LIfe's little pleasures ...

Well, that's what the photo illustrates - so I may as well start by explaining it. Actually I only took three photos today; the first was the view out of the usual bedroom window at just after 8am in which the lights of two ferries and some other mysterious ship stood out on a dark bluish/grey morning as the light very slowly indicated it might be day soon; the other was the view through my rainy kitchen window showing how dark it was becoming at 2.40pm. But this shows a wee high point of the morning: the coffee I look forward to along with the indulgence of two lebkuchen which I managed to buy when they appeared unseasonably in Morrison's in October; I've not seen them since. We don't do this sort of thing every day, a day like this demanded it.

So did I put the tree up? Nope. I iced the cake instead. The royal icing was too runny, so the cake looks sort of ... poured. It'll taste lovely, and no-one will notice. I wrapped a couple of presents - this gave me a headache again and may have to be accomplished in short bursts. And I wrote the Intercessions for Sunday. Himself went to practise the organ, came home for coffee, and vanished again, having warmed up a bit, to do some more. 

We ate around 3.30pm and gave up on work for the rest of the afternoon. I watched another episode of The Jackal - I'm a tad vague on what's going on much of the time, but it's strangely gripping. And then it was time to dress as for the Arctic and head up to the church for the last choir practice before the Carol Concert on Sunday. The temperature outside was 12ºc; inside was considerably chillier and the walls were running with moisture. The only other time I've seen this phenomenon was in our first flat the day the estate agent was coming to view it - the weather had turned warm for December and our bedroom was above the passage out to the back green. One wall - we had pale grey wallpaper - was dark with moisture, and I spent over an hour drying it with a convector and the hair-dryer. Not really an ideal way to spend maternity leave ...

But I digress. We sang well, and I got too hot because I was overdressed. We're singing The Coventry Carol as well as one, Advent Lullaby, that I wrote a few years ago to be sung to the fiddle tune Logan Water. Both seem more hideously appropriate this year than ever before. 

And now it's well past midnight. It's apparently still 12ºc outside. It's time to go...