For many years now on our annual and sometimes twice annual trips to France we have chosen to travel by car.
Not only to travel by car but, instead of taking a direct ferry to France from Ireland, to take the ferry from Rosslare to Wales, then drive across England before taking the ferry from one of the many ferry ports to France.
Initially, and while the children were travelling with us, and indeed before the days of cheap flights, this was done because it was the cheapest way of getting to our goal.
Nowadays, being creatures of habit, we often follow the same route
And, with the current problems in Irish Ferries, we may well be doing it again in the future.
As a traveller I am always terrified of missing my connection and always want to be within spitting distance of the ferry port before I like to stop.
Quite close to the Welsh ferry ports of Pembroke and Fishguard, inevitably our goals on our return journey, is the village of Laugharne.

As well as its proximity to the Welsh ferry ports,there are several good reasons to stop in Laugharne.

It is a very pretty Welsh seaside village.

It houses Dylan Thomas house, now a museum, which is beautifully sited on the estuary, and, on the path above, the shed where he used to write his books.
In fact Laugharne is the model for Llareggub, where he set “Under Milk Wood”.
We all know what Llareggub spells backwards.

The other excellent reason for stopping off in Laugharne is that it houses Corrans bookstore.
This is the largest and most intelligently catalogued second hand bookshop I know and always yields jewels.
(For one thing it always has shelves full of Dornford Yates novels.)

It was here a few years ago that I picked up a book which I find constantly charming, and which I keep by my bed as something to dip into whenever I want to sip rather than quaff.
It is “Christmas Crackers” by John Julius Norwich.
This, although published in 1980, is still available in Amazon, and, while researching for this piece I have discovered that he has since put together two more Crackers, viz; More Christmas Crackers and Still More Christmas Crackers both of which are now down on my wish list.

He tells the story in the introduction to my volume of how these compendiums started.
Apparently his mother sent him a blank leather bound volume as a present in the fifties and, lacking any other use for it, he decided to turn it into a commonplace books where he would write down anything he read or otherwise came across which tickled his fancy.
I will give you just two tiny excerpts;

The late Sir Compton Mackenzie, invited to name the ten most beautiful words in the English Language picked twenty:

Carnation, azure, peril, moon , forlorn,
Heart, silence, shadow, April, Apricot.

A good selection which I prefer to his second team:

Damask and damson, doom and harlequin and fire,
Autumn, vanity, flame, nectarine, desire.

And this one from Dorothy Parker:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Roumania.

It is indeed a wonderful book to dip into to.

But to get back to the title of this piece.

John Julius Norwich (who also wrote a most enjoyable book about Venice: Paradise of Cities, Venice and its Nineteenth Century Visitors)

was the father of Artemis Cooper who has written the best biography of my heroine, Elizabeth David; Writing at the Kitchen Table

She is married to Anthony Beevor who has written the excellent modern histories of Berlin and Stalingrad.

He is the son of Kinta Beevor who has written that wonderful story of growing up in Italy in the early 20th century: A Tuscan Childhood

She is in turn the Aunt of Michael Waterfield, Editor of his great Aunt,Janet Ross’s classic cookbook “Leaves from a Tuscan Kitchen”

And he is the chef for whom I worked for many years in the village of Wye in Kent and my daughter Caitriona’s godfather.

There you have it
You have heard of six degrees of separation.
There are just five (ok six if you count both of Anthony Beevor’s) books of separation between myself and Christmas Crackers.
A good omen for the season.