Monday 25th November - Another normal day

This could get to be a habit - wait, no - tomorrow is predestined NOT to be normal as himself is off to visit my godmother in the hope of setting up some kind of interim home-care while we wait for social services to swing into action.

So, today - my first piano pupil sent me a message over the weekend to say she wouldn't be coming, so that meant I could enjoy a slower start to the morning. That was excellent.

I started on the tea-lights;

If you get 24 tea-lights and wrap a band of washi tape around each one, you have an Advent Calendar. I have exhausted several rolls of tape, and almost my entire overstock of tea-lights, making four sets; me, and three friends. I fiddled around with them at intervals between pupils and before lunch.

There was a little frisson of high-speed activity when my father (who lives down the road) rang to ask if Himself could come fix his computer which had unexpectedly stopped working. It is easier to get in the car and zip over rather than try and diagnose the fault over the phone - this time it was just matter of changing the batteries keyboard, and checking what might have been started up on the computer while my father was clicking the mouse in frustration... 

After lunch I drove off to a village school a couple of miles away to teach recorders; 'Frosty the Snowman' with the older ones, and 'Jingle Bells' with the younger ones. Typical lessons for the time of year.

Home to teach another handful of pupils, and then supper time.

I've lit all the candles around the fire that have remained unlit since last Christmas - it feels peaceful, anticipatory, a pause before - before whatever is about to happen next. 

My set of Advent tea-lights are all stacked up on the mantel-piece ready for Advent;

and I've knitted another little Christmas tree.

I'm going to hang them all up, one each day, starting on 1st December.