Family Fortunes: Christmas memories awakened by the Odlums owl

This page heralded the start of Christmas in our east Cork farmhouse. I associate it with the growing anticipation of my older siblings coming home for Christmas; the annual trip to Cork on December 8th; saving coins in my First Communion handbag; and frosty, winter afternoons with the sun low in the sky.

This free guide (cover missing) from Odlums rested on the kitchen table for a week or two while the exotic ingredients were collected. My mother wondered aloud, every year, if the raisins from the local shop would do instead of the recommended muscatel ones (whatever they were). Little plastic pots of glacé cherries, tiny amber cubes of candied peel and tins of spices that smelled like photographs all gathered on the corner by the window. “Don’t be picking at them now,” was the stern warning as the pile grew. “I won’t have enough on the day if you do.”

The day started with the building-up of heat in the range to an unusually high level. That heat and the smell of spices surround me every time I see this page.

I loved the little owl because he looked as excited as I was at the prospect of fuss, a big bowl to lick and rich smells. You can still see the pencil marks on him where my mother gave me grease-proof paper to trace him while she got on with wrestling with the recipe, the range and the reduced quantity of glacé cherries.

The other half of the bottle of stout, not needed by the recipe, was consumed by my almost teetotal mother as a reward when the work was done.

I love this little tattered book. It is a portal back to childhood, and I hope it will be loved long into the future.

Now, where can I get some Valentia raisins?