A SCOTTISH CHRISTMAS

I've just had my first winter Christmas, and it was delightful. With all of my Edinburgh flatmates moving out over the next few weeks, we decided to bring Christmas forward this year so we could celebrate together. The decorations had been up for a week or two just to get us in the mood, so by the time the big day (November 28) finally arrived we were all choc-full of Christmas cheer.

The day began with what I can only assume is a traditional Scottish custom: traipsing through the drizzling rain to buy food for dinner. It looked set to be a feast: we bought potatoes, pumpkin, turnips, parsnips, vegetarian haggis, cranberry sauce, and for the carnivores roast chicken, sausages and bacon. After all the hard work of deciding what to buy for dinner, I spent the rest of the day shopping for presents and wandering through the German Christmas Markets. Each year Edinburgh transforms the East Princes Street Gardens into a Winter Wonderland complete with market stalls, rides, a giant ferris wheel and an ice skating rink. It's really lovely, and all the bright lights and action happening down there of an evening help distract you from the fact that it's already dark at 4pm.

Returning home to help prepare the Christmas feast, I joined my flatmates in the great tradition of boozing up while cooking. We were awash with alcohol, courtesy of a former flatmate. She had very kindly left us her television set when she moved out, and as we were all about to move away ourselves naturally we sold it and used the proceeds to by a huge quantity of grog. We were drinking that tv well into the wee hours. As an indication of just how "merry" I managed to get, by the end of the night I was cheerily singing away to the christmas song collection that had almost driven me to pierce my own eardrums with a skewer when it was being compiled a day earlier. Not convinced that me singing is an indication of drunkenness? Mariah Carey was on that CD. Say no more.

The dinner was delicious and a huge success. We followed it up by watching The Muppet Christmas Carol over a glass or four of wine, then moving on to drunken charades, the Rizzla game and something called Consequences. The Rizzla game is where you each write the name of a celebrity on a Rizzla (which is a rollie paper) and stick it on the head of the person next to you. Everyone then has to guess who they are by asking "yes or no" questions. I came dead last. I hate Tom Hanks anyway.

Consequences is really fun. You each take a sheet of paper and write down the name of a man, fold it over and pass it to the next player. They then write the word MET followed by a woman's name. This too is folded away out of view and passed on. The next line is HE SAID then SHE SAID, then the final outcome. So each line is written with the author having no idea of what precedes their line. One of my favourites coming out of this game was the following:

Rod Stewart met Mother Teresa at Whistlebinkies (a grungy live music venue in Edinburgh). He said "when I was 5 I took swimming lessons and now I plan to swim to Belgium, want to come?" and she said "hold that thought, I need a wizz". Then they went cruising around the world and lived happily ever after.

So it was a fun evening full of delicious food, gooey desserts, chirpy Christmas music, free alcohol, great company and lots of laughs. The other Christmas in December has a lot to live up to!