Tag Archives: winter

Getting Ready

As I write our Christmas preparations are running behind a little.  We haven’t yet got the decorations up and are beginning to feel the pressure from neighbours who have had their houses covered with Christmas lights for a couple of weeks now.  The Christmas season is enthusiastically embraced in our neighbourhood and many houses look like they belong on the film set of ‘Home Alone’.  We braved the floods last Friday and headed out to a farm to buy our Christmas tree.  The heavy rainfall has caused some roads to be impassable.  The fire service has cautioned drivers not to risk driving through flooded roads, but quite honestly with time running short and my desire for a bargain, I did push through two or three flooded sections of road.  I was fortunate. Others not so much.  One driver had abandoned his car mid flood and will presumably return to recover his car once the water has subsided.  The tree is now sitting on the back deck, waiting until I can get round to putting it in position.  Alan Titchmarsh has advised his listeners on Classic FM that they need to saw a little off the bottom of the tree before putting it up, so I have added that little step to my growing list of outstanding jobs.

Also making it onto the list and elbowing its way almost to the top of both the ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ categories is to fix the washing machine, which decided to breakdown yesterday, just as we stripped all the beds for their weekly launder.  We use our washing machine daily to clean the grubby garments of our two boys.  Early teens and pre-teen boys. I don’t need to say more.

Ahead of the Christmas preparations and the washing machine emergency, one job was considered paramount by the management.  Drilling four holes to enable four pictures to be hung in our lounge.  Jacki has nearly finished redecorating the room and we are now into finishing touches.  This job made it to the top of my to-do list because of who was asking.  Personally, I feel it could have waited, but we celebrated our 43rd anniversary this week and I would like to celebrate a 44th next year.

The job was made trickier as although I could locate my drill, the drill bits have disappeared off the face of the earth. Can’t find them anywhere: toolbox, shed, hall cupboards, where I last used them.  The urgency of the task required an immediate solution, so I popped out to the local hardware store.  I hadn’t driven more than a few hundred yards when I was confronted by another flooded road.  Yet again I ignored the fire service advice and pressed on. 

I am happy to report that all four pictures are up!  I am waiting for Jacki to return, from a friend with a washing machine, to get the seal of approval, but I think we are there.

I was delighted to meet up with a few members of my old brass band on Sunday morning outside a local garden centre.  There were 5 of us and we spent a couple of hours entertaining shoppers with carols and festive songs.  Over the past year I have been getting used to playing the different parts using a metronome playing through earphones and then mixing the recordings together.  This was the first time for quite a while that I had played live music to an audience as part of a brass ensemble.  No chance for a retake. 

It was great fun and well received.  People would stop and listen.  Kids made requests for their favourite tunes.  People made a point of coming to thank us for playing in such atrocious weather.  Did I mention the rain?  We were under a covered porch, which kept off the worst of the rain, but there were no walls or protection from the sides.  The temperature was mild, but after two hours I was happy to head home and to warm up with a Sunday roast lunch.  I have one more playing commitment to fulfil this coming Sunday and then I can pack away the Christmas music for another year.

We watched our first Christmas movie of the season, Elf.  By the end we were captured by its charm, and I feel that we may have been able to register on the ‘Spirit Clausometer’ and at least got Santa’s sleigh a couple of feet off the ground.  My twelve-year-old son, the one with the attitude and tough exterior, joined in with the singing in Central Park.  That for me marked the start of the Christmas season.  We will probably blitz through a few more Christmas movies, particularly after school breaks up later this week.  Is ‘Die Hard’ a Christmas movie?

I have refreshed our stock of board games.  I haven’t played RISK since playing it in the lounge at Batheaston as a teenager with my cousins.  The games were always very competitive and the quest for world domination was compelling.  My boys struggle with the competitiveness of LUDO and on more than one occasion we have had the board and counters hurled across the room.  They may quite possibly get triggered, but then again, they may end up having as much fun as I remember having.  CLUEDO is another favourite that I haven’t played for quite a few years.  A little more sedate than RISK as I recall.  I might need to take a poll of family members to see if this has broader appeal.

I’m not doing very well on the present buying front.  But I’m not panicking.  It was my wedding anniversary this week and I only got around to buying a card and gift at 8.00pm on the preceding evening.  I’m not going to wait until Christmas Eve to get the Christmas presents though.  As I write there is still over a week to go to the big day.  Plenty of time yet.

I try and reread the nativity story during Advent.  This year I seem to be stuck.  I’ve only read the first half of chapter 1 of Luke’s gospel.  It hasn’t yet got to the birth of Jesus.  We are focussed on the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth.  It has just struck me that they weren’t youngsters.  One of Zechariah’s responses when told by an angel that Elizabeth was going to conceive was ‘we’re too old’.  That response was met by a period of muteness, which ended only after John was born.  As someone who is getting on a bit, I was encouraged by that little detail. 

The reason I have slowed down my reading is because I am attempting to do the readings in French and Spanish, without cheating too much and reverting to English.  Sometimes I can get it, but there have been occasions when I have tapped one or two sentences into Google translate.  So I have been able to combine my language learning goals with Christmas preparations.

The food shopping is progressing.  We have placed an order at the local butcher and with Tescos who will deliver their goods next week.  We are having turkey this year and I have volunteered to do the cooking, insisted on it, in fact.  This will be a first and we will have 11 for Christmas dinner.  We have a few folks with dietary restrictions, so I will need to make sure their needs are properly catered for. To be honest, I am a little nervous mainly about timings.  Everything needs to be ready at the same time.  And then I will need to have the dessert ready to go.  My main measure of success will be how often Jacki needs to put down her sherry to dig me out of a hole. 

So, a big thank you to those regular readers of this blog.  I have really enjoyed writing these slightly longer posts.  I have settled for a Monday morning main post, with a slightly shorter mid-week update on Thursday mornings; I will resume this pattern in January.  I hope your Christmas preparations are going well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

(PS. I am pleased to report that the washing machine is now back up and running and the Christmas tree is finally in position and decorated)

Kestrel in a clear blue sky

I love to visit Badbury Rings. Today was a chill 4 degrees. The sky was cloudless. The sun was low even though it was close to noon, casting long shadows. The kestrel landed in a tree, but I was on the wrong side. The bird was silhouetted against the sun. I carefully changed position, hoping not to spook it. It was a male bird, slightly smaller than the female, but slightly more colourful. I was rewarded with a series of photos with the sun illuminating the glorious colours: chestnut brown, grey, black and yellow.

Suddenly, the kestrel launched itself out of the tree into the open sky.

The low sun lit up the side of the kestrel including parts of the outstreched underparts of the wings. Its ferocious yellow talons were clearly visible. It swept slowly over the farmland, stopping periodicaly to hover over a particular patch.

Winter lockdown

Goldfinch in winter lockdown

This last weekend the RSPB ran its annual survey of garden birds. By all accounts the number of people submitting data increased significantly over last year and their were reports of people being unable to access the survey web page to record their count. Quite probably this was the ‘lockdown effect’.

My own count included 8 goldfinches. They are small birds, quite striking in appearance with their red face and yellow finch stripes on the wings. They normally form groups in the winter which may contain other finches, e.g. greenfinch, siskin, chaffinch. These groups are referred to as ‘charms’.

The UK winter lockdown continues. Yesterday we lost Captain Sir Tom Moore, a covid hero who raised over £38m last year on his 100th birthday for the NHS. The vaccine rollout continues offering light at the end of the tunnel, even as the virus continues to take its toll. This latest winter lockdown does appear to be accompanied by fatigue and weariness.

A Squabble

A squabble of seagulls

Collective nouns come up for discussion in our household now and then. They can be so descriptive. A ‘murder of crows’, a ‘parliament of owls’ and a ‘charm of goldfinch’ all offer some insight into the perceived nature of the birds.

A group of seagulls is known as a squabble. I think this recent image suggests why this particular collective noun may have been selected. This group of black-headed gulls were gathered on a short jetty on the larger of the two lakes at Longham Lakes on New Year’s Eve. As well as this half dozen on the railing there were another group on the deck of the jetty. There were probably about twenty birds or more gathered. at this location. Occasionally they would be disturbed, take to the air, and circle round the lake before returning to this favoured spot. As they jostled for landing positions there would be quarrelsome interactions between the birds.