genialgemsandothergabblings

We all put a lot of planning ,thought and expectation into our festive celebrations and sometimes it all goes just perfectly  and other times we can feel a bit let down. Like the wartime diarist Nella Last said, it sometimes all feels as if it's not living up to the promise. In 1940 on Christmas day she wrote that she had cooked chicken ,sprouts ,brown  sausage , potatoes followed by pudding and rum sauce and cheese and biscuits. But because she was aware that her son had his eye on the clock to leave later that day, she felt it might just as well have been hash and bread and butter. Not one of her happiest Christmas days for sure. The last few Christmas days have been a bit like that for us with family not in the best of health and trying to spread ourselves about but this year it was lovely as we had family fun with our new grandson and his mum and dad and then visited the rest of the family in their own homes. It has been a year full of all that Life c...

 Short Days mean that if you want to get anything done you need to get at it in the earlier part of the day, as once any winter sun goes in after 2pm then it gets chilly pretty quickly.    So last week just before the big Storm, that did so much damage over the East coast came in, I tackled the mountain of leaves that covered our garden. It was an afternoons work a bit of much need ed exercise and I soon had things looking much better. We seem to be having some really mild weather but surely it can't last and we have ventured out and about,down to check on the boat and up to Myerscough College a couple or so weeks back. Everything looks so different at this time of year with all the vegetation dying down. We stopped  there to look at the sheep and we were taken aback by the whole field which was  covered in a mass of webs that were showing up so clearly with the sun shining on the dew on the grass. So two weeks to go, presents bought, wrapped and...