Away from our families, my flatmate and I hung out in his bedroom, Christmas lunch on our laps, watching a poorly written, jarringly inappropriate movie
I
n 2022, I was living in a flat in north London above a chicken shop, with two flatmates and a cockroach infestation (what did we expect, said the landlord, living above a takeaway?). My flatmate was from Lithuania, and was due to go home in January, and our other flatmate, his girlfriend, was away for Christmas. I’d been home to Canada the month before, so for Christmas Day itself it was just the two of us.
I bought a small chicken to roast, and served it with stuffing I’d brought back from Canada – it’s the same concept as the stuffing in the UK but somehow fluffier and with more texture – and some pasta. I made brussels sprouts, trying to recreate a dish I like from a restaurant in my home town by cooking them with bacon, maple syrup, parmesan and a mayonnaise drizzle. It wasn’t very nice. We had some prosecco that my flatmate had won in a competition, even though neither of us really liked prosecco. It felt like we should, because it was Christmas.
My flatmate set up a projector in his bedroom – we didn’t have a living room – and we sat on desk chairs, eating our weird Christmas lunch on our laps, and watching a film I’d always wanted to see: Tiptoes, in which Gary Oldman plays a man with dwarfism. Matthew McConaughey plays Oldman’s twin brother, who is average-sized (and obviously much younger in real life), and has kept his family – all of whom have dwarfism – secret from his pregnant girlfriend, played by Kate Beckinsale. I think it was supposed to be a comedy, or at least a dramedy, but it was still a difficult premise.
