Oh my goodness!

Yes, my goodness I really need to work on this blogging.    I've forgotten how many posts I've started  then scrapped because they're out of date. Well, this time, I won't scrap what I wrote in early August, I'll just update it...

And sooo, we went to Shrewsbury in Shropshire a few weeks ago, a nice old city full of half timbered buildings of all sizes and with plenty of interesting things to see.  We liked the huge medieval church of St. Mary in the centre of town, open to all to explore,  and busy with exhibitions and special events.   It has a big shady churchyard  excellent cafe, and all its fixtures and fittings are being preserved.  Of all those fine fittings, it was this huge yellow clock from 1747 that appealed to me most. Elegant, simple, and I think I might like to decorate one of my rooms in this appealing colour scheme of yellow and gold.

 

Shropshire adjoins several different counties, and since we are not often in that part of the world it seemed like a good idea to explore the area a bit.  In a drive that took us into neighbouring Worcestershire, we passed a sort of castle by the side of the road.  It looked to be a  gatehouse and lodge of some old mansion, likely built in the same castle-like style. 

I couldn't find any castles on the satellite map, but since a little sign stood nearby indicating that a public right of way went through the gate, we parked and walked right in to explore.

 After a couple of hundred feet it felt as if we'd entered another realm. It was wonderful.  Acres of crops full of wild flowers stretched out on either side, and no sound but the distant lowing of cattle and hundreds of birds.  It was like a nature reserve, with every hedge and field full of variety and different from the last one.  We couldn't believe it. 

   But, as the cynics say, there is a worm in every bud, and as we got back to the car I noticed a house opposite had a big sign in its window proclaiming "NO QUARRY!"  So when we returned to our Airbnb, I checked up and learned that the land'had once been the grounds of a stately home known as Lea Castle..   Here's a photograph of Lea Castle taken about 100 years ago. 

It seems that so many of Britain's country houses, it fell on hard times and was demolished, and after a while a villagey little care centre for people with learning difficulties was built in one bit of the land .  That has now gone, and there's also a small private housing estate on another bit of the land, though we didn't see it.  All we saw was a riding stables and the farm - all that unspoiled and curiously old fashioned farmland full of heartsease and St. Johns Wort and poppies and broom,  skylarks and a huge colony of rooks. 

Anyway, the quarry.   It seems the farm's owner (opposed by his environmentalist son, apparently) is determined to turn the whole place into a huge quarry which would tear up the whole lot up to extract  sand and gravel for construction. That would mean noise, pollution and constant heavy traffic transporting the sand and gravel.   Many local people think it will be far too near schools and residential buildings to be safe, and earlier this year they  took the developers to court to stop the scheme.   They won, but, predictably, the developer appealed.  When you consider how much money is to be made, the cost of prolonging a court battle must be negligible to a big company, I guess. .

It isn't fair, but the local people have to muster again for another fight.  Read about their campaign  here,  They're fundraising like crazy, seeking volunteer advisors with planning and legal expertise and organising public events. It's like David against Goliath, but I've contributed to their appeal.    I wondered if they could try and get the place designated as a nature reserve, but I don't know if that would be possible. . 

Another day I went from Shrewsbury into South Staffordshire to see the extraordinary rock houses at Kinver Edge, now in the care of the National Trust.  With views over the surrounding wooded hills, these unusual cottages were created a long time ago (nobody knows exactly when) when people burrowed into a bluff of red sandstone called Holy Austen Rock, near the interesting village of Kinver. Some of the dwellings were inhabited until well into the 20th century, and it is said that they were considered rather desirable by many people - at least, tcompared with the draughty ramshackle old cottages where most poor people lived a century and more ago.   But times change, and the houses had been abandoned for years when the Trust took them over. 

  Here's the path from the rock houses down to the village. 

Below, the large tree conceals quite a lot of the site, which is bigger than it looks here. It is built on  three levels, although only a few of the dwellings have been restored or re-purposed so far. 

Something is known of the residents and a few were photographed going about their lives. I snapped one print that I specially liked. It reminded me of the Hobbits, and I love the tin chimney sticking out of the rock! 

One of the cottages is now colonised by bats (it is a cave, after all). Not sure how they get in and out but obviously not through the front door... 

A couple of rooms in the restored cottages have been furnished to look as they did in the early 1900s.  Quite a cosy home it must have been - well insulated by all the rock I think.  And that coal range would have been cosy on a lonely winter night. 

A teashop and a respectable Victorian villa are built into the rock face on the top level of the settlement so we bought some tea and sat in a delightful garden amidst the red rocks and looked at the view while we had it. 

And at that point in August, I stopped writing the post, so there it is.....    But I did go to other places and one that I look back on fondly was taking our second oldest grandson, A, to  a Museum of Science Fiction in a lovely little town. 

It's  Bromyard, in Herefordshire, not so very far from Shrewsbury in fact. The museum's housed in an ancient house-turned-shop plus a network of underground cellars at one end of the High Street.  

Bromyard is the sort of large village or small town where cosy British murder mysteries tend to be set .   It is peaceful and well kept, and with baskets of flowers everywhere including the porch of this old pub I snapped in the evening.

Young A. really likes the long running British TV series  "Dr. Who. "   So do his brother and his parents.  In fact, if you're British, you have likely grown up with this iconic programme - I certainly did.   

It revolves around a traveller in space and time called "Dr. Who" and his companion who is generally the opposite sex to the Doctor, though they don't have a romantic relationship.   Both Doctor and companion regenerate into completely different people from time to time and every new Doctor and companion have very distinct styles and personalities.   Their vehicle through time and space is a vintage police phone box called the Tardis, whose main characteristic is being  infinitely larger inside than it appears outside.  

As you've probably guessed, the programme ranges very widely through different adventure scenarios.   Various Doctors  have, for instance,  been captured by stone age people trying to rediscover the secret of fire,  and hung out with Vincent Van Gogh in 19th century France. They have been embroiled in a future war created by a sinister algorithm, met thriller-writer Agatha Christie at a murderous 1926 dinner party, and got mixed up in a war between the Rutans and Sontaran clone species.  Or hundreds of other things.    They encounter other time-and-space travellers regularly (few of them pleasant) and many ohers highly inventive and often creepy monsters and aliens. 

 Of all the aliens in the show, by far the best known are the  Daleks which appeared at the beginning of the first ever series.  You will spot a couple of Daleks in the 18th century bow windows of the museum, and here are some more.

The Daleks are a bit worrying if you're four years old but after being around for about sixty years  they've now acquired a place in British society like the Doctor's familiar old friends who just happen to enjoy acting tough.  Their gravelly  monotone voices and catchword "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" are even more distinctive  than their appendages made out of sink plungers. In fact, they've become so familiar they sometimes make welcome appearances at village fetes, and are sometimes even seen participating in  morris dances.  (And if you can find more unthreatening things than morris dancing, I'd like to know).    But that's good.    At least it is as far as I am concerned. 

The museum has a wonderful collection of props and memorabilia, relying heavier on the earlier episodes than the later ones.  And there's a full sized Tardis in the front office which was used for filming. 

And was pleased  see that K-9, the lovable robot dog, was there in the flesh, so to speak. Here is a poster of K-9  at school. 

For me the museum was all about the atmosphere: very immersive with lighting and sound effects, and a  rambling layout thats' almost entirely underground.   It is so wonderfully idiosyncratic because it all belongs to just one family, I was told.

We all loved it and also liked Bromyard, which has a nice bakery, some old pubs, and lots of individually run, interesting shops.   Original paintings were displayed in the windows of many of the shops as part of an town art trail and when I wandered into Bromyard art studios and gallery I could see why. It is a lively place which runs low cost professionally taught art classes which were clearly very popular and some people were producing some amazing work. Some was on commission, some was for sale.  This picture particularly caught my eye. It is a large canvas of "Leda and the Swan"  and I really liked its feeling of movement and mystery. 

So those were my two most recent trips away from home. Unfortunately I've now done something to my right leg and now staying at home resting it and hoping that I'll be okay to go to Austria in a couple of weeks time. Fingers crossed! 

Iron, Bluebells, and the Keymatic Washing Machine.

After months of  poring over legal contracts, dealing with bureaucrats, and various other little trials, I feel we're out of the woods for now and can get on with some normal life.  Which has included seeing the spring and early summer unfold in some real woods. It's been a real pleasure and I'm sure the bluebell season lasted longer than usual this year too.    

Mid April there were hundreds of thousands of bluebells in the ancient Abbey Wood in Southeast London.  No, make that millions, I'm sure the numbers must have reached that -  I've never seen so many!  They just went on and on.   The large and wonderful wood is hardly mentioned in most guides to London, and is actually a little known treasure even to Londoners, too.    It is in the far southeast of the city and I learned that William Morris used to walk through it to the station when he needed to catch a train to London from his home in nearby Bexleyheath (now in the care of the National Trust) 

 My pictures probably give an idea of the blueness of the flowers, but doesn't capture the effect of all the other, less obvious spring flowers that were also covering the ground. Areas of glimmering anemones, starry yellow celandines,  fragile stitchworts and deep purple violets made it look in parts like a huge embroidered carpet. 

In early May, we had a few days in the countryside, and on our first day took a modest footpath that led into a rather grand private estate.  After passing the immaculate tennis courts and vineyard, we found ourselves on a most beautiful grass-fringed stream winding through woodland and meadows .  What with the birdsong and butterflies and the sun shining through, it felt like the Garden of Eden, and there were still sheets of bluebells ! 

 We were in East Sussex, not far from London, but our location was so remote that Google couldn't direct us the house where we stayed.  When we found it, access was via a steep, winding, very narrow lane,  a bit terrifying at first, but worth it.  Below is the view from the window seat in our cottage., framing the view of an an old weatherboarded water mill where the owner of the land lives.  

 

This mill was, surprisingly, built in the 17th century to power a furnace.  The area where we stayed was near the Ashdown Forest, where for 100 years the local celebrities have been  Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin.  But the real people living in the area spent centuries smelting iron in tiny hamlets and farmsteads with names like "Hugget's Furnace" - many of the names still surviving on local maps today refer to ironworking. 

I found it very interesting, because I am a fan of the "Mantelmass Chronicles" by veteran writer Barbara Willard, which are set in Ashdown Forest too.   "Mantlemass" is a  multi -novel family saga about generations of an ironworking family from the 15th century onwards.  Here's the cover of my copy of "The Iron Lily" a pivotal book in the series, which tells how Lilias, orphaned in 1557 by the plague, is forced out of her home but eventually makes a good life as a master in a man's world.  

The books were published in the 1970s, which was just before the kind of books offered to young people started to change drastically.   Willard was born in 1909, so would have missed what we now call "YA"  fiction, which rarely aims to convey an authentic sense of living in England of the past, family continuity or being present in the natural world.  Those type of books are generally marketed for adults now. I am sure teens can find them if they want, and I hope some do.  

So re-reading "The Iron Lily" recently, I thought that some enterprising publisher might re-package these books for adults. I don't know if Netflix is into making family sagas, but these stories are too good to sit forgotten on a shelf.  I found a book review blog called Semicolon here, which has reviewed the series recently.  I wonder if you think they'd appeal to you? 

We have also been to Suffolk again since my last post, where I mentioned my friend's pond which is shaped like an eye.  (it looks crazy when you view it from above on Google).  On our more recent trip to Suffolk the sun came out occasionally so we managed to snatch this shot of the eye looking a bit less tearful.  It hadn't been quite so wet, and flooding had receded, so you can start to see the shape with the little island forming the iris in the middle and the spoil heap from the digging creating an "eyebrow". 

  Whenever it has seemed summery, we've tried to get out on our bikes. We went recently to  South Kensington to see the final days of the "Secret Life of the Home" at the Science Museum.   

It's an imaginatively displayed collection of vintage household objects, designed nearly 30 years ago by Tim Hunkin, whose offbeat interest in how machines work made his  Secret Life of Machines ITV series so watchable in the 1980s.  He brought the same quirkiness to the gallery, with entertaining films, recordings and ads to cast light upon things on display.   

My favourite objects included a fiendishly complicated 1950s burglar alarm involving a 78 rpm record automatically calling the local police station via a rotary dial phone in a voice considerably posher than King Charles' voice today.  But best of all for me was the Hoover "Keymatic" washing machine (below). 

I found the launch ad on Youtube, which explains that it is fully automatic, as though this is a great novelty.   Was it really the first fully automatic washing machine in Britain? I wonder.   

Anyway I like the Keymatic because it reminds me of the house my grandmother,  her two sisters and their friend shared in South West London. Almost nothing ever changed in that house, and I loved it.  My auntie told me the family had bought the very best when they moved in during the 1920s, so there was rarely any reason for getting anything new.  Made sense to me.   

So imagine my surprise when one day in 1963 I skipped into the scullery to find a gleaming new Hoover Keymatic installed under the wooden draining rack.    Their 1930s washing machine had given up so they'd bought the very latest and best model available to carry on the good work. Easy to use, with an intriguing beaky appearance and attractive peacock blue top, it worked like a dream and really did end the trials of washday for them.   It immediately became a well-liked member of the household, and sloshed away reliably for the rest of their lives.  I can't look at it without thinking of them.  So I liked seeing that long-ago familiar shape in the gallery. 

All the exhibits will now be housed in the museum's huge new storage facility out in Wroughton, Wiltshire.  They promise public tours but I am sad to have closed the gallery at all.  Hunkin's approach was engaging and unique, and I so hope it won't be replaced by something too earnest. 

 Last weekend we went to see another new gallery at another museum,  So glad I live in a city with lots of free museums!     This is in East London, at Bethnal Green, and it is part of the Victoria and Albert museum of applied and decorative arts.  The building used to be known as the V&A Museum of Childhood and has now been extensively refurbished and re- branded to become the  Young V&A .... supposedly ... 

   

... well I guess they forgot to tell the person who did the mosaic sign on the front wall..... 

The old Museum of Childhood was another one I'd always liked. It was very Victorian and barely changed for decades, full of huge mahogany and glass cases containing all kinds of truly gorgeous toys and curious objects. It was one of our own kids' favourite outings, too.   But - you know what ? Despite all that, we were thrilled at the new museum.  It is now an even better place to take your kids!  

 It occupies a building from the 1850s with two tall, very large aisles flanking a long central space and roofed with arches of glass and iron.  It still has lots of splendid toys, but now they play their part in stimulating childrens' imaginations, and are carefully curated to help them consider design. It's also incredibly entertaining,  

I tried the gallery on the left hand side first. It  visitors with a series of questions which can be answered with reference to different toys and images.   "Where do you want to go?"  could include anywhere, but they give you some ideas:  evening in the desert,  a wintry haunted  house,  a mad planet where the stars are made out of soup - and  Hokusai's famous "Wave" print, which was my choice of where to go. Not being tossed around on that fierce sea, but skimming somehow above it, directly headed to Mount Fuji in Japan. 

This print is the first in Hokusai's set of "36 Views of Mount Fuji". But, incredibly, despite the title, I only recently noticed that Mount Fuji was right in the middle of the picture.   Hokusai had a sense of humour, and I think he knew most people would be too busy looking at the big wave to notice the famous mountain in the distance looking rather like a white-capped wave itself.  

"Who would you like to meet?" is the next question.  I decided I'd like to meet this interesting couple (below) dating from the Middle Ages.   They are wodewoses, mythical figures or spirits of nature, who were popular figures across Europe.    They seem to be bringing mythical figures out of the woods - and  I would like to meet those too.  As you see,  the wodewoses are covered with long shaggy hair, although Mrs. Woodwose has fashionable "ripped jeans" look about her knees, and her babies will not get a mouthful of fur when they feed.  They really are a fine pair. 

And how (in answer to the next question) would I choose to travel?  

 There's only one answer to this. The Pink Fantasy Flyer was in the old museum, and I loved it then and still do!    

I cannot detail it all, but can only recommend this collection, whatever your age may be.  

Currently the special exhibition is on Japanese folk tales and manga, aiming show how manga and the films of the Ghibli studios draw heavily on Japanese folk ideas and customs, particularly the Yokai who are wildly imaginative magic creatures.  Many of the Japanese objects in the show are made with astounding skill. I loved this tiny 19th century netsuke carving, which seems to be loosely based on on the traditional story of the "Wonderful Tea Kettle. " in which a magical animal lives in a tea kettle and terrifies the priest and everyone at the temple. (I don't think the original story includes this bare footed lady).  It's beautifully done -  and yet it is barely more than an inch long. 

 

There was also an equally skilled modern artwork in which a tree has been created out of a cardboard carrier bag. 

You must peep inside and see that small things matter, says the artist

After the show, we had a cup of tea at the Gallery Cafe in Old Ford Road nearby, a place we generally go to when we're in Bethnal Green.  We like the friendly unpretentious atmosphere, and there's a garden and outside seating too.  It belongs to a charitable organisation called St. Margarets which does lots of good works locally , so you can feel that your meal is in a good cause,  as well as being nice. 

And, after a grey and overcast day, the sun actually came out in the early evening for our cycle back home!  I keep thinking as we pedalled along that it would be nice to have a bit more sun, but on the other hand,   looking at the 40+ degree temperatures in southern Europe, I'll settle for grey drizzle any day. 

St. Paddy, Rain and A Gap in the Hedge.

Happy St Paddy's Day of yesterday! This is the cake I made for a party of some of the other Irish around here.  We talked of Irish things, like which is the best island to visit off West Cork, and  which is your favourite RTE fails collection on Youtube (this is mine)   Little K suggested sprinkling gold around the leprechaun and giving him a bottle by his side, a suggestion which suited him very well.   Her dad talked of a road sign he had spotted on a road trip across the country to Dublin, which flashed past his car window on a dark and rainy road.  It said :  "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE EXCEPT - "  

I can't help wondering what the final word was - do you?  

This story reminded me somehow of Lewis Carroll's song for Humpty Dumpty, which also ends in mid phrase, and is equally puzzling.  Carroll had some Irish connections and, even though his ancestors were almost entirely from the North of England, his work sometimes seems more Irish than not to me.  

But for me the late Spike Milligan has the most typically Irish approach to comedy; it's quirky, unexpected and iconoclastic, as well as just plain mad.  

Spike  had always fancied having the words "I told you I was ill" carved on his tombstone. But he died in Winchelsea, in East Sussex, just south of London, where jokes on tombstones were frowned upon. And this is what happened. 

I know I've been quiet for a while. In fact, my last post was just before Christmas, and around that time I had a mysterious and crippling bout of pain which seems to have been arthritis.  I've known I had arthritis for decades; it came on when I was quite young. But it had never hurt much. Then an awful pain came like a bolt from the blue and I even had to eat my meals standing up because it hurt my hip so much to sit down, although thankfully I could lie down to sleep. The only thing that helped was exercise, but it certainly was painful and needed some strong painkillers. 

The pain gradually went off and now I'm able to sleep without pain medication again. And I hope it doesn't come back.

Like many other parts of the world, England has had a wet and warm spring.  When we went to Suffolk a couple of weeks ago,  quite a bit of the landscape was under water. We still had a good time - we nearly always do - and I took this photo on a typical bike ride as evening came on. And yes, that's a very large puddle, not a lake. 

We also visited one of our favourite Suffolk ponds, which has been created in the shape of a huge eye that stares out into the heavens. It is usually a wonderful sight, and normally you see the outline and the iris quite clearly as you peep across through the hedge.  But this time the rainwater had blurred the  eye, and its tears had flowed out so far that you'd hardly have known it was an eye at all.  We will be back to see it again in dryer weather! 

Still, our trip coincided with more sun than they'd had all month, and so we also took the chance to visit Holton Pits.  This was until recently an abandoned quarry which was all set to be snapped up for light industrial warehouses. But then the local community decided to take a hand.  Read their story here.    I contributed to their appeal, so of course I went to look at the place.  I was delighted with it and its twenty acres will be a place to return to as the seasons change.   Overgrown quarries can be almost magical sometimes, and this one was no exception.  Even at midday in bright sun, this corner seemed full of suggestions and shadows. 

And as usual there were strange old cottages to see as we cycled along the narrow lanes and through rather deserted old towns.  I wonder what it's like in that room above the archway, don't you? Perhaps you have to crawl through on your hands and knees...?

And it was grand coming across Framlingham Castle, such a surprising thing to see through a gap in the hedge when cycling down a quiet lane. 

And now it's nearly Easter. I can't believe a quarter of the year is gone already.    What have you done in 2024 so far? 

Happy Blooming Christmas!

Looks like we may be spending a few days in Spain over Christmas. I've always wanted to see what they do at Christmastime there.  I'm told it involves a lot of pretty lights and singing of traditional songs in the village square, which sounds fine to me!    And the weather is very likely be better than the unrelenting grey gloom of London in the last few weeks.

I'm not  complaining about London's weather now, though, because we do need some rain and cold to make the plants grow later.  And we had a long and beautiful autumn with more colour than usual. Still, looking at the grey scene outside my window it's hard to believe that less than a month ago this was Regents Park as we cycled through...

 

We were on our way to the new and improved National Portrait Gallery, always one of my favourite art museums. It closed for three years for a major revamp, and only reopened this year.  I always felt it was fine as it was before, but I was blown away by how much better it seems now. 

They've kept the iconic and important pictures of course, such as the vast picture of King George V and his family below.  I looked at this for a long time. How lonely they all appeared in that grand echoing room, not really relating to each other, and clearly on display.  What a strange way to live.  I wonder what they would think about the people they are staring out at,  snapping them on their phones in a very different world from the one they knew.  

 

I'm not sorry for the Royals, but I don't envy them either. For some people a life of rigid routine with your time mapped out years in advance, may be fine. You could always enjoy the dressing up and being made to feel important, and I am sure that being extremely rich also isn't too much of a hardship!  But the lack of a private life, the relentless demands of other people, the sheer sense of confinement, would send some people crazy.  I think I'd be one of them. 

It seemed that many of the generals and admirals I'd seen in the past were missing - not to mention once-famous and now-unknown aristocrats.  Even I, as a history buff, had always hurried past the likes of Sir William Pulteney Pulteney, (below) portayed for his participation in so many colonial wars,  where he made so many bad decisions, yet still heaped with honours.  

I was also quite pleased not to have to stare at portraits of quite so many forgotten Mayfair socialites as before!

Instead, the rooms now offer context for the pictures on show.  People long ago were as diverse as today, although in different ways - and the artworks on display now help show how duchesses, paupers, acrobats, artists, artisans, tradesmen and common folk of all ages were shown and saw themselves in art.  

 There were more women and minorities than there were, too.  One of my favourite rooms contained only women's self portraits.   Far too many and far too much variety to show here but the one below stuck in my mind.   The photographer, Dorothy Wilding, looks so happy in her work, doesn't she? Not really bothered about what she looks like but what she feels like. All the best photography is like that, I think.   I think I'd have liked to meet Dorothy Wilding. 

And in contrast to the Royal Family in their dim, old palace,  this vast, bright painting of the film star Rita Hayworth seems to light up the room. 

There was a very good display on miniature paintings, showing how jawdroppingly skilled miniature painters were.  The part of the image shown below is less than two inches across,  and many were even smaller, having been painted with single-hair paintbrushes.  

I was also struck by an extremely lifelike sculpture of Tim Berners-Lee who thought up the idea of the World Wide Web.  It's quite incredibly realistic except that it is only about 1/2 human size.  At least, I think it is, unless he is a person of severely restricted growth.  It's a most compelling and engaging statue, and is placed just before a huge screen on which appear various portraits in the collection, offering a nice variety of backdrops for him.  

(Incidentally, I wonder why Tim Berners-Lee has not been knighted.  If a peerage was good enough for  Michelle Mone  and  some of the other controversial figures who have been ennobled recently, surely inventing the World Wide Web is worthy of some recognition? )

Below you see Lord Byron's screen, created in decoupage for him by his boxing tutor, of all people. I never knew Byron had a boxing tutor but he was apparently fascinated by prizefighting and prizefighters, and one side of the screen contains only pictures of these. The other side of the screen reflects Byron's other great passion - the theatre - and his favourite actor, Edmund Keen.  That is the side in my photograph. The engravings of famous actors are interspersed with reviews and comments cut out of newspapers. 

Byron was apparently short of money and sold the screen a few years later, which seems a bit ungrateful to his boxing tutor who had clearly spent so much time on making it as a gift.   But thankfully it was purchased by a publishers which treasured it for well over a century.  

There are several places to eat in the museum, but I it was getting dark so we just grabbed something at the simple little snack bar outside situated in what  I think used to be a ticket kiosk.  David Hockney helpfully shows the way. 

So now Christmas is rushing upon us!   We helped the twins decorate their tree last weekend  - the old tree has now grown out of its pot and needs planting out, so they got a nice new potted tree that's about one third of the old one's size.   The decorating had hardly started when it became clear that there was no way all the decorations would go on the new tree.    Some of the more robust ornaments had to be taken off and put on the old tree, still in its pot outside. They are now cheering up the front garden!

When fully decorated the new little tree looked very cheerful in the corner, and we all watched the traditional Christmas animation "Father Christmas" by Raymond Briggs, and ate mince pies.   It's an amusing, gentle little movie which combines two books "Father Christmas" and "Father Christmas Goes on Holiday" which describes how the old fella delivers his presents worldwide, and spends his time enjoying himself off season.  His catchphrase is the slang word "blooming" which was widely used in Briggs' childhood (and mine) but isn't heard so much now.  It is a mild way of saying "goddam"  - a bit like "darned" I suppose, because he is a kindly and highly respectable old gent at heart. 

 

I hope your Christmas preparations are progressing well, and if I don't post again in the next few days please let me wish you a "Happy Blooming Christmas!" too!