Friday 16 December 2022

Christmas Party at the Three Tuns

 The Cinema Bookshop Christmas party was at the Three Tuns this year.

We were a bit late to start because Greg had been to the school performance of Aladdin - I think I gathered that one of his grand children had been a handmaid to Princess Jasmine.  We started off the evening with drinks from the bar - I tried the Wye Valley Nutcracker, which is this year's Christmas beer from the brewery, and very tasty it was, too.

Then we were seated in the back room around a long table - a bit cold occasionally when the patio doors opened, but that didn't happen very often.

About half of us had soup for starters - carrot, honey and ginger, with a swirl of creme fraiche and home made bread.  It was delicious!  The rest of the table had the prawn cocktail, which was enormous, and came with a spicy sauce.  We ordered a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine to share, though some people were still sipping their gin and tonics from earlier, and others stuck to lager.

For the main course we went for either turkey or beef, with lots of vegetables, including cauliflower cheese.  We got extra gravy too.  By this time we had pulled our crackers, which contained a rather small paper crown and several cards with party game ideas and jokes and trivia (apparently Japan has square water melons).  It was a bit too noisy in the bar for the "hum a famous tune" party idea, but there were some book related questions which we gave intentionally wrong answers to.

I was the only person to stick with tradition and have Christmas pudding, which was lovely.  Other people had panna cotta or chocolate and hazelnut cheesecake, and Deb went for the cheeseboard.  The sweets were laid out beautifully on rectangular black plates, decorated with little pieces of fruit and dusted with icing sugar.

We waddled out of the pub at the end of all that!  I only had a little way to walk, but others live further away, so a taxi was waiting for them.

It was a very enjoyable evening, and I didn't feel hungry until the following lunchtime!

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