It has been our habit for some years to have a goose at Christmas. I remember paying about £70 (seventy quid) for one in 2009, the year we moved up to Hull. But since Aldi and Lidl have become so ubiquitous, we generally buy a frozen goose for £20 when they come into stock in October-ish, and they have been more than fine.

A friend of mine was very keen on a frozen twenty quid goose (and, be honest – who wouldn’t be?), but sadly she suffers from poor health, and isn’t able to get to the store to fetch one, and we simply couldn’t fit another into our freezer for her. But as we were trundling to Lidl a few days before Christmas, I messaged her and asked if she would like us to pick her one up, and she said she would. But Lidl had only a rather meagre goose crown, which would barely have fed her cat, so we battled across town (which was manic) to Aldi, who didn’t have any either. We were knackered, and had had quite enough of the car, but Pete manfully cycled over to Lidl at Hessle Road to check stock there. And they had both frozen and fresh goosen. The fresh was £36, which struck me as a bargain when he phoned to give me the glad tidings, so he bought one of those of us, and we took the frozen one to our friend in Doncaster when we went to buy All The Cheese on Donny market on the Saturday before Christmas. She was thrilled.

And we were thrilled – this goose has fed us for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, there’s a pan of stock on the hob, there is lashing of meat left for pie / curry / risotto / stir fry. We ate it with spiced red cabbage, roasted potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, pigs in blankets and a stonkingly good gravy. And the cats had the giblets.