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Saturday 31 December 2016

Seasonal musings

Advent is over, we spent it looking for our Advent Calendar, a quilted work of art that I won some 15 months ago,


we searched all those safe places where one stores infrequently used treasures, we have found other lost causes, such as bed linen we thought had gone away but fits our futon perfectly. Much time has been spent on turning out drawers, cupboards, boxes with Ian being warned not to say "it will be in the last place you look" because so far the Calendar isn't.

The Calendar is not part of our tradition, we don't go overboard on decorations, just white lights in the front bay window, a Christmas tree with lights and decorations in our lounge, we tuck our cards between books in the hallway Billy bookshelves, not so easy with landscape cards but then one can become absorbed in the book that has been moved and another hour has gone discovering serendipity knowledge that will fail on recall at the next quiz.

Just to explain why my blogging has become so infrequent, I am struggling to use Blogger on my iPad, whether it is Blogger app on my front screen or from the bar at the top of my post so in desperation I have logged into Ian's laptop and will send these ramblings from that machine.  If it works I may invest in another laptop, have not used my Toshiba much this year, it will be 10 years old this coming May so it is due for retirement. I want to tell you all about my experiments with sugar paste and the decorated Christmas cake but will leave it to another blog as the photos will have to be moved from phone to Ian's laptop.  I can type faster on the laptop but have become much reliant on predictive text of Apple products.  One cannot win, it is all a big game to thwart us. what happened to standardization? My mind jumps back to filing cabinets of grey British Standards full of definitions and diagrams.

 Note to self, double clicking the space bar on a laptop and Windows 7 does not produce a full stop and does not capitalise the next word. 




Monday 5 December 2016

Christmas cards

L

Cards from bygone years for recycling 



The arrival of our first two Christmas cards prompted Ian and I to organise our list to ensure that no one was missed. Our method is so high tech, A4 writing pad, names recorded by going through cards from previous years, hidden in the depths of the landing cupboard we found three different years’ offerings. 

There was laughter and smiles from some cleverly designed cards, sadness and memories when the sender is on another shore, memory searching when we didn't recognise a name and a form of bullshit bingo concerning the spelling of my Christian name. No excuses now, just check the credits on the last Bond film please. 

Slightly more difficult are negotiations about where we prune and edit the list, it needs sensitivity, links can be tenuous so each is taken on its merits. 

Need to start writing, no round robins, we have no objections to them and understand for busy folk with careers,  families, large mailing lists and interesting lives they are great and enjoyable.  We no longer fit these criteria, so sometimes add a personal update. Perhaps they should be  referred to my blog, but not all our world is here anymore.