Christmas at The Willows

The Weather

Let us first of all talk about the Christmas weather.  Like most of the British public we contemplated spending Christmas building an ark.  Not the sort you put a Covenant in.  The sort that floats and carries the family, two calling birds, three two French hens, etc.  Actually, we didn’t bother, knowing our luck this December it would have had a leak.

The rain did stop for a couple of hours and the conservatory was pervaded by sunlight.  Or, if not exactly pervaded, it did have a little bit of wall illuminated by that golden ball in the sky.  The rest was in shadow because the sun only briefly peeps over the horizon of trees at this time of year.

On New Year’s Eve, Partner-who-loves-tea and I were out and about visiting charity shops. On our way home the sun came out.  Needless to say I foolishly made a comment about it.  And, to our surprise, it didn’t go in.  But it did instantly start to rain again so we briefly had a beautiful rainbow over Pensby.

But we have not been flooded out this Christmas like some folk. One local girl took a holiday from her manicure salon but when she heard the area was flooded she phoned her assistant to ask if the salon was flooded out.  “It’s worse than that”, was the response, “the water has flooded the floor but the roof’s also caved in under the weight of water…”  So we have had a very lucky time of it by comparison.

The Decorations

We were very late getting the decorations up this year but we managed it. 

Had we not done so we would at least have had the consolation of lots of Christmas flowers.  We had Amaryllis, Poinsettia, and delightful smelling Hyacinths. 

Ivy

I can officially declare Ivy is no longer a kitten. Kittens are cuddly, soft, loveable. Cats are claw-filled balls of fur that can climb to the highest spots in the house and bring down every breakable object that is not boxed and stored away in the loft.  Such objects descend at a rate of 32 feet per second squared if I remember rightly. Our light bulbs are stored on a shelf that is too high for Partner-who-loves-tea to reach.  They are, however, easily reached by some small creature that has no hesitation in putting its claws in our clothing in the cloakroom and not caring about any holes it may leave behind.  Boxes are fun.  Especially when filled with things that rattle about. Unfortunately, mess around too much in such a box and it falls off the shelf….

Playing the game of get the angel off the top of the Christmas tree would almost be forgivable if it didn’t involve pulling down all the tinsel and lights and baubles (we didn’t use any of the breakable ones this year!!) and, on one occasion, the whole tree.

“All you have to do is keep the cat out of the lounge while you aren’t there,” was one word of advice.  Not true.  Cat can get to top of tree faster than man can get out of chair.  And it only takes one moment of concentration on Midsomer Murders for a rustling to occur in the corner of the room.  “Timber!”  And what happens if you want to go to the loo? First locate and remove your cat.  Not under the dresser, not by the radiator, not behind the settee, not inside the shopping bag….  One is left with two alternatives – wet trousers or destroyed tree.

And what about the photographs on the dresser and the ornaments on the window ledges?  Minimalism sounds like the order of the day for 2013.  

  Cat

Kitten

We have, of course, had our cute moments during the holiday period.   Ivy, for example, was the first to open her present.  She was a good girl and ignored it on Christmas Eve despite it being under the tree with ours but on Christmas morning she tore into it with abandon. 

 "So many presents to explore."

  

 "I think this is mine."

  
"I'm in!."

 

 "He's called the other humans in but no one is telling me off - that's weird."

 

  "Mine, all mine."

You might say the catnip made it an obvious target but three had catnip in – we couldn’t give her one without her giving Misty and Roland getting one as well.  (She got three little grey mice from Misty and Roland – just the right size for chasing up and down the lounge as she puts a claw into them and flicks her arm to get them to spin through the air.

 Presents

No doubt our Christmas presents, Christmas dinner, Christmas television and so on will be blogged at some stage over the next few weeks but suffice it to say Jo’s television, my Google tablet and Richard’s laptop were among the great successes.

And now it is 2013 

So a Happy, Healthy Peaceful and Productive New Year to all our readers...