The four envelopes are flat and empty on the kitchen table, and the jar of receipts is on its side next to them, which is as close to a clean desk as this house gets. It's Tuesday 30 December, grey and mild, the kind of day that can't decide whether it's raining. I sorted the receipts into three piles after breakfast, with Mabel sitting on the biggest as if she were invigilating.
The plan, from the middle of November, was £620: £360 for presents (£120 for Isla, £120 for Alfie, £120 for everybody else), £160 for food, and £100 in an envelope marked "extras". The final number is £671.
Where we stuck to it
Presents came to £356.30. Isla's £120 turned into £118.40: a set of Katherine Rundell paperbacks she'd been circling since October, netball trainers a size up, and a bookshelf for the back bedroom that she assembled herself with a screwdriver and a firm expression. Alfie's came to £121.95, most of it a very large Lego dinosaur and a proper football. Everyone else, which means Linda, Steve, Hayley, Jordan, Ivy, Pat, Keith and Rob, came to £115.95.
That left presents £3.70 under. Food, at £163.70, was £3.70 over. The two figures cancel exactly, which is the kind of coincidence that makes me suspicious of my own spreadsheet, so I added it up three times. It's right. The big items were a turkey crown, a gammon, and what felt like nine bags of potatoes. Christmas Day was the usual: six round the table in the through-lounge with the leaf in, Steve carving and telling us what a turkey used to cost, Alfie wearing his paper crown to bed. Boxing Day was at Hayley's in Wakefield, where my contribution was a trifle and the washing-up. The leftover turkey became a pie on the 27th and soup on the 28th, and nothing went in the bin that I know of. (December's grocery total, £598, has the Christmas food in it. I'm careful not to count the same turkey twice.)
Where we didn't
The extras envelope did exactly its job. The tree, cards and stamps, wrapping paper, two advent calendars, a few bits for the table, Jean's tin of biscuits and the cotton wool for Alfie's sheep ears came to £100, with 20p rattling around in the bottom. The panto was never in there. Hayley's tickets for the afternoon show on Saturday 20 December were £12.75 each, £51 for the four of us, and in November I'd said I would only decide once the other envelopes were safe. They were nearly safe. I said yes anyway. That's the £51.
I could have said no. I'm the person who wrote the budget. But Isla has asked about the panto for two years, and Alfie had never been inside a theatre. He sat forward in his seat for two hours with his mouth slightly open. He booed the villain so hard that on Monday he had no voice, and he took charge of the "he's behind you" bit as if he'd been waiting all his life. Rob, who claimed he was only there for the interval ice cream, laughed loudest at the dame. I wouldn't undo it. I'd just put it in the plan from the start.
What I'd change
- Put the panto in the plan from the start, at £51, instead of leaving it as a question mark.
- Add a wobble line of £50, because there is always a panto.
- Keep the receipts in the jar as I go, instead of finding two in a coat pocket on the 29th.
The £51 came out of the current account, which has coped. It would have been nicer to find it in the plan, but the plan is only paper, and the panto was a good afternoon. The energy direct debit stayed at £142 all the way through, which helped, and the house was warm enough that nobody asked to have the thermostat moved.
The sums: £356.30 for presents, £163.70 for food, £100 of extras and £51 for the panto make £671 in all, against £620. That's £51 over, or 8.2 per cent, and the loudest booing I have ever heard from a six-year-old.
