Wednesday 31st January - New Year's Eve

 I thought this might be a day for finishing things. 

My page-a-day 2025 diary, obviously; once I've written up today it can join the other the others on the shelf. I can't remember how long I've being doing this - since 2016 maybe. I wish I'd started sooner. I see I've lost a whole 1.5 k over the year; that's about 3 pounds or 4 ounces per month! I won't be getting 'Slimmer of the Year' anytime soon for sure. As long as I'm a little bit lighter rather than a lot heavier I'm happy.

I was going to draw the amaryillis flowers, and the new one that we'e just started off. I took some photographs to make it easier, but now I can see that's not going to happen. So here they are instead.

And I was delighted to see a single brave broad bean emerging from the cold dark soil under a cloche. I hope the hard frost and fog hasn't made it retreat back down again.

Yesterday I thought I should take a picture of my oak tree to round off the year, but I didn't get round to it. 'Never mind, tomorrow is another day'.

Well yes, but today started with frost and fog, which barely lifted until late afternoon. 'Tomorrow is another day', I doubt there will be much change in appearance of the tree.

It's been a quiet day; stitching - I've nearly finished the practice 2By2 piece for the current collaboration with Ang. We've given ourselves an extension into the New Year as neither of us had one anything until a day or two ago. 

Hint; if you want to sew with three strands of cotton and find they won't go through the eye of the needle, you could either find a needle with a larger eye, or decide it would look just as good with two strands instead. To save time and temper I chose the latter course. It looks fine.

I've finished two books over the last couple of days; Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher, and a 99p download on my Kindle, 'A Walk in the Park' by Jill Mansell.

We've had a long catchup call with friends living across the seas, hearing the news about Christmas and the family. Thank heavens for tech!

It's only seven-thirty in the evening; who knows but I might even finish the sleeves of my rainbow cardigan? 

But only if I crack on with supper; I'm frying up the bacon left over from yesterday and adding it to lentil and vegetable soup from a couple of days ago. To make it really festive we'll have some toast as well - we surely know how to live in this house!

Resolutions; the same as always (I don't set myself up to fail!);

2 bags of stuff donated/sold/thrown out every month

Write up my page a day diary 

Eat chocolate several times a week

The first one went a bit by the board this year, but I'm sure I can easily find enough stuff to make up for it next year.    

Have a Happy New Year, and thank you for your support and comments. What lovely people you all are! 

Tuesday 30th January- I spy with my little eye...

 'Let's go and have a Cornish pasty for lunch at Nymans Gardens ' sez I.

It was just before noon, a gloriously sunny day and not as appalling cold as it has been recently. 

So off we go. but...

When we arrived at the entrance gates there was a girl bundled up in layers of warm clothes, thick work boots, scarf, hat, gloves, standing by a notice

THE CAR PARK IS FULL, PLEASE DO NOT QUEUE

She had a sympathetic smile and was signalling that we should drive on - to where?

I had once worked at a school further down the road and knew we could turn at the pub. In the end we did turn, but instead of retracing our route just kept going, along lanes, through villages, past farms, until we found our way home again. 

I made a classy macaroni cheese with bacon and onion and peas and sweet corn all in the cheese sauce. Not a Cornish pasty, but pretty good all the same.

Along the way I spied trees (obviously), these trees in particular;

From top to bottom 

A plane tree... I was searching through my memory to identify the tree, then remembered the months either side of Christmas 2013 when I had several overnight stays at the Brompton hospital for tests. The ward was on the top floor level with the plane trees that lined the streets.

A ruthlessly pollards mature tree, I'm not sure if it is an oak or a beech, just by the local shop. This could be a candidate for 'following a tree' 2026, as the willow by the duck pond that I had my eye on was taken down recently. 

Several weeping willows near us have green leaves.  Surely they must left over from this year? 

There's a willow in someone's garden further down our road where the thin branches are bright orange., like a fire. When I used to travel all over the country from school to school there were things I used to watch for; one was a place where a couple of willows blazed red and orange, a shocking display of colour in an otherwise drab countryside.

On the road back from Nymans I was really pleased to see a rookery that I didn't know about, just a few, maybe half a dozen nests. Goody goody; I used to watch the progress of several rookeries on my commutes. 

It's probably a good thing I've stopped driving; there's far too much scenery to see.

Monday 29th December - inbetween times

This colourful glass column is a Galileo thermometer 

and you can follow the link to Wikipedia to find out all about it. I understand the principle enough to be comfortable saying that the glass bubbles contain different liquids that rise and fall with different temperatures. Each bubble has a little label dangling from it. 

All day the yellow 18°C bubble has been at the bottom of the column, with the 20°C, 22°C, 24°C, and 26°C bubbles above. This means the temperature is between 18°C and 20°C, therefore 19°C, which explains why I'm wearing my poncho over my fleece, shirt and vest...

I have a blanket handy too, just in case...

Today my lovely husband BB cut my hair for me. I think it's up there with cleaning the oven as a least favourite activity, but does it with a good grace. The long straggly ends dangling onto my shoulders that have been distressing me for several weeks are all gone. I am delighted by the results, even though I had envisaged something in-between my long hair and my new short hair style... we're always being caught out by the way one's hair is so much longer when wet compared to dry. 

I'm very grateful for his neat work. Visiting a hair dresser is difficult, from the point of view of avoiding respiratory infections. I always mean to try and book a mobile hairdresser to come and cut my hair out of doors in the warmer weather, and then suddenly it is winter again. 

We didn't listen to Christmas carols much over Christmas.  How about Vaughan Williams giving us a 12 minute fantasia on Christmas carols as a catch up?

London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Richard Hickox

Sunday 28th December - towards next year

 I think it must be because tomorrow is a Monday, but it feels as though we are nearly into next year even though New Year's Day isn't until Thursday. 

I can start using my new diary for real tomorrow. It's been necessary to have two appointment diaries running in parallel for several months as the 2026 events come trickling in so moving over completely will be a relief.

I will take my last 'following a tree' photograph on Wednesday (or a day or so before, depending on the weather). Looking out, I can see that the last few leaves have finally dropped.

Drawing the tree was like creating a scruffy fractal image. The branches come all twisty out from the trunk, and divide, and divide, and divide until you stop. 

The amaryllis continues to be amazing. I noticed the leaves for the first time today.

Music; 

Philip Fowke playing the Andante variation from Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

I was given a beautiful, tiny little handmade book by a friend this Christmas. On each page she had written one of the Names of God, and a Bible reference for it 'as an aid to meditation'.

I have a mind like a butterfly that doesn't stick to one thought for very long; music like the Rachmaninov variation above helps... today's page has

'I am the Bread of Life'; John 6, 48-51

 I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Jesus, the bread that came down from heaven at Christmas....

Saturday 27th December - the day after the day after Christmas

It's been a good couple of days. 

Eating Christmas food;

Reading Christmas books;

Working away at Christmas kits;

Planting up a bowl of crocus bulbs (one of my presents);

Eating chocolate;

Eating Christmas biscuits;

Quiet, peaceful, with time to reflect, to marvel at the amaryllis, now 55 cm tall and about to flower

Time to stand and watch all the little birds busy busy busy at the bird feeders,

The weather has been bright and sunny but bitterly bitterly cold. I've enjoyed looking at the garden without the need to go outside (although I did nip out to put my crocuses in the shed; the instructions say to leave them there for 10 weeks or they won't flower)

I hope you have been enjoying Christmas as best as your circumstances allow; you can hope and wish for the perfect Christmas but one never knows...

I remember the time BB was called out for an IT emergency just as he had started to carve the turkey. My father took over and we carried on; BB returned about five hours later, ravenously hungry, and grateful for the generous helping set aside for him...

Or when my parents caught flu just before they were coming to stay with us; one of them staggered to M&S and 'bought Christmas ' which they cooked once they were well enough...

and the many other occasions when plans went awry...

they all become part of the big family story...

People who have been reading this blog for a while will know that my father spent last Christmas in hospital with a broken hip and died early in January from flu/covid plus old, old age. 

This hasn't made me sad; he was so frail and tired, and had he lived I doubt he would have recovered from the op. I can't help feeling he picked his moment to 'shuffle of this mortal coil' when life had become increasingly arduous.

So this Christmas has been a good one, quiet, peaceful, relaxing and reflective. 

Wednesday 24th December - Christmas Eve

Yesterday's post never got further than just the title - I'm not sure what happened - I must have been distracted and then forgotten...

But today - We've made it all the way to Christmas Eve! 

On Tuesday I wasn't too sure we'd clear the table; it still looked like this;

Improved, but a long way to go.

This morning, however, not only was it mostly clear, but I was able to get out the Christmas tablecloth, faded now after perhaps twenty years since my mother made it for is one year;

We even have a few early snowdrops for Christmas. I watch for them every year; sometimes there are only one or two barely open buds. This year is a bumper year, I've never seen so many in flower before Christmas Day.

The little Advent calendar house is complete

and the amaryllis is astonishing. I was standing staring at it, wondering where all that green stalk had come from. A few weeks ago it was a dry bulb pushed into some compost. Since then I've merely watered it a couple of times, and from somewhere it has grown those long stalks, and large buds. I've found a larger, heavier pot to stand it in as it looked liable to topple over any day now. 

I wrapped the last few presents for friends, and we delivered them after lunch. For years now we've had salmon for our Christmas Eve meal, and this year was no different. I roasted onions, peppers, tomatoes and sliced potatoes in the oven for 30 minutes, turning them half way through, and then added the salmon fillets for another 10 minutes. So easy, and very good!

We've watched Carols from Kings - if you missed it, find a quiet hour and catch up on iplayer or BBCSounds. It was beautiful. 

It's heading for bedtime now. I wish you all the best for Christmas Day, however you are spending it, with family and friends, or on your own.

Here's the choir of Trinity College Cambridge singing Balulow from Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols

Monday 22nd December - Clearing the decks

The boxes of Christmas decorations have been taken back upstairs, and what hasn't been done won't be done now. Today's main efforts were stringing all the cards around the room at ceiling height,

and hanging baubles on the rose bush outside. (Picture tomorrow). Not much left to do - the last presents to wrap and deliver to local friends and, oh, yes, the other half of the dining room table...

I would very much like to get this sorted in time for Christmas...  we've kind of ignored it for about a year. I'm sure it is full of forgotten treasures though, so could be quite fun (typing in the text doesn't quite convey my dubious tone of voice).

Meanwhile here is the last of the Advent O antiphons, the one for 23rd December. I suppose the night-time services on Christmas Eve were considered to be part of Christmas, rather in the way the Midnight Communion service on Christmas Eve was always a part of Christmas Day, more important in some ways that the Christmas Day service.    

O Emmanuel,

Rex et legifer noster,

expectatio Gentium,et Salvator earum:

veni ad savandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel,

our king and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

The text of these antiphons is very familiar to us from the Advent hymn 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel' .

Here are Chet Valley Churches singing it;

Sunday 21st December - the Fourth Advent Candle

 

The fourth candle is for Love.

Here is the beautiful poem 'Love came down at Christmas' written by Christina Rossetti, sung to the Irish melody Gartan by by Chet Valley Churches;

I remember reading the famous 'Love' chapter in the Bible, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, at my goddaughter's wedding;

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

At my cousin's wedding some years earlier, they had the same reading, and the sermon is one of the few I remember. The preacher suggested you replace the word 'Love' with 'God'.

Ah, lovely. 

Then he suggested you replace the word 'Love' in the middle section with 'I';

I am patient, I am kind, and so on. 

Ah, rather more challenging. I took this as a statement of intent, and revisit this message from time to time.

O Antiphon for 22nd December 

Latin:

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,

lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:

veni, et salva hominem,

quem de limo formasti.

English:

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

• assage
• Resources
• Hebrew/Greek
• Your Content13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain 

Saturday 20th December - Early to bed and Early to rise

 Having an early night. It's been a lovely day meeting up with our children...

O Antiphon for 21st December;

O Oriens

Latin:

O Oriens,splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:

veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

An appropriate antiphon for the shortest day of the year. I've always liked the pun on sun/son

Friday 19th December - O Antiphon for 20th December

 More present wrapping today, as we are meeting family at the farm shop café to swap Christmas presents. We won't open them then and there, but carry them off to put them under our own trees as home.

BB added some more baubles to the tree while I was cooking bubble and squeak and scrambled eggs for supper. The cards are waiting to be strung up round the room in a day or so.

I've written all the ones for the mail, now there are just some friends and neighbours to do for delivering by hand.

.....

This is the antiphon for tomorrow, Saturday 20th December;

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Isreal, 

qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: 

veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and the scepter of the House of Israel, 

who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens. 

O come and bring out the captive from the prison-house, him who sits in the in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Thursday 18th December - Tinsel! and O Antiphons - O Radix Jesse

 The next stage of tree decoration has happened;

I must have thrown all the small pieces of tinsel away last year - they do get increasingly tatty as the years go by. So this year I gathered the remaining long strands of silver tinsel, and cut them to length with the kitchen scissors. What a mess! You can see snips of tinsel all over the floor. But according to my mother's instructions the tinsel has to lie along the branches like snow, which means having longer and shorter lengths. Being snow, all the tinsel is silver, although some looks gold in the light.

It has been tipping it down with rain all day, but I wasn't going to go outside to check how the tree looks. Luckily BB had to go out, so he stood and directed me where to put the last few pieces.

.....

The little birds found the bird feeders yesterday and were making a occasional timid forays back and forth. Today, in spite of the rain and the cold blustery wind they were busy all day, some at the seeds, some at the peanuts. The squirrel hasn't appeared yet, so the nuts are lasting quite well at the moment.

Ang over at Tracing Rainbows posted a video on how to make a wreath by stabbing greenery into a large potato. I spotted a link at the end of the video for discovering more crafts. In particular I fancy having a go at making apple and peanut butter bird feeders.

    

They seem to be apple slices with the core cut out and a string threaded through. The bottom is smeared with peanut butter on both sides, and then dipped into birdseed. I reckon I can cope with that!   

......

Antiphon for 19th December 

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

 

O radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,

super quem continebunt reges os suum,

quem Gentes deprecabuntur:

veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

Wednesday 17th December - Zoom Christmas Party and Carol Sevice, O Antiphons

 It's been a packed morning and afternoon and evening...

The Christmas Tree has moved from the hearth rug to the window, had its branches sorted out and the lights added;

It's always pleasing to find the lights are still working; how things have changed from when I was little and they never worked! My mother, even back in the 1950s, always insisted on white lights, not easily available. I remember her, in the 1970s, going through the bowl of mixed spare bulbs on the counter at Selfridges and swapping out all the coloured lights in the string she had just bought for the white ones. The coloured lights were still in fashion then so it wasn't as reprehensible as it sounds...

We're at this stage now. Every year I'm torn between the calm simplicity of just having lights,  or adding tinsel, or having baubles as well,  (but only red, silver or gold!) and finally with or without lametta... decisions, decisions....

........

I'm pretty much flaked out now. The zoom church that I joined over a year ago had its zoom  Christmas Party, followed by zoom Carol Service.  That's a long time to be on a zoom!

We are a proper church in a Leicestershire diocese. Most of the congregation live in a group of villages all close to each other, but some of us live further afield; USA, Spain, and South East of England like me. 

I wondered how a Christmas party would work on zoom, but it was brilliant. Somehow we all received party bags with snacks, Christmas decorations, frivolities like glo-sticks, and a joke. Great fun. It must have taken quite some organising.

 ........

The Antiphon for Thursday 18th December (tomorrow if you are reading this today...) is 

O Adonai (Lord)

Latin:

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,

qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,

et ei in Sina legem dedisti:

veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

English (Anglican):

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush,

and gave him the law on Sinai:

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

I like comparing the latin words with the translation which is why I include both.

Tuesday 16th December - Christmas Preparations and The O Antiphons

Our Christmas Tree is out, but not up.

We've a fair way to go yet. The two green storage bags of decorations are down ready, plus sundry other bags and boxes, condensed from what seemed like hundreds to just four.

Compared to years gone by, when we used to cut the top off the real tree to fit into the corner, this is a tiddly little one, and artificial at that, but so much easier to manage. 

I don't know why we never had a problem with the cats, even when they were kittens. Maybe we had already convinced them that 'NO!' was an absolute and non-negotiable command... 

We didn't that a problem the first Christmas once our children had grown from babies to toddlers. We just stuck the Christmas tree on a little table inside the playpen, and childproofed the bottom 2-3 feet of the house. Plus the 'look don't touch' rule was already established from visits to shops. 

One child was left-handed, and the other right-handed; I don't know whether it was me or BB who had the bright idea of arranging it so they held hands in such a way that the left-handed one used their left hand to hold the other's right hand; 'now, hold hands please, look after each other,' we'd say, and for some reason that was very effective and stopping them from touching everything on the shelves.   

.....

It's been a marathon effort, or so it seems; but 50 cards made it to the post today, and four parcels are wrapped and almost ready to go. The next batch of cards are all to be hand delivered locally later this week, or maybe early next week. 

The Notebook and stitching swaps will not make it in time for Christmas, but he, it's always good to have something to brighten up the 'in between' days after Christmas and before New Year.

.......

The O Antiphons; I blog these almost every Christmas; it's a part of my Advent and I'm always a bit annoyed with myself if I forget the start date which is actually 17th December, or tomorrow.

You can read a fuller description here. There are 7 Antiphons, or short prayers, traditionally used at the evening service using words taken from the Bible. They are thought to originate from Italy in about the 6th Century.

It occurred to me that if I wait to share today's Antiphon until tomorrow, you might not read this until the next day, so here is tomorrow's antiphon today.   

O Antiphon for 17th December;

Wikipedia

Monday 15th December - procrastination - organ playing

 The art of doing other slightly useful things that could be perfectly well done later in order to avoid doing the really useful things that need doing now.

But I've nearly run out of slightly useful things to do...

BB has very busy; the corner by the red chair was piled with boxes of papers and photographs retrieved from my father's flat, and the chest under the window equally laden with books and old magazines and - well - stuff! He's carted it all away upstairs somewhere (tra-la-la, I'm not going to look) and  replenished the rechargeable batteries in the candles and switched on the lights in the windows.

Another mini-step towards Christmas...

This is very pleasing; 

Thomas Tomkins (1572–1656): Voluntary (Musica Britannica no. 24) played by Silas Wollston on the 'St Teilo' 'Tudor' organ. From the CD 'In Chains of Gold - the English pre-Restoration verse anthem, volume 3', recorded in September 2023 and to be released on February 28th 2025 on Signum.

Played on the organ at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb

I see it takes three people to play this! One to work the bellows, and one to watch the music and operate the stops to change the organ sound (on the other side of the bellows-man), and one to actually play the notes. It's such a tiny keyboard; as well as being only a couple of octaves long I'm sure the keys aren't as big front to back as a modern keyboard.

Back in the 1960s I occasionally played the organ on Sundays at my grandmother's church in a tiny village in Northamptonshire, and once, memorably, for the Australian opera singer Joan Carden. She was interested in Family History and had joined a great gathering of the Carden Families in a small village in Cheshire organised by my father (he was hugely involved in tracing the Carden family tree). She sang the Faure Pie Jesu while I quiveringly accompanied her.

Both times I was playing very elderly and poorly maintained 'tracker action' organs, where the keys were directly connected to the organ pipes by complex systems of levers making them stiff and and difficult and uneven to manage. Quite a challenge to keep going, but thankfully the bellows had been electrified. As long as I didn't use too many stops there was enough air to supply the pipes.

There was another Family Gathering several years later, and once again I played the organ for the celebration service in the Parish Church. This was an all-singing, and probably all-dancing too, given half a chance, fully electric job, with lots of indicator lights and a row of buttons just under the keyboard (called presets) where you could catch them with your thumb to change the sound between verses. I can't remember what the last hymn was, all I remember was that I accidentally flicked one of the presets partway through the final verse; the organ lit up like a Christmas Tree and every stop seemed to have been activated. The sound was tremendous, and I was laughing so much I could hardly concentrate, while at the same time so thankful that this had happened right at the end, and not, say, in a verse like 'And though I walk through death's dark vale'. That would have been so embarrassing. Give me a proper piano every time!

Well, this won't buy the baby a new frock, as they used to say (probably in the Miss Read books). Or, in other words, back to getting on with the Really Useful Things that I should be doing NOW!  

 

Sunday 14th December - Advent 3 - Joy

 Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice greatly; the Sixteen singing this aria from Handel's Messiah 

And Sean McCann and friends singing The Seven Good Joys of Mary

Advent 3; the third candle is glowing

The theme for this Sunday is Joy, following on from Hope and Peace.

Christmas approacheth apace; only ten more drawers left in the Advent calendar, only ten more pieces to add to my tree house

It's looking full of life and interest now;

I heard about the online calendar from the Ashmolean Museum the other day. Too good not to share.

Here's wishing you all many joyful moments this week.

Saturday 13th December - ho hum

Not every day is packed full of excitement. 

Some days are just bits and bobs, this and that...

How about some Beethoven Bagatelles op 33 played by Alicia de Larroccha 

You might recognise no 3 as the music for the original BBC radio programme 'A book at bedtime'.

Friday 12th December - My tomorrrow self will be so pleased with me.

 Fully supported by a pot of tea and suitable music playing, I persuaded myself to make a start on the Christmas Cards. This is an old box, one ones inside are a mish-mash of cards left over from previous years, and quite a few salvaged from my father's flat. Waste not want not...

I've discovered it's not going to be as much of a task as I feared; four pages of names and addresses, means about 80 cards, around 10 to be emails, about 15 to be hand delivered locally. I cracked on and gor halfway down the second page. So far so good; the target is to get them done ready to post on Monday. More tea, more music, and possibly more cards required!

I am grateful to 'Fat Dormouse' for sharing this link with me in the comments to yesterday's post;

It's a clip from 'Song of Praise', where Kate Rusby talks about the tradition of Pub Carols in the North, and sings one of the carols.

It reminds me of a Christmas a long time ago now when our Canadian friends were over in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We went for a celebratory meal at a local traditional pub in a very old building near to where we live. To our great joy, the carol singers came in, and started singing all the old favourites, including, of course, The Sussex Carol. Everyone in the pub joined in, even visitors like ourselves were welcome at this village event. It was such a joyous end to the evening.

I remember my friend and I had a solo line in the Twelve Days of Christmas - we had to keep our wits about us to remember to come in!

 I've chosen a Maddy Prior/Carnival Band recording again - like the Kate Rusby 'While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night' above these carols are meant for dancing. The choirs of Kings College etc just don't have that feel! 

 

Thursday 11th December - Preparations gathering momentum

 But not for Christmas... for my latest quick knit...!

I've been wearing a favourite jumper, knitted up in this wild and wacky yarn called Bamboozle. I don't know if that yarn is around any more; it's a while since I made it.

This is a picture of my tummy! The problem is that the jumper has a rather low neckline, which is a bit chilly in this weather. What I need is a(nother) cowl or scarf. However it is really difficult to match the jumper another yarn.

I tried this;

Which sort of works, but really needs to be on bigger needle to get a looser fabric. It's going to shade through to oranges and yellows soon which could look good.

And now I'm I'm experimenting with this;

It's a chunky soft acrylic yarn, which I'm knitting on 8mm (instead of 6.5mm) needles over about 21 stitches. Every time the blue colour appears, I cut that length out, hence the couple of small balls sitting on top waiting for another knitting adventure. This is dead quick to make; I only started today and I'm already about halfway.

The pattern goes something along the lines of 

knit a few rows of garter stitch to start

For the rest of the cowl, starting on the right side; knit 3, invent some kind of pearl and plain pattern for the centre stitches, until last three stitches, knit 3     

Adjust number of stitches in the centre as you go along to make the pattern work out.

When you are bored with a pattern, knit a few rows of garter stitch and try something else.

If a pattern isn't going well, abandon it, knit a few rows of garter stitch and try something else.

Stop when you have reached the required length, and join the two ends somehow. 

I've done 12 inches today and I reckon another 12 or a few more should do it.

Writing cards? Wrapping presents? Buying/Ordering presents? Tomorrow is another day...

........

Look after yourselves; the news here was full of the current flu, a particularly unpleasant version, which appears to be spreading around the country. I will probably be avoiding shops and other places full of people for a while. 

.......

Here are the Fisherman's Friends from Port Isaac in Cornwall singing a traditional Cornish Carol. 

When we went to stay with my parents in Falmouth over Christmas, we would go into the town on Christmas Eve to hear the local fishermen singing the traditional carols through the town. We always left at lunchtime though; they sang outside  and inside every pub; things could get rowdy as the day went on!     

     

Wednesday 10th December - head in sand mode

Tra-la-la - I've got my fingers in my ears and I'm not listening - what's that? Only two weeks until Christmas? Why that's a WHOLE FORTNIGHT - plenty of time....

We were out and about this morning; off to my father's flat to meet someone who was coming to to the energy survey thingy certificate we need as part of the wadge of paperwork for selling  property. As I was about to get into the car I stopped to take a photograph of this moth;

 

The markings are so intricate and pretty. Although not much use as camouflage against the window!  I hoped it would fly away as we moved off.

The survey didn't take long, it was a lovely morning and so we went off for a little drive to charge up the car battery and visited a Country Store - oh joy! It was the sort of shop where you could by pet food, horse food, chicken food, hunting shooting fishing farming clothes, and all sorts of strange things to do with small farming machinery and bits of hardware. 

Near the front were several aisles full of farm foods, and several aisles full of Christmas jams, biscuits, chutneys, sweets - my eyes were on stalks!

We came away with biscuits, eggs, chocolates, and what I really wanted to buy; a beanie hat with a torch.

It's for a Christmas present for Vicky, my gardener (she doesn't read this blog). An elderly friend put me on to them; she said her son and grandsons had them for working with the sheep, and she bought one for herself for when she goes out at night. The number of times I've watched Vicky carry on digging and delving long past dusk...

RandonThoughts commented about the Maddy Prior recording of 'the Angel Gabriel' carol; as a contrast to Voces8, here it is.

I used to have a lot of fun with the infant classes with this CD; we used to make up circle dances and the like in the last few weeks of the Autumn Term. 

I played their Gaudate to one very difficult class. Well, it was an easy class really, except for one 6-going-on-16 boy, let's call him Chas. He was the youngest of five boys but several years. The teachers had endured the previous four and their verdict was none of the men in that family had any respect for women!

We listened to the music, and I asked for their impressions and comments. To add some movement, I suggested the children choose whether to stand still when the men sang and stand still when Maddy sang, or vice versa.

We did that once, and then Chas took charge. He had organised all the boys 'you're the army', lining them up in pairs and instructing them to march round the room when the men sang, and then told the girls to dance when the woman sings. 'Right, let's be having the music, Miss'. 

And that as one happy class, content to be slotted into their stereotypes, which I watched fascinated. And relieved; call me a chicken if you like, but one had to be feeling strong to deal with Chas at the end of the school day, if Chas wasn't in the mood. Strength is something most teachers are fast running out of at the end of December!

Hard to think this track was released 50 years ago....

   

Tuesday 9th December - a flashmob carol

 Scanning through my blog feeds this morning I came across this fabulous flashmob Christmas carol, thanks to ThatBritishWoman

Be ready for an overdose of cute, and maybe have a tissue ready? There's something about a flashmob that always makes me cry...

What a lovely way to start the day.

In the afternoon we met an agent for a local auction house at my father’s house. I had really contacted them for advice on a painting of my mother, which is ENORMOUS. I really don't wantvto part with it, but we can't fit it into our house, it's over 1.5m long and tall! 

I didn't expect them to send someone round, because I didn't think there was anything valuable or worth his attention. (And I was right!). He didn't seem to mind coming out, had a quick look round, and made some helpful suggestions regarding trimming the portrait. I think we might be able to find somewhere in our house for the reduced portrait. It's sad to chop it about but we live in a small semi. To borrow a phrase, we need to cut our pictures to fit our walls!

As I was getting out of the car, I noticed a tangle of old man's beard, leaves and berries against the wall nearby. It seemed to glow through the dullness of the afternoon light.

Monday 8th December - Speculaas again

 

One of my birthday presents this year was a little biscuit stamp from the Søstrene Grene shop that opened in our town earlier this year. 

They come in different patterns, mine is the middle one. I made the Nigella Speculaas recipe, which involves naking up your own spice mix first... I need to buy ground cardamom and allspice to make it properly, but I substituted mixed spice which included both of them.

I was pleasantly surprised that the stamp worked so well. The white dust on the biscuits is excess flour, I used less in later batches. The biscuits came out well too. 

Speculaas (the Dutch version, Speculoos is a little different and comes from Belgium) is one of the flavours that means 'Christmas' to me.

I know what's going to happen; I shall carry on moseying along thinking 'Christmas is ages away, plenty of time yet' and then all of a sudden it will be upon us and I will be posting my Christmas cards on Boxing Day... it has been known. For several years I used to alternate between starting at the back and the front of the address book so at least people received cards every other year.

Voces8 again; 'the Angel Gabriel to Mary Came'

I'd never heard this carol until I was about sixteen and went to a boarding school. I l9ved it at once.

Sunday 7th December - 2nd Sunday of Advent; Peace

The second candle on my Advent wreath;

And voces8 singing these verses to the tune Finlandia;

 TEXT

Vv1&2 by Lloyd Stone, v.3 Blake Morgan

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is,

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating,

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

*This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

So let us raise this melody together,

Beneath the stars that guide us through the night;

If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather,

Until true peace and harmony we find,

This is our song, a hymn we raise together;

A dream of peace, uniting humankind.

*modified from Stone’s original poetry

Back in the days when I used to lead the 5-8 year olds in Junior Church, the activities I embarked upon occasionally (often) had unforseen (completely foreseeable) consequences. 

I think one of my most conspicuous one was based on the words of the book of Isaiah chapter 2, verse 4;

He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war any more.

I had the bright (stupid) idea that we would all make swords from rolled up newspapers and then turn them into spades to illustrate the verse. Most of the children (boys) never got beyond the sword construction phase and then set about challenging each other to sword fights, which continued, at an admittedly reduced volume, as we went back into the church...

John 14;27 would have been a safer verse to teach them;

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Saturday 6th December - New day! New me!

 I don't know whether it was the camomile and lavender tea or the relief at having resolved a difficult problem, but I slept in for two hours this morning and woke full of vim and vigour. A new and strange sensation...

I think I'm in agreement with Peter Rabbit about camomile tea, but if it helps me get a good night's sleep I'll give a go.

I came across an advertisement for books by the foot, and books by the metre today;

I was amused you could choose by colour, binding (leather, vintage, orange spined penguins) etc. Not cheap! I wondered what the house clearance people were going to do with all the old books and paperbacks in my father's flat. 

We've been through them several times and taken out the ones we want to keep so letting them won't cause any twinges of regret. They say that they everything the least bit saleable goes to the giant boot fair at the Brighton Racecourse. Or to charity. They try to avoid landfill except as a last resort. There are a couple in this area which set out to be low-waste clearance companies. 

Anyway, seeing that books-by-the-metre advertisement sent me down a rabbit-hole tracking down the phrase 'books do furnish a room'.

It's very true. I loved seeing books in pubs, and was forever browsing them like a library when we there for a meal or a coffee. I have been know to ask if I could take one away to finish reading it.

This book is about the tenth in the series 'Dance to the Music of Time' by Anthony Powell. I haven't read this series, maybe I should have a look. They have such beautiful titles.

I was been listening to Handel's Messiah; the opening song, 'Comfort ye' is just perfect. This is the same recording as the one I've got.

Philip Langridge is the tenor with Sir Nevill Marriner and St Martins in the Fields choir and orchestra.

Friday 5th December - 2By2 Stripy stitching

 Here's Ang's November 2By2 stitching; I've taken a photo of what she sent with the patch;

It is lovely, and I think the morse code, which is commemorating her mother's wartime work at Bletchley Park, is a very clever and effective touch. 

This is a short post. I'm feeling all in. For various reasons I've had a tiring Autumn, and for once I'm really looking forward to Winter now that the worst of various major (for me!) undertakings have been undertook, if you get my meaning.

Early night beckons... I'm off to make a cup of the 'night-time' blend herbal tea.

Cantabile sings Hushabye Mountain from 'Chitty chitty bang bang'