As it’s my first year in the Falklands, I thought I should spend Christmas here and enjoy a southern hemisphere Christmas. It took me a while to feel Christmassy, as I was missing my usual cues – days were getting longer, not shorter; there were no endless Christmas songs in shops (until the final week or two); the shops didn’t convert to Christmas the instant Halloween was over but only became really Christmassy once the December supply ship arrived, with all the Christmas goodies.

I also had to be more organised than usual in buying Christmas cards and posting them to the UK, as the last date for airmail was 1st December. I slightly failed on that and certainly didn’t factor UK postal strikes into the mix, so some people will be receiving Happy New Year cards by the time they make it there. Lesson learnt for next year!

Work stopped at lunchtime on 23rd December. I made my first food shopping stop in one of the public car parks, to collect some lamb and carrots direct from the farmer and then tested out my butchery skills, with the aid of helpful Australian Youtube videos on how to butcher lamb! Needless to say I did not have the right tools for the job and it wasn’t always easy to see what the experts were doing but I did manage to produce some recognisable cuts of meat – not entirely sure I’ll be doing it again!

The other thing that happened on the 23rd was Christmas food shopping and it did look like Armageddon the way everyone was stocking up – but to be fair, here the shops were generally closing on 24th and not reopening for several days, so there was some excuse for the laden trollies.

Christmas Eve was notable for ear splitting sirens shattering the peace of a calm afternoon. It sounded like Stanley was burning down. I went to my front door and sniffed – could I smell smoke? I went to the back door to see if I could see anything. I met my neighbour who was similarly mystified.

And then round the corner, in the street below us, came Santa …. on his way to the Town Hall to meet local children and being taken there by the Fire Service, with all of their sirens and blue lights going full blast.

And so to Christmas Day – it coincided with a very low spring tide and we were able to walk out to the wreck of the Lady Liz at the edge of Stanley Harbour – a real “Oh wow” moment, given that one is normally looking at lots of water between the shore and the wreck.

And then off to a lovely lunch, kindly hosted by Jo and Gaynor using both of their houses. We all brought a contribution, which at one point looked like we would only be eating puddings, however after some reorganisation we had a feast of several courses. Champagne and pumpernickel bread (Canadian) and crackers and dips (South African) outside in the sun and then turkey, ham, lots of roast vegetables and sometime later lovely puddings and cheese. Followed by a number of silly games, until eventually it was time to leave our hosts in peace and go home to bed. A memorable Christmas Day.