Nella Last's Christmas blues!

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 can throw at you, lovely things and not so nice things but here we are again ready to say goodbye in a few days to 2013 and head on into 2014. Lets hope the world becomes a more peaceful place!
We have had some visitors to our garden in search of food. First a flock of Redwings flew in and spotted that next doors holly tree was full of red berries{ its not now] These small thrush like birds are a rare sight here and in all the years we have lived here I think I have only seen them twice.
Then as I was drying my hair in the dining room, I spotted a flash of red on the tree near the pond and when I looked out there was a woodpecker on the suet feeder having a good old feed. Again not a common sight in our garden.

Boyce, next doors cat hiding in the lean to!

Spotted the Redwings high up in our trees

Redwing on the holly berries

The Redwing ate all the berries and moved on then!

We popped out, in the awful gales and it was really gusting but no rain really to speak of and only to get some bread.  I went into a couple of shops and came out with a lovely comfy cat bed for Ginger, for his old bones and some lovely scrapbook supplies for me!

What a Christmas some have had with this stormy weather , the barometer has been so far back showing low pressure for days now, which is so unusual

There is still time for snow ,well of course some areas already have lots but here it is not something we get a lot of.......I guess I had better not speak too soon!