I’m still ill. Three weeks, now; in fact, a little more. The really obnoxious symptoms have gone, but if I do just a little too much I find getting out of bed the next day very difficult indeed.
So today I sampled the solstice daylight from the door and then retired, so far as I could, to the sofa. The choir sang O Oriens at Evensong, though I didn’t hear it. Once again, it’s not really how I’d have liked to mark the solstice, but it feels oddly appropriate. And if it feels particularly dark this year – well, it was a new moon yesterday, so maybe it was.
Yesterday we went out to a stately home. There was a choir (OK but not great) singing Christmas carols outside the café, and in the chapel there were volunteers leading any visitors who cared to join in (and most seemed to) in more carols. Yesterday would have been my mother’s birthday. She would have enjoyed nitpicking the choir’s performance, and she always went carol singing on her birthday if she could. I cried, but I was so glad to have done it.
O Oriens. O morning star. O radiant dawn. Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. A whole chunk of morning prayer unexpectedly brightening the evening.
My moon app tells me it’s a waxing crescent, 3% illuminated. Of course it’s not visible in the night time at all, and even if it were, it’s tipping it down out there. Nevertheless, despite all appearances, it might be possible that things are already getting better.
I am more or less over my cold and was able to sing most of the Christmas carols as I would have wished.
The mixed
Christmas with the family, the first time we’ve made it since Covid happened. It’s been good. Tag-team organised chaos. Missing Pa. Ended up in charge of two major meals. Slightly overreached myself with the Wigilia and had a cry midway through making the pierogi (need to get better at coopting minions, particularly when it’s just a case of following a recipe in a book).
The difficult and perplexing
Being ill has meant I haven’t been to nearly as much church as I normally would, and having melted brain and general fatigue has meant I haven’t been able to do as much in-depth Advent study as I usually would, and really all I could do was turn up at midnight mass and hope it was doing its thing somewhere deep under the surface.
What’s working
The shower! At least, better than it was before. I think I must have knocked the temperature control at some point.
Reading
I finished Bright Smoke, Cold Fire. Holy cliffhanger, Batman! I suppose I’ll have to read the next one now, but I disapprove. Picked up The Master and Margarita again; I continue to find it rather heavy-going. Started Sisters of the Forgiving Stars. And also Letters from Tove [Jansson], which I can see I’m going to enjoy immensely.
Watching
I finished the first season of Detectorists and enjoyed it. Quite a lot of skiing. And we watched a programme featuring Susan Calman taking a Christmas cruise down the Danube, which provided me with an opportunity to try to recognise bits of Vienna and Bratislava.
Cooking
Almost an entire Wigilia (Polish Christmas Eve) meal, modified to account for two vegans and one vegetarian. I was particularly pleased with how the pierogi (three flavours – mushroom, sauerkraut, and potato, onion and ‘cheese’) turned out, even if it would have been better to make it in advance.
The barscz came out of a Tetrapak and the uszkas came out of a bag. I made a sauerkraut salad and a cucumber and ‘yoghurt’ salad, and got Tony to do a tomato one. Lidl ready to pan-fry sea bass for the carnivores. Stuffed tomatoes for everyone else. And I had made the cake ahead of time.
Ended up mostly in charge of Christmas lunch, too, until I got the timings out by half an hour and gave up with a howl of despair. There were plenty of other adults to take over.
Eating
See above.
In the garden
Finally got around to unloading compost from the Hotbin.
Noticing
Arundel looking impossibly fairy-tale in the declining winter sun.
Appreciating
Family. Friends, not least the online ones. And the hovercraft coming back into service just as we got to Portsmouth, cutting an hour off the journey.
Acquisitions
Other than Christmas presents, a lot of sewing thread.
Line of the week
From the verse of O Little Town that’s only in the New English Hymnal:
Where charity stands watching And faith holds wide the door, The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, And Christmas comes once more.
This coming week
More seasonal shenanigans.
If you’ve been celebrating Christmas today, I hope it’s been a very happy one. Otherwise, I wish you a nice peaceful day and hope it all doesn’t get too annoying.
Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!
You might or might not be familiar with the Christmas carol Past Three A Clock (and a cold frosty morning…) If you are, apologies for the earworm. If not, here’s a video. The tune and the chorus are traditional. The verses, however, were added on at a later date by G. R. Woodward and, while they’re a lovely bit of poetry, I’m not sure that I’d have put some of them quite in the following order.
Hinds o’er the pearly
dewy lawn early
seek the high stranger
laid in the manger.
(Past three a clock, etc)
Cheese from the dairy
bring they for Mary,
And, not for money,
butter and honey…
I assume that the ‘they’ is meant to refer to the dairy workers, perhaps before they get caught up in the Twelve Days of Christmas, but the way it’s written it does look rather like it’s the hinds.
Which when we copped onto this last year meant two things. Firstly, stealing the deer from the royal ice skating Playmobil scene and ordering some Playmobil cheese for them. And secondly, a bred lik poem:
Kathleen Jowitt 