Short days ...

Today was short in terms of daylight hours - it won't be getting much shorter - but we cut it even shorter by having a joint long lie! It's usually just me who lingers in bed, but the alarm went off in the seven am darkness when I was deeply asleep and it turned out that Himself had heard 4 o'clock strike, so I suggested he turn the alarm off and go back to sleep ... And then I had one of these lucidly crazy dreams involving trying to find either my car or a house (it was a bit muddled) somewhere in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow (only there was a sense that Edinburgh might be involved) and I was so put off by the changes in geography of my once-familiar haunts that I got completely lost and paid a small boy with an angelic face to show me the way ...

Just as well it grew sufficiently light by 9am to waken me up or Heaven knows where I'd have got to! The shortened morning passed in doing Italian (natch), parcelling another present for the post, deciding not to brave the Post Office in the middle of a Saturday morning and making a beef casserole for tomorrow night's dinner after the carol service. Himself went off to the church and came back well after one o'clock, so we had a late snack and then went to take Di's birthday present round to her house. 

By this time it had started raining, and somehow we didn't manage to fit in any exercise or fresh air, but it was almost dark again and we sat and chatted and chatted some more till it was time for the dogs to be fed and for us to leave. That's where that crazy photo - the only one I took today - comes from: standing outside her front door looking past the incongruous palm tree over the solid black of the Firth straight up the Clyde towards Glasgow. The light in the centre of the horizon, exaggerated by the long exposure, is generated by the approaches to the city reflected off the low cloud. 

Our weather, though dreary, was relatively benign, but friends in the north tell me it's blowing a hoolie in Stornaway and all the turkeys are storm-bound in Ullapool. Wherever you're reading this, think on that!

On quite another note, having just had to shrink my fingers in cold water to get my rings off, I am pondering the possibility that I might have Raynaud's - particularly in my feet. I've been recalling the chilblain years of the inadequate but fashionable flatties of my teens, the 15 denier stockings in snowy weather, the hot water bottle, the tartan legs from frying them over an electric fire ...And now I'm sensible, all boots and socks (but crocs over bare feet indoors) and ...

And bed socks. Cashmere of course. It's bedtime.