Sunday 24 December 2017

Last minute preparations





Are you ready?

Have a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Spending Christmas


The tree -
pricey Fraser fir but it smells lovely and hasn't dropped any needles.


 Advent windows - small charge for a map.




Waldorf stars - this year with the right paper,
waxed translucent coloured squares all the way from San Diego.


Sunrise.


Sunset. 


Free gifts.

Sunday 10 December 2017

Tall Cat takes refuge



from the snow.


It must be at least 3mm deep.

Monday 4 December 2017

Rest cure


 Nothing to read here.














What a relief.
No signs.
No instructions.
No advertisements.

I find myself incapable of ignoring any lettering
however banal.
These days we are bombarded by messages,
but the habit of reading them all started young.
I remember feeling obliged to decipher the words
mesembryanthemum criniflorum
on the back of the loo door at home.
I can't have been more than five years old.
My father had pasted up some pages torn out of Amateur Gardening to
the panels on the door.
There was another sign in his spindly writing taped
to the geyser that heated the water for our baths.
It read,
Remember. Before lighting remove paper from chimney.
We read this nightly and eventually set it, somewhat bizarrely, 
to the hard-to-scan chorus of


In a feeble attempt to stave off this madness
I peel the labels from appliances
and products that cannot be mistaken for anything else.
This may yet be my undoing but so far it offers a little merciful respite.

How do you cope?