Me Life Story by Scarlett Moffatt (best classic books of all time txt) 📗

gingerbread men with candy canes so they are more Christmassy. I literally put about 40kg on at Christmas. You can’t help it. Every night you’ve an excuse for a Snowball. I quickly put on the weight I had lost in the jungle.

Me and my dad have a little tradition, the Moffatts’ ‘Twelve Days Before Christmas’. We drink a pint of Baileys each night on the build-up to the big day. My dad and I drink Baileys like it’s water. I can’t work out how many units of alcohol that is but to be frank, I don’t care. Like I said, it doesn’t count because it’s Christmas.

As for my Christmas shopping, it’s like a military operation. It takes some planning. I make a list of everything and then just have a whole day where I shop. And I like proper wrapping. Sometimes I spend more on the wrapping than the actual present for the person.

I have a theme to my wrapping every year. So last year it was brown paper with ribbon. I also made a little stamp saying ‘Scarlett’, so I could stamp every present. Yes, I get carried away.

I’ve normally got it all done by the first of December, and I always go really overboard with my little sister. In the past, I’ve got her things like a trip to Disneyland Paris, iPads, dressing tables. So she gets a big present off me and a big present off my mam and dad. I do treat her like she’s my child. Obviously it had to be an online shopping trip the year of the jungle win as I had like five days to get presents bought and to try and get over the jet-lag.

We have a ritual on Christmas Eve. Ever since I was little, my mam has given us all new pyjamas. We’re allowed to open one present every Christmas Eve, but obviously it’s the pyjamas. Every year my mam will say, ‘Oh no, not that one, not that one. What about the present wrapped in Disney princess paper?’ And every year me and Ava just say, ‘Mam just give us the present that you want us to open.’ And it’s always the new pyjamas.

For the last three years, these have been matching onesies. Last year Ava and I got matching Pokémon onesies. We were both Pikachu. As well as the matching onesies, we got new slippers and dressing gowns. Our mam gets new ones as well. That way, we’re all ready for Santa.

Then we always have a Christmas Eve buffet. It always has to be the same: pickled onions, sandwiches, garlic bread, chips and dips, mince pies and pizza (that’s been stood there for about three hours, so it’s freezing). Then we all sit down together to watch The Grinch in our new pyjamas.

I like Christmas to be very traditional. One year, my mam wanted a trendy black Christmas tree. But my dad, my sister and I like a tacky Christmas. You know the sort of thing – loads of lights, stickers on the window, tinsel that doesn’t have to match, baubles of every colour, and those plastic little Santas that look like they’re coming down the chimney. Stuff like that everywhere. Even in the bathroom, just stuck everywhere.

Whereas my mam wants everything to be coordinated. When we had done our living room out in that haphazard way, she said, ‘I’m going to get a black Christmas tree.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it will match with other things.’

‘But things don’t have to match at Christmas, Mam. What will Santa think?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘No, what will Santa think if he comes down that chimney and he sees a black Christmas tree?’

‘But he’s not real!’

‘La, la, la. I don’t want to hear that in our house. He is real.’

Then there’s the ritual on Christmas Day. At least fifteen of us always go to my nanny Christine’s house. My nanny’s house is quite small, and she only has a table with four chairs. So the kids are sat eating their Christmas dinner on the stairs and on the floor.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way, even though it is organised chaos and by the time the mashed potato comes out, everything else is cold.

Grandad, my nanny and my uncle Mark do the cooking. They all chip in. But our family doesn’t get involved in that at all. Definitely not. We just sit back and get drunk.

Sometimes we bring condiments. So we’ll do the cranberry sauce and mint sauce, but that literally is it. We also bring the booze, which is the most important bit, I think. We always buy a lot of booze. Baileys, obviously, loads of wine, Prosecco, Bucks Fizz.

After the lunch, we always put the telly on, have a sit around and just chat. By this time, my nanny’s a bit tipsy, and she’ll put Jive Bunny on. The ‘Jive Bunny Megamix’. It’s always the same. It begins, ‘Come on everybody, come on everybody.’

‘Now the party starts!’ we shout, and so we drink some more.

Then we just play loads of games. We’ll play bingo for money. We have an actual spinning bingo machine, and my nanny brings out the tickets. It’s twenty pence for one and a pound for a strip. The prize for a full house is normally at least a fiver. So you have to be prepared to flash the cash.

After that, we play a quiz which my nanny sets every year. We normally get a lot of questions on Carry On movies. That is her favourite subject. So a couple of days before, you catch up on all the lines in the Carry On films.

But the ridiculous thing is, even though she sets all the questions, my nanny still joins in the quizzes. We split into teams, and every year we’re like, ‘You can’t join in, Nanny, because you know all the answers!’

Nanny replies, ‘Oh, I can’t remember the bloody answers.’

‘But you’ve just written them all!’ And somehow her team always wins.

She divides the quiz up into actual sections, so