1. Catlets as Christmas decorations.

Well, it's past midnight and Christmas Day is over in Britain. Would you like a short tour around the Life house and its Christmas decor? First of all, our front doorbell with a bunch of ivy and a few baubles.

I don't know how to do the thing when you make a little You Tube screen come up on your blog. But anyway, here are links to You Tube things you should look at if you don't know them. They certainly appealed to me.

The first is a woman (Anita something?) singing all the things a mother says in the course of one day - to the tune of the William Tell overture.

The second is a monk faced with new technology (the book) summoning help from the mediaeval help desk. (When I saw it originally, it had subtitles to the end (it's in Norwegian) but now the last few sentences are missing, but anyway, the little book that gets picked up at the end is the manual.) That monk reminds me so much of me, some time ago (or indeed me now, sometimes). I think it's very funny.

I don't know if I'm actually making links that work so sorry if they don't!* My domestic help desk people are currently:

Daughter 2: having a nap
Husband: having a nap
Son: tidying his room (and I don't want to distract him...)
Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law - with his parents in Worcester.

I'll get them to fix it later if necessary.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

The Mom Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anSpBUxsgAU

IT Helpdesk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyjRj3UMRM&NR=1

*Edited to add - the links seem to work.

The Life Christmas tree has been in position for a few days.

This is Santa. I bought him years ago, when Daughter 1 was a baby.

Ah, thank you so much to my soothingly not-quite-yet-Christmassy commenters. Above you see Daughter 2 with Sirius, who is taking a relaxed approach to the season.

The cold is receding somewhat (though Mr Life has it now, alas) and I might be beginning to feel slightly more festive. The cards are all posted and this evening Daughter 2 and I made two Christmas cakes, one for us and one for my mother. (I follow the recipe – butter, sugar, eggs, flour, mixed dried fruits, glacé cherries and so on, though leave out the salt. “That makes it really healthy,” suggested Daughter 2.)

We collect our tree tomorrow. We always have a real one. I’m not sure whether this is environmentally allowable or not – I suppose it depends whether it comes from round about here or from the Amazon rain forest - but at least it’s not plastic and will presently be recycled into bark chippings. And what would Christmas be without that nostalgic piney scent; that annual moaning sound which is Mr Life struggling (this year, through his sneezes) to make the tree stand upright in its holder; and those sharp little needles piercing deep into any besocked feet over the festive season and for some time thereafter?

In fact, not many people here have trees up yet, as I noticed as I walked home the other day (in the dry this time): only about one house in thirty. So we’re not really late – simply displaying normal British reserve and caution.

Monday

A student said to me, “I can’t speak French. Funny thing is, though, I can speak it when I go to France.” Handy.

Wednesday

On Wednesdays I usually walk home from work – it’s about 3 miles – just to stretch my legs properly. This Wednesday, it was, as we say in Scotland, stotting down – pouring with rain that bounced off the pavements and up again in straight lines with little balls of water on the top. Some of the rain stotted up the backs of my legs, soaked into my trousers and gradually trickled down into my socks. My jacket is kind-of-showerproof – it might repel a gentle summer drizzle - and so water soon soaked through my hood and started to run down my neck and back. After a while, I was so wet that it became almost enjoyable – I couldn’t get any wetter so I became part of the shower, a big lump of weather splashing and squelching along. Just as I got home, the rain stopped. The cats were glad to see me. But why didn't you just stay at home today? they enquired.

Friday

I had a dental check-up at 8 am and arrived before the dentist. Our current dentist is very young, but normally he wears his white dentist’s top and appears reasonably… dental. However, he arrived looking like a sixteen-year-old: woolly hat pulled down over his ears, scruffy jacket, black jeans. Taking off his jacket, he then revealed a crumpled yellow t-shirt emblazoned with the name of some band. And I thought… this is what it’s going to be for the rest of my life. As I approach retirement and for ever after, all my dealings with professionals will feel as if I’m putting my faith, my health, my life in the hands of children. Strange. I once vaguely thought that I might do a PhD or something when I retired, but in fact I won’t. How embarrassing it would be to be told by a smooth-faced youth that my ideas were foolish.

Still, of course, the world belongs to the young, and why shouldn’t it? It belonged to us when we were young. Anyway, I suppose I’m better having a youngster tending my teeth than an arthritic 60-year-old with failing eyesight.

And once he put on his dentist’s uniform he looked more convincing.

I was tagged a while ago by Loth of "The Gym isn't Working" for 8 random facts about myself. I apologise in advance for the mundane nature of my life – I was similarly tagged some months ago and probably have nothing interesting left to say. However, I won’t let that stop me… .

1. I really enjoy Anne Tyler’s novels – some of her earlier ones are uncomfortably dark, but I particularly love "A Patchwork Planet" and "An Amateur Marriage".

2. When I was a girl, my family had a cat called Dido. She was a stray and just moved in on us when she was maybe six months old and I was 15. She was lovely – white with a black patch between her ears. My school uniform was navy blue – and constantly covered in white fluff. She stayed on in my parents’ house when I married and moved out and lived till she was about 15.
(Why did I waste my youth worrying that I was fat? And that was really quite a short skirt, wasn't it? - but it was the fashion at the time - about 1969, I think. I was 19.)



3. Continuing the theme of being 15, I’ve kept a diary since I was 15. I don’t write in it every day by any means – sometimes several weeks pass without an entry – but it’s continuous, and thus occupies quite a lot of hardback notebooks. I have no idea why I do it but I can’t stop. I hardly ever read past volumes, though there has been the odd occasion (not for years) when I’ve read from the beginning. It’s quite salutary to see how silly I sometimes was when I was 15. I thought I was quite sensible at the time and I think others probably thought so too. As I get older, I wonder what will happen to it when I die. Sometimes I contemplate a big bonfire. It interests me to ask myself whom I think I’m writing for. In the past, I just wrote what I thought, but of recent years I’ve probably written with a bit more circumspection, since it now begins to seem possible that I might some day actually die and it might outlive me.

4. I’m very phobic about blood.

5. I’m not very keen on piercings either. Even pierced ears, if the hole is visible. Especially ears with big stretched holes and heavy earrings hanging from them. Shudder.