Archive Entries for December 2006
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Monday December 25, 2006
Christmas Day
George and Deborah with their Christmas Stockings.
Posted on December 25, 2006 at 8:24 AM. Category: Red Letter Days.
Friday December 22, 2006
Tree transformed
Posted on December 22, 2006 at 9:46 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts.
Thursday December 21, 2006
Redwings
Could not resist this view from my window - it's the time of year (about 2 or 3 days before Christmas decoration day) when the redwings can be sure to descend on the garden and clear every holly berry in sight. Here you can see two of them - one on the left clearly visible (posing) and one on the right behind the leaves (eating).
I had to take the picture through the glass and from a distance, hence the usual dubious quality.
Posted on December 21, 2006 at 1:27 PM. Category: The Garden.
A Nice Cup of Tea ......
....but mostly a Sit Down.
Actually this one is my elevenses, which is always coffee, (stop laughing).
Note the lovely mug from the Metropolitan Museum ("Santa Claus Please Stop Here") - a gift from Alison, of course. I had the amazing but also banal brainwave that what I needed for my expanding Christmas Mug collection was a Mug Tree - just temporarily while they are in residence in the kitchen over Christmas.
Posted on December 21, 2006 at 11:00 AM. Category: Kitchen and food.
Monday December 18, 2006
The Lost Weekend...
No - no - I did not spend the weekend in an alcoholic’s stupor. However, it seemed to disappear regardless. I can remember it though - and view the evidence.
I spent the entire weekend cleaning - and enjoyed it enormously; it's pretty good when you don't feel all the time you are wanting to do something else - maybe that's the key - I was using the NLP technique of visualising how I'd feel when the house was clean (which is "Good", by the way, for all you doubters). Now I just need to spend a bit more time in front of the TV watching "Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife" - much better than "Desperate Housewives" - believe me! George spent Saturday morning in Dorking (Antiques Paradise) and I imagined I would have the whole day to potter around, cleaning and tidying, but his shopping was so successful, (we're all going to get eyebaths this year, obviously...) that he got back in time for lunch, and general chores.
On Sunday, the cleaning continued - we even cleaned the windows to try and prevent George’s Father commenting on them (negatively), which is his personal Christmas tradition. I expect Santa Claus also notices. So the current state of play is that the living room (“my” room) is now rather naked - I have removed the ornaments that are usually in residence - the tree is installed but there are no decorations of any kind yet. I could take “before” and “after” photos, but the true “before” beggars belief, so best not to dwell on it, I think, especially with photographic evidence. And I still have yet to evict my Stitchcraft collection….
Posted on December 18, 2006 at 12:48 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts.
Saturday December 16, 2006
A Christmas Me-Too
I have nicked this from Alison and completed
a competitive MeMe - however, I have shortened it as my target audience
probably knows all this already....
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Yuk.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? He
wraps them.
3. Coloured lights on tree or white? White.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? Yes
5. When do you put your decorations up? From
choice, Christmas Eve, but it will be earlier this year, as I am fed-up
with going to France straight after Christmas and not enjoying them for
long enough.
6. What is your favourite Christmas dish (excluding dessert)? Goose.
7. Favourite Christmas memory as a child: On
Christmas Eve, having a temporary bed on the sofa in the living room,
and going to sleep with the Tree lights twinkling into the night. But
there are many others.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? What
can you mean?!
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Nicely.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? A
light dusting which should fall overnight on Christmas Eve. This has happened
once in my lifetime.
12. Can you ice skate? About
as well as I can skate at all, (which is slowly and carefully).
13. Do you remember your favourite gift? My
Teddy.
14. What's the most important thing about Christmas for you? Small,
cosy rituals and traditions.
15. What is your favourite Christmas Dessert?
Trifle.
16. What is your favourite holiday tradition? Parlour Games:
"My Mother Keeps a Shop" (a traditional variation on "I
went to John Lewis and I bought"), "Old Mother Reilly's Dead", "Black Magic", and "Tippit" (we played it very slightly differently from the game described in the link) - none of which games seem to be played in our house now!
17. What tops your tree? Hand-made
porcelain Fairy.
18. Which do you prefer: Giving or Receiving? Definitely,
Giving.
19. What is your favourite Christmas Carol? God
Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
20. Candy Canes... Yuck or Yum? Sound
like I would not like them.
Posted on December 16, 2006 at 10:21 AM. Category: Red Letter Days.
Tuesday December 12, 2006
It all makes work for the working woman to do.
I crawled into the office at the crack of dawn today (to try and avoid long queues on the M25) in order to get a direct LAN connection and thus fix my laptop. Sadly my laptop refused to see any LAN either. I had to involve the Help(less) Desk - which confounded all expectations by demonstrating endless patience and helping me fix it.
Later in the morning when all normal people had arrived in the office, looking like they had spent the appropriate amount of time in preparation to come into work, I was regretting leaving the house in the dark and in such haste. Especially at lunchtime, when a complete stranger said to me conversationally: "Isn't it nice that we can all come into work in casual dress now?" - which was clearly code for:"My God, you look terrible! - didn't you even comb your hair?"
Posted on December 12, 2006 at 5:20 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts.
Monday December 11, 2006
Twas on a Monday morning ...
...the gas man came to call...
The Engineer was supposed to have us as his first call at 8:00am. At 11 (well, it was raining - and I mean really raining) George called Them and They said "the engineer called but could not find your house so went away again". I will leave you to imagine what was said after that.
By about lunch time, the "engineer" had arrived and also left again, assuring us that the New Box would be activated after about 30 minutes. By late afternoon, after many calls to Them, repeating the codes and serial numbers from the New Box, and reinstalling the hardware (removing extraneous adapters added by the "engineer"), we finally got our service back.
I celebrated by downloading some new software platform to my laptop, which promptly caused all my networking hardware to become invisible, and removed any possibility of further home working (even dial-up)......
Posted on December 11, 2006 at 6:12 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts.
Sunday December 10, 2006
Just a Lazy Sunday.
Hmm.
Our broadband connection disappeared on Friday - which was awful (what a nerd I am). Had to revert to dialling up, which was more efficient than I remembered. It turned out that the whole cable box had "a critical error" - but unlike the old days when you rented your TV, and the advantage was that if it broke, then day or night someone would bring round a replacement..... they have to send round an "engineer" to tell us what's wrong with it -
Me: "O - can he mend it then?"
Them: "no - it has a critical error"
Me: "would it not be quicker to deliver a new box right now?"
Them: "no - the Engineer has to diagnose what is wrong"
Me: "and I have to wait another 30 minutes in a queue to book the engineer?"
Them: "yes that's right. O wait a minute - you say your broadband is down? I'll book it for you here then. He can't call until Monday".
George spent much of Friday shouting at them - I would say to no avail, in that the "engineer" has not relented and decided to work weekends, but in the face of abuse They seem to offer you money to go away. So he gracefully accepted.
And we were condemned to a weekend without TV. We had to talk to one another.
No - it was alright - just kidding - we didnt have to - we used my (inferior) digibox.
Yesterday, we went into Kingston (no snow though) to do Christmas shopping. This means George is getting desperate. I had a lovely time as I have already completed my essential gift shopping. I managed to cover a huge amount of ground - and buy a ton of stuff - things went so badly for George that I was undisturbed for hours.... I bought myself the Perfect Thing, in Navy Blue, from my Favourite Shop (Wallis), at Half Price. [You will have to wait until Christmas for the photos.] Said Perfect Thing is usually obtained cruising swiftly around Asda on Christmas Eve looking for something appropriate, gaudy, and above all - cheap. I did resist buying a second example of the genre, managing to face the fact that I may have only a limited need for one crocheted evening top in navy, never mind two.
This morning we purchased The Tree. It is currently residing outside until next weekend - so it keeps cheerful until it really has to face the central heating. George spent the rest of the day showing his antique collection of eyebaths to a student, who wanted to photograph it as part of her thesis on "eccentric collections" (!).
I spent the rest of the day reading "Lifeless" by Mark Billingham. This book mentioned the sinister trivia that in 1997 the "Yorkshire Ripper" was stabbed while in Broadmoor by the"Woolworths killer" - the latter having been responsible for a sad and shocking local murder in Teddington in 1994. Reminding me of that event after so many years, strongly reinforced how far the world of the fictional whodunnit is from the poignant sadness of a violent death (even that of a stranger) in real life.
Posted on December 10, 2006 at 10:13 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts.
Friday December 8, 2006
Limbering up for over-indulgence.
Two Christmas lunches in two days.
Today I went to the Spinners group meeting, which included a "bring and eat" buffet lunch. I was committed to take quiche, and luckily (à la Agatha Raisin) our local baker sells 'home cooked' quiche - which saved me a lot of time! I am pleased to say no-one appeared to have been poisoned, and I was not sucked into some unlikely rural amateur detection ritual centred on a local craft group.
Sharron was able to report that her little traveller wheel, that she was having such difficulty with last time, is, in fact, working fine now, and no-one understands why it was acting up; it probably did not fancy being loaned to me. I was able to share my exciting wheel news with Pam and Ann. They offered some good advice, and I have now ordered some items from P&M Woolcraft to set up the scotch tensioner.
Yesterday I went to Oxford again, where nice food was enjoyed in nice company. It was very atmospheric - dark and wintry - all it needed was the snow - but then I would not have been able to travel there, so you can't have everything.
Here is a rather amateurish picture of the covered market - but it looks very pretty despite the camera shake.
Posted on December 8, 2006 at 4:01 PM. Category: Days Out.
