For the past few autumns, I’ve been at odds with the rest of my family about when the appropriate time to start singing Christmas songs is. Nathan traditionally had a 1st Dec embargo in place but that’s gone out of the window with the advent (pun intended) of my choir. We now start Christmas gigging at the end of November so that means starting rehearsal in September or, this year, in October. Working back from that logically means that I tend to spend August choosing and arranging the new Christmas songs. Which, according to my family, is TOO EARLY. This year though, the kids are doing a proper Christmas-themed show in Perform as opposed to an arbitrary Perform show with a song about snow tacked on the end. So they too are busy singing Christmas songs, even before I am. All of which means it’s definitely not too early to start batting that particular C-word about.
Sony Movies think so too, which is why they’ve launched their Christmas movie channel already – a full-day schedule of festive treats on Freeview 50, Sky 319, Virgin 424 and Freesat 303. And to celebrate, they teamed up with innovative Chin Chin Ice Cream to give away 100 Christmas Turkey Dinner Sundaes. Eva and I were in town today to teach English, so we jumped on the 38 afterwards to check it out for ourselves. Well, first we had lunch at My Favourite Cafe in Essex Road and then we jumped on a remarkably slow, hot and overcrowded 38 that terminated at Holborn instead of Piccadilly Circus and then had to walk. We earned that ice cream.
I had warned Eva that it might be slightly unusual ice cream but wasn’t sure myself just unusual it would be. The answer was…really quite. It was meant to be a turkey dinner in one bowl and certainly had that meaty-gravy taste alongside the caramel of the ice cream. I couldn’t help feel that it would be really nice ice cream without that meatiness and as it was, it was more interesting than delicious. Eva certainly wasn’t sure:
She eventually dug some of the cranberries out from the bottom, carefully wiped the ice cream off and then spun a fantasy tale about a giant cranberry that looked like a turkey. I finished her ice cream but more because I dislike wasting food than because I was finding it a super enjoyable experience. It wasn’t nasty, it was just…odd. The people at the next table described it as “remarkable” but I’m not sure whether they meant that in a positive or a negative way. Remarkable is a safe word for it. What it definitely was was Christmassy. I mean, you could taste all the elements of the turkey dinner in there and it did feel festive. But also odd.
On the way back across Soho Square, we spotted something which made Eva remarkably happy. She told me the other day that there were two famous nurses in the Crimean War and where did we end up today but in front of Mary Seacole’s house? It made a nice ending to a surreal Soho trip:
If this review has convinvced you to try the Turkey Dinner Sundae then hurry – they’re only available till Tuesday. But I’d probably recommend just sticking to the Christmas movies…
More information on Chin Chin here
