Christmas Q&A: Mick Foster

Favourite Christmas film and song?

My favourite Christmas song would be a song written by Patsy Farrell from Legan in Longford, Christmastime in Ireland. We have recorded it and so has Brendan Shine and loads of others. My favourite Christmas film is Home Alone. It’s great craic.

Who cooks Christmas dinner in your house?

Neither of us, because my son Jackie and my daughter-in-law Cora live a few hundred yards down the road from us. Normally we go there for Christmas dinner and I make the trifle.

What’s your favourite part of the dinner?

I love food, end of story, but I have a real weakness for sweet. I suppose the trifle is my favourite part and I make loads of it. In the course of the afternoon and evening, every time I pass the fridge, I could take a spoonful or two.

4. Do you have any family traditions?

Not really. We have a couple of horses, and I feed them, that’s about the height of it. We have nobody left for Santy, only my great grandson.

What’s your best/earliest Christmas memory?

I was born in Kildare but I am in Westmeath for 63 years. When I was small and still living in Kildare, we used to go down to my grandmother’s house between Moneygall and Toomevara with the result that Santy would come to us there and when we’d get back to Kildare, we’d find out that he had also been there. I was steeped.

How do you spend Christmas afternoon?

After Mass, we would normally go into my daughter Denise and son-in-law Russell for breakfast – they live up beside the Mullingar Park Hotel. Then we go to Jackie and Cora for dinner about two or three. After dinner, we lie around on chairs and couches like sows and maybe play a hand of cards or watch a film.

Are you an organised shopper, or a Christmas Eve one?

I leave that end of things to Moyra (Mick’s wife) but neither of us are really big shoppers. If I went into a big according shop or a saddlery, I might browse around.

Are you planning on making a new year’s resolution?

I make the same one every year and same one every Lent: to stop eating sweet things. It might work for a few weeks…"