A light in the darkness ...

I have a very particular take on Advent. I can't imagine it in anything other than the darkness of the north-western fringes of Europe that I inhabit, in winter (an Antipodean Advent is beyond me). Today, however, has been lamentably gloomy, so that going out for a walk was a gargantuan effort without which I would have succumbed entirely to mental gloom to match the weather. Even then I wasn't cheered - it was dark under the trees by 3pm, and not much better out in the open; the wind had dropped; it was horribly mild and damp. And then, walking round the loch in the Bishop's Glen, I saw the flickering light across the water. It's left of centre in the photo, between the left-hand tree and the middle one. It looked like the hearth-fire of my Celtic forebears.

The fact that I knew it to be the fairy lights on Santa's sleigh in the garden of the one house in the glen didn't spoil it. Not really ...