Past Christmas 'Disasters' ?

Susie_Richards

Boxing Day morning, several years ago, the power cut out. :eek:

No Electricity!

It turned out to be a broken cable in the Street outside my house, and the workmen were digging up the road repairing it until 6.30pm.

It was a very cold day as i remember, and the Gas Central Heating Boiler wouldn't ignite without power, so it was out of action too


Do you have any similar Christmas 'disasters' to share?

skea56

Turkey on quite low all morning, dad took it out for a last check before putting on all the veg/potatoes etc. Put turkey back into oven and closed the door.....which promptly fell out and smashed into a zillion shards onto the kitchen floor.

Had to go next door and borrow their oven (thankfully they were having a later dinner so could spare it for half an hour til ours was complete!)


sk56

Hezzawithkids

One memorable year I was suffering with a bad dose of flu and barely making it through the day. I put a duck in the oven to roast then fell asleep on the sofa. Woke up a couple of hours later to a cremated duck and raw veggies (OH was upstairs and apparently had no sense of smell). Our dinner that year consisted of reheated burned duck plus partially cooked veggies.

Naf

Aout 10 years ago; my family had moved into a new house (not sure if that year, but within the previous couple of years) with an old electric cooker fitted. The knob for the clock/timer on said cooker was broken, although with the cunning aid of pliers you could still manage it, and we had done up until then. For some reason it had gone wrong again a few days before Christmas, and I decided I could fix it. Instead I broke it completely and permanently, which somehow stopped the whole oven from working.
After having just spent a bomb on Christmas shopping, my parents then had to fork out for a brand new cooker too.

SailorSam

Christmas Eve one year i'm just getting ready to go out to work nights on the Cab, it's the week when you can guarantee you're going to earn a lot of money, and the 'day driver' turns up but without the Cab. They'd turned right and never noticed the car driving towards them. The whole of the near-side of my Cab was taken out.
Well what can you say ? Never mind as long as you're not hurt.

gizwal

About 5 years ago the oven door decided to fall off 2 days before Christmas day! While I was imagining the worst case scenario of boil in the bag Christmas dinner ,OH managed to temporarily fix it to make do. But we had no oven until Jan payday when we bought a new cooker!

Katiehound

Not sure if you would class it as a disaster but when I arrived at my friend's on C.Eve last year, about 4pm the dishwasher decided that was IT! Every item in the machine was covered with a thick sparkly layer of salt!!
With 10 folk for the traditional meal and 8 people staying in the house there was an awful lot of washing up and most of it came my way!!
I am hoping washing up duties won't be on the rota this year.

PlymouthMaid

This wasn't a disaster but was funny ... when I was a child my lovely old Nan always gave Mum a Christmas pud to store for the following year's dinner. We had been suffering terrible mouse problems as the neighbour kept pigeons and so they bred like vermin (of course). Come Christmas Day Mum got the pudding out only to find that it was a hollow shell as the greedy mice had eaten the inside entirely. They also nibbled all our presents that year too. Then we got a cat.

lisa110rry

A few years ago, we were staying in the beautiful Kingdom of Fife, in a rural cottage for Christmas - New Year, just my husband, myself and our small terrier-type mongrel. The dry dog food was placed in the bag under the sink. The dog seemed fascinated by the range-type cooker, constantly trying to peer under it. When the food in the tupperware dish was exhausted, I went to replenish it from the bag, only to find the bag empty! The mice had taken every single morsel (they presumably lived under the cooker).

Same holiday, Christmas Eve, we discovered a young deer lying under a hedge in the very snowy garden, we were alerted by the dog who had never seen a deer before, but still wanted to nip its haunches. I called the SPCA three times and left messages, also tried to rouse a nearby farmer so the deer could at least be dinner, but no one home. The deer died overnight and I had to tie a rope to its legs and haul it over the road into some trees so tht at least it could be some wild thing's dinner. It was horrible.

mai_taylor

I had the stomach bug last year on the run up to Christmas so once Christmas day arrived I didn't have any appetite and just nibbled at my Christmas dinner that I'd cooked, wasn't really a disaster though because I woke up to too pet bunnies on Christmas morning.

27col

When we were building our first house in 1967, we spent Christmas Day in it doing various odd jobs ready for moving in in January. Christmas lunch was a Vesta curry. Not a problem as I don't much like Christmas food.
However, when we got back to where we were living with relatives.10 miles away. We discovered that the bedding chest with all our new curtains, was just about to burst into flames.
This was due to a faulty table lamp that had been knocked over by a cat. and switched itself on. We managed to prevent a serious fire, though it was touch and go at the time.
On examination we found that the curtains had a burn hole about every 18 inches, due to the way the curtains had been folded in the chest.
We were extremely lucky that the house had not burned down. If we had been away 10 minutes longer the whole thing would have caught fire, instead of just smouldering.
Not a Christmas we will forget in a hurry.