The big day has arrived. As is traditional, wrapping went on until the wee small hours. After an evening of food and fun powered over the finishing line.
Whatever shape your day takes. Enjoy the moments. See you on the other side.
I found this temporary sculpture yesterday. Doubtless commissioned as a photo opportunity. But beautiful in its own way without humans posing against it. I love the ambiguity of it. Are they Angels wings or Fairy?
Christmas has become for many of us the most delightful mash up of Sacred and Secular. Consumerist and cozy. Family and friends. Memories and Magic.
I nearly always overthink Christmas. Preparing for the present yet nostalgic for the past.
Studying Fine Art as a mature student, gave me a new mentor as I found the writing of Robert Hughes as an excellent guide to Art Theory. But his famous quote about Christmas baffled me when I first read it. I had completely forgotten my bafflement until I was standing near his plaque in Sydney two weeks ago.
So here I am having given myself renewed bafflement fresh from the sunshine of Sydney. Bafflement caused by a man who had rejected Catholicism for deeply personal reasons and yet mentions God in one of his often quoted quotes.
I suppose my circular counter argument would be that a deep winter celebration was much needed by early humans in the Northern Hemisphere.Short cold days can be relentless. Early Christians saw an opportunity and popped God into the mix by a convenient Birth of Christ Story to coincide with Winter festivals.
Bob is your Uncle and Christianity gets a popularity boost. Whose heart did it start in?
Actually Bob probably becomes your drunk Uncle who always appears with his slightly grumpy partner Sylvia whose family Christmas traditions do not involve being pleasant to anyone.
So wherever Christmas sits in your heart currently. Seasons Greetings.
I think we only started to engage with the Northern Hemisphere Christmas yesterday. For certain we have done Christmas admin for a few days but yesterday we went to gather with friends and strangers in a warm house, had good food, good conversations and gathered around a piano to sing Christmas Carols without a hymn sheet. 100 per cent accuracy of harmonies but maybe some of the words were a little erroneously placed. All part of the charm.
The Christmas admin today took me to two of my favourite places. Exeter and The Barbican, Plymouth. Both places made me feel warm and fuzzy because like the harmonies of the night before success was 100 %.
Two images from earlier visits, nobody needs to see Exeter or the Barbican in the rain.
Christmas morning sunrise. The breakfast of Bobbers.
Christmas morning found us all at sea. Miss Spearmint also hauled up on the beach after a heavy Christmas Eve in Plymouth Sound. She will be sleeping off her over- eating until the next high tide.
Happy Holidays Blog readers, you rock.
Here we are. Christmas Eve. Time to reflect perhaps, or time to hit domestic admin with gusto and efficacy. Gusto and efficiency for the last 36 hours was going to be rewarded with some cheesy chips from a local seaside cafe. Imagine my disappointment when they were closed. A disappointment compounded by Miss Lola delivering her lunchtime poo into the heart of a teenage thistle. Teenage thistles are a lot like regular teenagers. They look quite cute, a mix of the child you loved and the adult you will come to love. But whoa! Looks can be deceiving those cute slightly downy leaves carry quite a spiky message. How Lola delivered a whole poo quite so deeply into this moody spikey plant is beyond my imagination. She appeared to deliver it with ease. I did not retrieve it with anything like ease, to be frank, I yelped, as she certainly deserved to. For my troubles I have a nasty and unusual Christmas scar, not the traditional forearm one from retrieving baked goods from the oven. A thistle scratch, slight but jagged and ridiculously sore.
To get over my trauma I devised a new reward for my Gusto and Efficiency. An hour or two of dabbling with watercolour, typing and paper. I had success and hit on a happy accident of a paper that responds really well to typing and water colour. Have a Happy Christmas.
Yesterdays dawn was quite spectacular in the Tamar Valley. As Omicron cancels or compromises so many peoples festive plans it is necessary to reflect on the serendipity of life. Sometimes we just need to leap out of bed and grab the moment.
And so. As the Northern hemisphere awakes it has gone through the longest night. My shortest day was spent at the speed of a 90 year old visitor. There is much to reccomend about such a speed. Less expectation to achieve everything and just plenty of time just to natter and almost meditatively wrap the small gifts that end up in stockings. Stocking-gift wrapping also gave me the wonderful aroma of beautifully fresh Navel Oranges , which must always be in every stocking. Surely a good reason to just breath deeply and relax.
There are still many dark days to fill with introspection but as the world turns we are looking towards the light now.
There are many more stocking gifts to wrap up but just crossing the winter solstice gives me a lightness of thought.
Time to enjoy the lengthening days and the anticipation of gathering in modified ways for Christmas and the New Year with family and friends. Time to look forward.
P.S This is the sunrise at 8:10
There is nothing like a bit of casual shop lifting to start the day. Yesterday we were on a mission to collect a prescious cargo from Southampton. I popped to our local coffee shop and bakery to buy some coffee, before our drive. On the way out I was seduced by a fruit loaf on the counter. I had already paid for my coffee and happily nattered about life in general as I packed the loaf into my bag, making no effort to pay for it. Fortunately the coffee shop team know a common thief when they see one and asked me very politely to pay for it.
Can you imagine if I had done that 200 years ago. With only a quick trial I would have been packed off to Australia on the next boat and Plymouth being a primary deportation port that would likely have been the next day.
Next stop Botany Bay. End of Story
I was pondering early this morning, on my dog walk, the sort of pondering that can only end badly. Pandemically and politically Britain is a bit f**ked. We are a week away from Christmas and none of us really know if it will be possible to do what we usually do to mark this time of year with our friends and families. The dogs, of course, played no part in my actual, dismal, pondering. Too busy following their noses to a street food van who was prepping something tasty.
Just like that I was catapulted out of my morose frame of mind by these amazing colours of the pre prepped veg. The dogs were there for the sizzling chicken.
The vivid veg quite cheered me up and gave me a direction for this blog. It was then easy enough to trawl through my archive of photographs taken in past Decembers. The best match for this veg was this tinsel, also found at a street market, in East Dulwich, 4 years ago.
This tinsel is one of lifes regrets. I didn’t buy it at the time I saw it. I probably thought it was too garish and not easy to integrate with my existing Christmas decorations. But this mornings colour jolt, when bright pinks and oranges, greens and purples spiked me out of pondering grumpiness, has made me re-evaluate its charms. As soon as I can freely visit East Dulwich and the glorious North Cross Road Market I will buy myself a swag or two of vibrant, unorthodox tinsel and make a little shrine to happiness in difficult times, and a reminder that when life doesn’t take the route I would choose it is still possible to find something bright and memorable.
This Christmas Decoration represents blog perfection. Just after midnight there should be a blog ready to be automatically dropped into inboxes around the world. I”m not saying it never happens but it is mostly an aspiration rather than an actuality.
72 days ago when the blog changed its title, while I was on a blogging course. The course leader suggested being a little kinder to myself and give myself more freedom to deliver blogs less often. While not, as yet, feeling the need to abandon whole days I do, on occasion cut myself a bit of slack and a later blog goes out.
Yesterday I thought laying about would give me time to be on time with the blog, in fact all I did really is be a bit unfocused.
Yesterday not much happened following a bout of food poisoning. Me and the Christmas tree were together a bit as I dozed between bouts of activity which is when I noticed the time on the Christmas decoration. In truth I was just a bit less of myself, low energy and a bit achy after my digestive tsunami.
24 hours of abstinence, apart from two bowls of rice crispies with oat milk, has created a fine dining monster in me but at low cost. The first cups of real tea were revelatory.
All the flavours of the Asia, blended in Yorkshire, dancing around my mouth like there was a post pandemic party going on. Who knew tea could taste quite so good!
The afore mentioned rice crispies embellished by oat milk were a comfort food, tweaked by my newly over sensitive taste buds they have become fine dining. Their vanilla notes enrobed in oaty richness.
Goodness knows what gustatory delights await me this morning. Toast perhaps masquerading as something far more significant. Today I will be more focussed.
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