Another take on the combination of silver birch tree and golden light – real this time. It wasn’t like this yesterday, I’ll tell you that much.
Tree and light, remixed
Christmas lights: starting early
When I was little, the Christmas tree went up on Christmas Eve. It might have been acquired a few days earlier, probably from the chap over the road who grew them in his garden, and it might conceivably have come into the house then, but the decorations would go on during the Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, at 3pm on Christmas Eve. Beginning, of course, with the lights.
These days I am a little less strict, though I enjoy Advent so much that I do tend to keep Christmas pushed back to the back half of December. But I shan’t be fighting the lights going up, because there’s a small person in the house who is absolutely fascinated by them. This afternoon we went and looked at the Christmas tree in the market square, and then visited a coffee shop with an excellent array of little white lights. Strict I may be, but I’m not going to begrudge anyone else their cheerful twinkly lights. Particularly this year.
Handiwork
Here’s one of this year’s Christmas decorations. They’re a bit experimental: I picked up a box of decanterless stoppers in a charity shop and have been caging them in beaded wire crochet. The solid ones are going to be a bit heavy for trees, but should be just about okay hung close to the trunk. I’m going to hang a big bead from the bottom.
I’m finding that I’m not terribly interested in writing at the moment, and I’m very much enjoying making things in three dimensions instead. Having finished my fishpond skirt, I’ve moved on to these beaded things and am thinking too about picking up my knitting needles again, and finally getting around to trying out my new big darning loom, and I’d like to do some patchwork too… Meanwhile, writing… meh, as they used to say on the internet. I expect I’ll get caught up by it again sooner or later, but for the moment it seems to belong to another life.
Angel shadow
Beauty is fleeting. If I’d been looking five minutes earlier, or later, I’d have missed this strange little golden shadow falling across my great-great-great-aunt’s picture. (There are two stained-glass suncatchers hanging in the window, one representing a bee and the other an oblong rainbow: together they make an angel.) That said, she’s been looking beautiful in this portrait for a hundred and sixty years. Either way, I suppose it’s a case of looking, and appreciating when you see it.
Lighten our darkness
I have not just been falling asleep reading books. I have been falling asleep trying to say evening prayer, whether doing it by myself on the app or watching some cathedral’s livestream on YouTube. In the Marlows books, Patrick says that his nurse told him that if you fall asleep during a prayer your guardian angel finishes it for you. If that’s the case then I’ve been keeping mine busy. I do not fall asleep, however, if I walk twenty minutes through a dark chilly blowy evening to go to Evensong. So I did that today. The journey there was rendered particularly dramatic by a power cut: half the hill was in darkness.
I’m glad I went. Gloomy readings from Daniel and Revelation matching my mood; light and music reaching through and transforming it. And the thought that this prayer goes on and on, through the centuries, whether I’m there or not.
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night, for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Secret Lives (E. F. Benson)
I’ve been having trouble reading lately (on one occasion I was woken by the thud of the book hitting the floor), but E. F. Benson, in a slightly less caustic mood than usual, hit the spot and I hoovered this up in two days. At first I thought it was just going to be Mapp and Lucia in London, and there is a bit of that about it, but it’s mostly about an ex-typing agency employee living her best life writing exactly what she wants to, getting paid squillions for it, and generally having a whale of a time in the face of snobbery both literary and social. Great fun.
Outsourcing
The garden is running wild, and has been since the summer. It’s been on my conscience, too. It looks a little tidier now that the leaves are falling, but it’s also more obvious how much needs trimming back and cutting down now that it isn’t just a mass of green.
So today I had someone round to give me a quote for tidying it up and, as he put it, putting it to bed for the winter. I’d love to be able to do it myself, but it just isn’t going to happen. This is the next best option.
Amicti stolis albis
I do find baptisms very moving. It’s something about it being the beginning of a journey, a step into the light. And something about the sense of community, about one person being welcomed into a huge family.
In our case it’s an excuse for a regular family party. Though our regular family is pretty huge too.
A fair ground (a goodly heritage)
It’s nice to have an excuse to ride on the gallopers/roundabout/carousel/merry-go-round/whatever you want to call it, on a bright sunny day, with the organ playing a selection from Carmen.
I mean, I’ve ridden on it on my own, without an excuse, before now, but it’s particularly nice to have an excuse.
A loud tree
Today, I heard this tree before I saw it. It was full of starlings, and they were loud.
I often see them around here. Sometimes they perch on TV aerials, sometimes on the ridges of roofs. I’ve had a few of them visiting my bird feeders. For all that I’m always half-expecting to see them, they’re always a surprise and delight.
