First, over mince pies (bought in) and home made brandy butter or cream plus mulled wine, potent and made with my special recipe, the 24 of us practised with “Away in a manger”. Then we headed off up the lane to see an elderly and, this year, bereaved, neighbour.
Before our Christmas Carol party my friend C took his chainsaws to the pear tree felled by storm Darragh. I had a play with smaller saw and have now bought myself one on Amazon allowing me to start work tomorrow on creating logs to dry for next winter.
The hideously ugly, modernist, hugely expensive cat box the Mrs bought from Ikea is still being spurned. She moves it around the house to wherever the cats are resting but to no avail. It needs to go on facebook marketplace on aesthetic grounds and because it can be sold as unused. Instead..
If the Mrs and kids had their way the Christmas tree would go up sometime in September. Having explained that a live tree should only be inside for a short as possible period to give it any chance of survival I relented and yesterday it came in. We have a carol singing party here at the weekend so I could not hold on much longer. At the top is an angel made by daughter Olaf 19 years ago when she was just four. It has survived.
I had thought that we had escaped unscathed but daybreak revealed otherwise. The old and very large pear tree at the centre of my vegetable garden had toppled.
The wood burning stove is eating through my log pile at a fair old rate. But, as you will see shortly, God has come to the rescue and I can now survive even the longest of winters. Such matters do not worry fat cat Quincey and his smaller sister Sian, asleep on my Christmas jumper. When these two were rescued from the cat rescue in Birkenhead they did not know how lucky they were.
Storm Darragh has been thundering through North Wales for almost 24 hours. The winds howl down the lane to the Welsh Hovel, the trees bend and indeed one is already down. You can hear the wind screaming at you and the rain is non stop. The river is now covering my orchard and over in England the fields are flooded.
The paper that told us about the Ghost of Kyiv, the defenders of Snake island, the Auschwitz style gold teeth and the Russian soldiers given Viagra tablets for industrial rape has fallen for yet another Ukrainian hoax. It brings you pictures of North Korean soldiers sent to die for Russia and they are birds!. Except…
On a day when Jaya joins me on the school run, after picking Joshua up from Kings we stop off at a BP/Asda service station. I get a black coffee and the kids share a sandwich and chocolate bar in a £3.75 meal deal. It is now a ritual. Today as I waited for my coffee to pour another Kings boy came up to Joshua and started talking.
This is Quincey and a photo for cat lovers everywhere.
As long term readers know, almost every year I plant a newly purchased Christmas tree in a large wooden pot, hoping that it will survive Christmas and then flourish outside until I can bring it in for the following Yuletide. On one occasion my tree lasted two years, most years including 2024, it died before getting a second run out and became part of the bonfire night celebration.
I explain why the new policy is not only wrong but will not alter the course of the Ukraine war while creating new risks for all of us.
Unable to sleep on Dr David Viner day, I wandered late at night up the lane, turned back to face the farmhouse and then back into the farmyard. The global warming was falling fast and settling. Viner would have been shocked.
It was 7.30 in the evening and as the rest of the family finished supper I was tasked with walking up to the village to buy some Persil. But as I stepped out of the back door I realised at once what was happening. “Come quickly Joshua, come Jaya guess what’s happening?” I shouted. A few seconds later “it’s snowing” they screamed in joyful unison. But this was not meant to happen.
My cousin Alex unearthed this gem at the weekend. The old man is Uncle Chris reading a paper perhaps ten years ago. On the front is a photo from 1963 of Richard Ingrams, Uncle Chris at the typewriter, and Willie Rushton working on an early edition of Private Eye. The quote, in these dark times for free speech, is very apposite.
