Christmas Eve, this was the sky from the sitting room window a few days ago, the moon looking beautiful, and twinkling off to the left, am I right, is it Jupiter at the moment...Dark Puss are you there, you usually confirm this sort of thing for us.
Carols have been trilling away in my ears all week and much as I love the traditional ones I also love those of John Rutter, so here's Angels' Carol to listen to as you read if you want.
We are doing very quiet Christmas chez dovegreyreader and sending festive greetings of the season to every one of you.
Having been iced in all week, only the Land Rover gets us to the end of the lane and we had to tow Jim the Postie out yesterday, which all seemed like good enough reasons to leave traveling any distance to the men of the house and they've valiantly battled out with lists and returned laden.
Five of us will gather here, Bookhound and I and the Tinker, Offspringette arrives today doubtless ready to sleep for a week after her first term of teaching practice, the Gamekeeper will be on puppy duty and doubtless we'll have a webcam conversation with the Kayaker sitting on a beach somewhere in New Zealand.
We've had the usual tree light failure only resolved by the Gamekeeper persuading ( I don't think he was armed) a local shopkeeper to sell him the lights out of his shop window for £2 yesterday, the last set in town. We have the decorated bough in the kitchen and everything looks about right, plus we'll do the usual homemade crackers with the same things in them from the last ten years.
With apologies to all vegetarians, the turkey and its twenty friends had lived a happy and contented free range life down on the farm until the Gamekeeper turned up on Tuesday and sang them all some carols, after which the end probably couldn't come soon enough and now ours is in the fridge.
I've spent some lazy fireside afternoons this week surrounded by books (there's a surprise) reading the first twenty pages or so of several and gathering in a good pile of reading to see me through, but how surprising the choices have been.
Any search for traditional Dickensian nostalgia or 'nothing but happiness' books has been thwarted by a glut of page-turning contemporary reading; a few books not out until January but already I think The Convent by Panos Karnezis will be a star read for 2010.
I won The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman along with two more books in KevinfromCanada's Booker contest and am enjoying that as much as I knew I would.
M.R.Hall's The Coroner and The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale, those precious commodities, real and unpretentious novels, good well-written stories, unputdownables.
Another title which I think may be set to do huge things in 2010 because I hear it's selling out fast, Important Artefacts and... by Leanne Shapton; the breakdown of a relationship delineated via the photographs and descriptions of the couple's possessions in a saleroom catalogue. It requires a subtle sort of two, almost three dimensional concentration which I hope to discover in the next few days.
I have been looking forward to Dogboy by Eva Hornung since I first heard news of it back in September and as my copy arrived yesterday I've moved it straight onto the pile... the tale of a modern-day Mowgli in post-perestroika Russia and apparently it'll make me cry...we'll see.
Plus have no fear, I do have something typically Christmassy and nineteenth century, the Mystery Trollope for the Reader Magazine, so that's me sorted for a few days and I plan more.
How about you?
I'd love to know what you'll be reading and watching... could someone look at the listings and tell me what not to miss?
I think most blogs shut down down for Christmas on the basis that it's almost a crime to sit on a computer when you're supposed to be playing Monopoly and throwing the Rubik's cube across the room for the umpteenth Christmas in succession, but I'm mindful that not everyone finds Christmas a happy, jolly sociable time and plenty of people spend it on their own too.
I'm also 'on duty' for my online HV day job over Christmas and New Year, perhaps the most difficult and demanding time of year for those who have been bereaved or had a stillbirth, so I'll be here.
Do stop by for a virtual mince pie if you feel so inclined, hopefully we'll meet up in comments over the next Twelve Days of Christmas for the daily prize draws and there are some great ones coming up (and entries will close on each of those quite quickly or I'll get muddled and Rocky will get lost) plus the occasional light post...things like The Day Rusty Met Rocky.
Meanwhile, we might as well start as we mean to go on etc, scroll on for Christmas Eve gifts.
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