Keep it Simple!

In case I don't say it again this year, Happy Christmas!

Now, if you don't celebrate Christmas, I don't want to know. Simply substitute the word or phrase that suits you and yours, and I wish you all the good things that come with it.

Today I've spent time making a Christmas wreath, which is now hanging on my front door. It is done the old-fashioned way with a  wire ring and a moss "sausage" into which I have pushed  bits of fir and eucalyptus, the odd bit of holly.

I will not be decorating my house with a million twinkling lights as so many do. I am heeding the Save Energy command. Christmas must be a huge drain on the energy resources of the world. Not only the lights on houses, trees, shop windows, town centres, the leaflets that hurtle through my letterbox wanting me to buy more, more, more. The cooking that goes on over Christmas, the petrol used in rushing from shop to shop to buy more before Christmas. In one household itdoesn't seem much, but multiply that by the number of households world wide and the result must be staggering. (My maths is not up to the task!)

Keep it simple. Make a wreath and try not to savage the holly bush and the fir tree as you do it. 

It's a strange world.

It's all over now. (Wasn't that  a Rolling Stones hit once upon a time?)
Christmas is a very strange time of year when the days are short, dark and dismal so we fill the place with bright, twinkling lights almost as if we're afraid of the dark. Sunrise is around 8.30  and sunset about 3.30 thanks to Summer Time fiddling with the clocks. We need the surge of energy that Christmas brings - the rush to buy presents, to fill the fridge, freezer and store cupboard so we can eat and survive the freezing weather, to keep ourselves busy doing energetic, happy things. It's an instinct to come together, to herd together instead of trying to survive on our own. In ancient days, it would have been vital for survival. Today, with electricity and abundant food, it is a psychological need for bright lights and companionship. The urge that strikes people to rush out and buy "bargains" in the post-Christmas sales - which used to be "January sales" - could be considered as relief and affirmation that we're still alive.

The shortest day has crept by, almost submerged in the floods that afflict the north of England. Those who live on flood plains must now be counting the cost as rivers, delightful in summer, now metamorphose into raging torrents of brown, muddy water. Trees that soak up gallons of water a day have been ruthlessly felled to provide grazing. Streams clog up with debris, branches and leaf litter and no one clears them. Water has soaked into the land all through autumn, and now runs straight off the hills and into the river systems. The river Tyne was rising again yesterday for the third or fourth time this month. So much rain has fallen in so short a time there is little anyone can do. News bulletins tell me the same is happening in South America, while Australia suffers bush fires. It's a strange world we have today.

Books galore!

On the right - a pile of books - my selection and how I spent almost all of my Amazon gift card! Missing from this is a dvd of the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and a couple of titles that are yet to arrive from a subsidiary company. One Ian Rankin title I bought for a penny!

That's my Christmas reading sewn up and possibly for some weeks to come! I received the first Christmas Card today and attended a Christmas wreath making demonstration plus lunch at http://www.bradley-gardens.co.uk/ today. A very good lunch it was too, with Chicken in pastry with a glass of white wine, followed by vanilla brulee.  The demonstration was very good but I'm not sure how much decoration I shall do. Perhaps a wreath for the front door - but it won't be as grand as the one made today - white roses and orchids went into the table centrepiece. I forgot to check and see if I still have some holly with its berries - the blackbirds may have nicked them all. Not that I begrudge them a few berries. I'll track some down while I'm out with Tim if necessary.

Christmas, Wool and mud

Ah well, the festivities are almost over. The afternoon of  Christmas Eve we enjoyed a couple of hours in Park Wood near Hexham without seeing another person, and on Christmas Day we had the Spetchells by the river Tyne all to ourselves. Seems not many people ventured out, and yet the weather was pleasant enough.

We had duck breast as our Christmas dinner, but giving Tim a few titbits proved a bad move. He spent the evening walking around the room, flopping down only to get up again  within a minute or two. Eventually I put  a large flat cushion of the floor, he cuddled up beside me and we watched all two hours of the Downton Christmas Special together. Worse was to follow. He wouldn't settle when we went to bed, but kept moving around. Around one thirty he wanted to go downstairs and into the garden where he performed three pees and a poo. I came to the conclusion he had doggy indigestion. Came back inside, upstairs, settled down for a bit, then around two thirty he was sick on the upstairs landing. (DH, needless to say, slept through all of this!) He (Tim, not DH) finally settled on a large cushion by the side of  the bed and he and I got some sleep. Moral of  story? Don't feed your dog rich food.

The Sales have begun today. A good day to stay away from town and the Metrocentre! Once the initial madness is over, then I might venture out and see what, if anything, is still for sale. M&S sales are usually hopeless as everything is either less than a size 8 or greater than size 16. Still,  we live in hope, That's what keeps us going.

Snatched a copy of Wool by Hugh Howey from the library and have read a third of it. I can see why it caught people's interest and became an Amazon bestseller. It has caught mine now, and I want to sit and go on reading to find out what has killed everyone off and if Juliette can possibly survive, isolated as she is in a place full of dead people. Tim is hovering beside me, anxious to go for his walk, so I can't read any more just yet. I think we'll just go along the riverbank and I'll try and stay upright in all the mud. Tim is OK; he has crampons built into his paws!

Run-up to Christmas

Miss a day and e-mails choke up the computer! Now I'm running to keep up, and all because I took Saturday out to host a dinner for friends. Well, and Sunday to get over it - I was cream-crackered even though DH did a lot of the cooking!

Here I am today, running to catch up. E-mails checked off - except that for some reason BT Openworld is down, though G mail is functioning without a hitch. Keeping abreast of the Sydney Lindt cafe seige, and trying to plan for the next few days and the run-up to Christmas. I try and stay out of town at this time of year because I dislike being pushed and shoved in crowds, and conspicuous consumption is quite ugly in its raw state. Unfortunately, some things must be purchased, and while buying online is great in many ways, I do like to touch and feel clothes I buy - before I buy! I need something for DH, and so I'll sneak in really early one day this week. Everything seems to be so urgent in the run up to the big day. So many things that Must Be Done and yet, would we really miss them if they weren't done? Will anyone notice if I fail to buy or make sausage rolls? I doubt it!

Walking with Tim is a slipery-slidey task these days. We've had one good day of frost when the ground was hard and silver with frost. Tim went out in his overcoat - the temperature had dipped below freezing overnight. He trotted out looking very pleased with himself. The frost had gone by lunch time, the overcoat went back on the hook and the ground turned to mud again, The fields are green, winter wheat is growing apace in the fields. The lawn looks a mess because it is still growing but too soggy to cut. 2014 has been the strangest year for weather that I can remember.

Goodbye Christmas, hello New Year

Christmas is over for another year, and we can all calm down and gather our strength for New Year. Our guests are leaving today, jetting off to Zermatt for some skiing, so the house will soon be calm and quiet again and I'll have to get to grips with catching up on household tasks. One thing we won't have to do is go shopping. It seems we overshopped by a mile and seriously over estimated how much we would eat. OTOH, we have drunk all the alcoholic supplies - surprise, surprise!

Thanks to the good weather, which has been so mild that honeysuckle is budding and gorse is flowering in sheltered spots, we've indulged in some bracing walks - Stocksfield woods,  Chopwell woods, the beach at Seaton Sluice, and our regular good old riverside walks. Our guests travelled as far afield as the creamery at Hawes in search of real Wensleydale cheese. Evidently they can't get it in Australia. Nor can they take any back as the regulations on food importation are very strict and quite rightly so. The UK has suffered from the import of so many species like the grey squirrel, mink and a particular kind of crayfish to name but three. Travellers brought back all sorts of things from abroad, and some were good like the glorious rhododendron  but then we suffer with Himalayan Balsalm crowding our hedgerows and riverbanks.

Very little writing or critiquing was done by moi in the last week, so I'll have to get back into the grind again. Not that it is a grind, really. I wouldn't do it if it were something I hated. Sometimes getting the words down or deciding which way to go next in the story is difficult, but I let it simmer about on the back burner for a while and it usually becomes clear which way I want to go, and the words start to flow.  I'm really behind with critiques for my writing colleagues, so perhaps that is what I shall start with this afternoon.

I haven't even seen Death comes to Pemberley yet!

Christmas is here

Christmas Eve and guests scheduled to arrive from Oz within the hour. House scrubbed, fridge stocked, will probably fall asleep about mid-afternoon as soon not used to housework! Took Tim for a walk early this morning and managed to come home without being coated in mud. Funny how only men were dog-walking this morning - women probably chained to the kitchen. But Maybe I do both sexes an injustice...men on holiday, women happy to let men walk the dog? A distinct possibility.

The news this morning cites the pardon for Turing, and, as with all these posthumous pardons and apologies I cannot see the point. Times have changed so much in the sixty years since he died. Plus which he will never know, so who are we pleasing with this? I never saw much point in the current craze for offering apologies over national wrongs in the far distant past. Apologise now for something you've just done and regret, to the person you hurt, of course. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to realise it is necessary, but if  both of you are still alive, then do it and feel better. But after four hundred years when all parties involved are long dead and forgotten - is there a point? It has to be lip service to  a large degree. But then politicians are good at that.

I know it's the season of good will and all that, but sometimes I think we are too forgiving for our own good these days.  Before you all shout and tell me to go retire in my corner and not come out again, let me wish you all a happy and serene festive period and a prosperous, healthy and happy 2014. I may not get much writing done in the next few days, but I'll be working hard in the coming few months. Ideas are bubbling and I may just get them down on the computer before too long.

The picture was taken in Kielder forest last week. A riot of winter colours.

Christmas & Social Media

It's time Christmas was gone. We're at the boring stage now - soggy wet weather, wind and rain, temperature around 5 degrees C. Fridge full of leftovers or odd scraps that won't make anything else. People getting crabby with too much food, too much wine and not enough exercise. TV mostly rubbish aimed primarily at kids.

Did my best. Can't help or change the weather, but regulated my intake of food and wine, took a walk every day. Yesterday stopped a young dog from plunging into swollen stream to reach young owners searching for him - the chances of being swept out into the nearby river were pretty high.

Did some work every day, too. Going back to Twitter this morning, noticed how several people keep trying to stop authors promoting their books. Don't understand their logic when they promote a) themselves b) their own authors and c)what they had for breakfast lunch and dinner. That's interesting? To whom? The truth is that everyone on Twitter is promoting something, even if it is only themselves. The urge to join in is there, and if  a book is the only thing you have to talk about, then why not? Nobody is forced to read what comes up on Twitter. I skip a lot of posts to find the ones that hold some interest for me. Live and let live, I say.

An unaccustomed blast

The UK is an astonishing place. Some fascinating facts overheard, read or otherwise imbibed this week - The population of London is now 53% ethnic, (so where are all the indigenous English going?), universities are sobbing that they need more overseas students (since English students are falling away and thus staff will lose their jobs) and lawyers are so hard pushed for work that they will persuade anyone to sue anybody for anything or demand a public enquiry/apology for something that happened  thirty-five years ago and the BBC is somehow to blame because Jimmy Savile did nasty things all over the country.  Pity he isn't here to answer the rumoured 450 people who say he violated/abused them, say I. Even more of a pity that they didn't say anything when he was alive. Can I detect a hint of lawyers in this, too?

Against all this mayhem and madness, the closure of the odd library doesn't seem so very important. Here the Guardian states that the UK has lost over 200 branch libraries this year and 146 the year before that. In my own region, Newcastle is threatening to close ten out of the city's eighteen libraries. The city council seems to be making more effort to save the Christmas lights than it is to save the libraries. If companies can be persuaded to fund the Christmas lights, why can't they fund a branch library? Would it be so bad to have a Fenwicks library or a John Lewis, even an M& S library? Better than no library at all, I'd say.

 Since I appear to be on a rant, let me add that I've always thought Christmas lights are a waste of energy. Buy energy saving light bulbs, they tell us. Switch off unwanted lights, turn down the heating in rooms you don't use, half fill the kettle...and then all over the country they go and blast the sky with unwanted light in the name of Christmas. Everyone seems to have forgotten it's a religious festival and pretty, sparkling lights don't matter. Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Christmas blues

Happy band at Gibside

Trying to get into the Christmas spirit but hampered by feeling woozy. At nearly noon, this is not a good thing when accompanied by sharp pain in side when taking a deep breath. Slept sitting up in bed last night, as easier to breathe that way. Cannot decide if I should ring the surgery or not.
Sigh. By the time I decide it will be too late and they'll all have gone home for Christmas. Perhaps this thing, whatever it is will, disappear of its own accord. Hope so.

Meanwhile, not up to usual comments, percipient or not. Have just prepared venison casserole and put it in the slow cooker. By tonight it will go in the freezer and be ready to eat with very little effort next week when guests are here. They're coming all the way from Australia, so effort required!

Tonight, as luck would have it, is the night for our "street party" at the Hilton in Newcastle. Planned for months, all the cul de sac attending, smart hotel, Christmas fare, and self feels woozy already. Better stay off the wine.