpower to say no. Mo-ah.
Now it must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate: I didn’t used to drink myself into such a state of unconsciousness. But awaking on Christmas morning, (after apparently attempting to brush my teeth in bed, for how else did the toothpaste get there? and dental hygiene is important...), I felt glad to be alive, glad to have made it home, glad to be still in one-piece (more or less) and in bed, falling in and out of sleep to Radio 4 (Myra Syal playing Shirley Valentine), and enormously glad to finally hear from my friend that no, after I had left she had not jumped off the balcony of Azure (located on approx. the 35-floor) as tempted in her likewise drunken state, or drowned catching a sampan home to her own outlying island, or choked while vomiting, but was - and here I attempted to raise my head and sidle out of bed – on her way over for Christmas dinner, as arranged.
The weather was grey, drizzly and windy. It could almost have been England, except that of course, England is seeing picturesque white snow these days and, at least, if you are one of those phoning in to 'You and Yours', complaining about it bitterly. But the weather in Hong Kong was grey: mild, but with the wind whipping round my building, tempestuous. The perfect weather for the meeting of two morose, slightly shamefaced (though in good company not so for long) ghosts of Christmas Eve party people past: a scene from Withnail, minus the lecherous gay uncle. Needing ingredients for dinner, I dragged my poor, dazed companion into the Park ‘n Shop (a curious name really when you think about it, for no one in Hong Kong ever drives to the supermarket!) – the thought of festive fayre still having the power to turn a delicate stomach and overwhelm a troubled mind - the video store and mercifully back home. It had felt like a Krypton Factor challenge, but I think I started to sober up over the cooking. Thinking carefully about what to chop, wok and boil first, what quantities are required to feed not one but two people, and trying to avoid knocking myself out on the corner of the cupboard door – at first about as perplexing as tackling a rubik's cube – had, in the end, quite an absorbing, therapeutic effect. Either that, or it was the quantities of Perrier being imbibed in between all the laughter; my sous-chef also squeezed into my small kitchen, by this time bobbing around with nervous energy (whether at the thought of my cooking, or coming down off the hangover, I’m not quite sure though).
But what, you will say, were you making? Turkey, roast potatoes and parsnips, carrots, sprouts, peas, and stuffing with maybe a few yorkshire puddings (which, I am proud to say my students now know is not a sweet dish but a large savory kind of puffed up pancake)?? No. Of course not. Are you joking?! As I explained to my friend when she oooed and aahhed over the sight of my oven, we don’t use that. “It’s gas,” as I explained, “and to light it I have to turn the gas on and stick your head in with a match and…”
“Sylvia Plath.”
“Quite. People think she killed herself, but she was in fact just trying to light her oven. If she’d had a Hong Kong one, the result would’ve been worse. She would have blown up in flames. Allow me to demonstrate,” I said, in my best Blue Peter voice. At which I did not stick my head in the oven with a lit match – that would have been stupid – but merely turned the gas on the stove and ignited the ring. At which, as per usual, a god almighty flame erupted large enough to BBQ a large turkey in a matter of minutes. “It’s quite powerful,” I explained.
“So I see,” she replied, "it could have your eyebrows off."
I sternly reminded her that her job was to stand guard over Health and Safety, and continued with my chopping. With the stove now lit though we were making progress, and slowly, carefully, with much presence of forethought, into my wok went: oil, garlic, ginger, chillies (just three, because I have a habit of making things too hot), eggplant (or aubergines if we are being English about this very unEnglish Christmas dinner), capsicum (or bell-peppers), broccoli and flowering-cabbage, spinach, lentils and pumpkin. The perfect hangover veggie curry!
Well, okay, it’s very non-traditional for Christmas Day, but it injected some much needed wholesomeness to an abused body and with those three fierce and fiery chillies it certainly was warming! The Woody Allen film meanwhile was sort of lost on us a little, but as the evening drew to a close and I was left alone to Skype with my family, I felt it had not been a bad day all in all. My 21 month old niece was of course the star of the show: terribly happy showing me her new chalks and making herself at home in her Playmobile kitchen (which to be honest I was rather jealous of, being better-equipped and almost larger than my own) while the rest were in the throes of their various dinners, one sister cooking for her own little family, and another treating mum to dinner at the pub. But I, eight hours ahead, I was going to sleep, at what felt like long last. Very content.
