Sunday, 6 January 2013

A New Year Ramble



New Year
We watched the Thames embankment New Year firework display on the television as we let in the New Year.  It was magnificent as always and this year I endeavoured to capture a few shots of it. 







Come rain, come shine
All our flowers have been brilliant this Christmas.  Although the Hyacinths are short-lived their perfume is heavenly.  You will notice that the background is a rainy window but in fairness I should point out the last two days have been mild and sunny. Much more like Spring than Winter.  



Nevertheless, the woodland floor of our little copse around the corner is still totally impassable without a stout pair of wellies.

And even with the sunshine that sky looks somewhat threatening.


The thorn trees in the playground are covered with berries as they always are at this time of year.



Ivy Puss
“If I hide in these boxes by the back door perhaps I can sneak out when the door is next opened…”


Blogger
I went back to my old Wordpress postcrossing blog to check something the other day. And what did I find?  A video at the bottom of the blog posting I looked up.  A video?  I never  put any videos on that blog.  It turns out it’s an advertising one.  When you click on the ‘Why is this advert here’ it says – either the blogger has put adverts on this site as part of a money making programme or they have failed to pay to upgrade their Wordpress account.  Upgrading, of course, costs one money.  I’m awfully glad my experiment with Wordpress was comparatively short-lived and I came back to Blogger voluntarily because it was providing the better service. Had I not done so I would have been driven back here now by the cost.  

Twelfth Night
Postcards, erecting (or rather re-erecting) shelves, tree-felling and spring cleaning have occupied me this last week.  The tree that I 'felled' was the Christmas tree which came down with the rest of the decorations on Twelfth night.  Twelfth Night is often thought of as January 6th - Epiphany - but strictly it is the evening of January 5, the eve of the Epiphany and formerly the twelfth and last day of Christmas festivities. 
In our house, spring cleaning is an automatic consequence of taking the decorations down.  It’s an excuse not only for some dusting and polishing but to move some furniture and ornaments around,.  This year part of the objective has been minimalism.  The removal of anything even vaguely capable of being pushed off the window ledges as the dreaded Ivy jumps up on them.

And talking of Twelfth Night -
A great while ago the world begun,      
               With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,  
            But that's all one, our play is done,       
               And we'll strive to please you every day.

Thursday, 3 January 2013

Some more about Christmas Past…



Some more about Christmas Past…

I think that I acquired 13 books over Christmas if you count the few I bought in from the sale table in the local library and the couple from the charity shop.  I guess I’ll have to do some reading.  What a shame….

My other presents included four small Portmerion plates to add to our crockery.


And a couple of Orthoceras to add to our collection of rocks, minerals and fossils.  Orthoceras ("straight horn") is a genus of extinct nautiloid cephalopod.  Orthoceras fossils are dated back to the Silurian Age 400 + million years ago and are the earliest recognizable animals.

 
The Orthoceras were a gift from David, our son who died in infancy over twenty years ago.  This may seem most strange to some people but in the early days after his death we were worried that somehow he might get forgotten on special occasions so we decided to give each other a little present as a memento. Much of our rock and mineral collection has come about this way.  Needless to say, we now know that David would never be forgotten on birthdays and the like, even without any token such as this, but the tradition continues and will do so until one of us dies.

Best-wrapped present went to one from a friend in Washington State – it was a wonderful book by an illustrator called Sallie Middleton. 


The most unusual present was one received by Partner-who-loves-tea.   A roll of designer toilet paper!


 The idea of launching oneself at that angel seems pretty irresistible.


Strictly Come Dancing had a Christmas special on Christmas Day which Partner-who-loves-tea and I watched on her new Christmas present – a 32inch flat screen TV.  


The irrepressible Bruce Forsyth and the beautiful Tess Daly were the comperes as usual.


It was great to see Fabrice Muamba fit enough to train and take to the floor after his heart-stopping experience which I reported on in March (here and here).

Over the rest of the holiday ‘there wasn’t much on’ – the perennial complaint of Christmas time viewers. But at least we had a couple of Agatha Christie’s to watch.  

Violence?  Strong language?  OK, thanks for the warning but I must have missed that bit…


Daughter-who-takes-photos and Friend-and-son-in-law-who-loves-otters came the day after Boxing Day.


No, that isn’t what it seems…  Jo played charades for us.


An otter jug as a present caused some amusement.


But it was a Bluetooth case and keyboard for his Google tablet that was described as ‘life-changing’ by Friend-and-son-in-law-who-loves-otters. 



Ivy was given some mice.


It rains but…
It’s only the third day or January but the birds are giving me a wonderful dawn chorus as I write this.  Such weird weather.  It has rained so far this year, continuing the climactic conditions from last year, but the forecast is for finer weather at the week-end. We shall see!

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

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...

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