It’s been a whirlwind of a day. Ravine walks, extracting gremlins from electronic monstrosities, eleventh hour wrapping and shortbread baking…it goes on. The annual watch of The Blue Carbuncle featured somewhere. Christmas Eve is always crammed with stuff, and this year is no exception.
Sneaking in at the end of it is our final blog write up for this year’s calendar. It’s a black tea we know well, called Santa’s Secret. It blends peppermint and black tea, and for our money is the best of these ‘sweet’ teas. It’s sweet, and has a real extravagant, desert-quality feel to it, but it isn’t saccharine, either. The mint sits comfortably with the black tea and they keep each other in check, the perfect balance of strong and long in the mouth. This is how to reinvent tea well.
We also reiterate the other day’s recantation. We stand by the fact that this calendar’s balance is skewered bizarrely, but there do seem to be nearly equal parts herbal and non-herbal teas. It’s just that all the variety came at the beginning and the end, making for a few very unbalanced weeks of tea drinking. It’s good to know the calendar can still do variety.
Here to close out the year is a carol that purports to be by Walter Scott. We say that; there are lines of this that we know for a fact belong in Marmion. There are other lines that we’re fairly sure Shaw added in because he liked them. Oh, the joys of carols, eh? THere’s a reason no one ever seems to be able to agree on both lyrics and tune, and why we each of us think ours is right.
Merry Christmas
Adapted from Walter Scott
On Christmas Eve the bells were run,
On Christmas Eve the mass was sung;
The damsel don’t her kirtle sheen,
The hall was dress’d with holly green;
Forth to the wood the merry men go
To gather in the mistletoe;
Then drink to the holly berry,
With hey down, hey own derry!
The mistletoe we’ll pledge also
And at Christmas all be merry,
At Christmas all be merry!
The fire with well dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
Then come the merry masquers in,
And carols roared with blithesome din.
England is merry England,
When Old Christmas brings his ports again
Then drink to the holly berry, etc
We wanted to find you a vocal arrangement to go with it, but luck was not on our side. And while, theoretically we’re not averse to singing it into this particular monstrosity for you, it’s late and all residents not Miss Marschallin would be objected by the lack of consideration. But if you happen to know of a favourite version, point us towards us or send us a link.
Until then, Happy Christmas from us, Miss Marschallin and the Dawlish Dachshunds!
Chorister at Home 