We spent Christmas 1997 in Banja Luka, Bosnia, with six-month-old B and my mother. B at that stage had all the normal developmental signs, was just sitting up, smiling like anything, and weathered with resilience an attack of impetigo on her neck.

Banja Luka, on the other hand, was a city still in trauma, barely a year after the end of the war, and still worrying if it would start again; the local politicians who I was working with were locked in an internal power struggle with the war-time hard-line Serb leadership, and the political situation was still fragile. None the less I managed to buy a Christmas tree at a stall in the main street.

We used to go to Mass on Sundays at the Metal Factory outside the city, the main base for the British army in the area. On Christmas Eve they had a Midnight Mass, actually at midnight, jointly celebrated by the Catholic and Anglican chaplains (the latter was in fact from Northern Ireland, so CoI rather than CoE). We all went, carrying sleeping B with us. Rather than the usual dozen or so in the congregation, the little metal hut was packed with servicemen and servicewomen, singing Christmas carols lustily and all clearly missing home desperately. Though civilians, we got special attention for having a baby with us.

The next day was Christmas Day itself, though not for the local Orthodox Serbs who stick to the old calendar. I went down to the covered market to buy a turkey, but found my Serbian was not up to it, so found a local friend to help me negotiate.

She did the job, and I went home with a fine bird, though with all innards intact, which my mother bravely prepared and roasted. We settled down to Christmas dinner and remarked on how much fat there was in the skin of Bosnian turkeys. And, yeah, the liver had been a lot bigger than you would expect too. And it tasted different from turkeys we were used to. In fact, it tasted more like, em, a goose. We concluded that it was a goose, not a turkey. No big deal, just not quite what I thought I had brought home. We had a good day anyway, and B enjoyed her presents.

I took it up with my local friend the next day. “Did you realise,” I asked her, “that that bird we got yesterday was a goose – guska/гуска – not a turkey – ćurka/ћурка?” She shrugged her shoulders without embarrassment. “What do I know about that?” she demanded. “I am city girl.” She gave the impression that to know such technicalities of bird genus was the mark of an inferior rural upbringing, far beneath the notice of an urban sophisticate like her.

All in all it was a special Christmas – our first with B, as now we are having our first without her.