Tradition...

We're being promised/threatened with cold weather and snow and ice on Monday (a Yellow weather warning, no less) but it's not here yet, though the barometer slipped back today for the first time in ages. Today was actually pretty miserable - mist/cloud/drizzle - and gloomy throughout. I woke to the realisation that my eye's away with the birds again (startling image, if you take it literally) - don't know if it's because I forgot a second dose of steroid drops yesterday, or because something about yesterday just made it worse when I was beginning to think it was maybe better - but I'm pretty fed up. 

This being the case (reminds me of Latin exercises: Quae cum ita sint) I didn't really put much enthusiasm into today. I didn't even get my Italian done in time to have extra points in the evening. I did instead have phone chats with my sister and Di, who was bemoaning a face-plant rather similar to the one I executed while out in the rain with her a few years back, and I also managed to weigh out and mix the fruit for the Christmas cake and slop sherry into it, using the recipe I've used for the past 51 years. "A Christmas Wine Cake" it was called, and came on a card from the British Egg Council, a card which if I remember correctly came in a box of a dozen eggs. My #2 son asked for a copy of it this year - did I say? - so we'll be eating ours till the summer holidays if they don't help out!

We did eventually go out before it got dark, for a rather blowy and wet walk along the front to Kirn and back. We dropped in on artist Paddy to collect my little watercolour of Sandbank, which I'd been working on for weeks and which she'd framed for me. We'll start running out of wall space at this rate ...

And that was today. I was pretty mopey throughout, and still am - it's another fortnight till I have an appointment with the consultant ophthalmologist and in addition these things always seem to flare up at weekends when there's no-one to advise. Grrr.

Photo - the only one I took today - of the mixed fruit, glistening in its sherry bath.