TIME TO REFLECT.
This is our mantlepiece.
Yes, our mantlepiece,
temporary home to a handful of the Santa Claus collection that
emerges here each year at Christmastime.
We no longer know why we bother.
Our children and grandchildren are well beyond the age when the Santa's Grotto look interested - let alone impressed - them, so I guess it has to be habit and, maybe, a roguish desire to prove that old age is not necessarily allied to wisdom.
I long ago shattered that supposition anyway.
HOME.
A sometimes sad year.
Early in the year our friend Joan Keep died and a week before Christmas my late cousin Don Stanley's wife, Thelma, with whom I have maintained affable occasional telephone contact over the years, died in a Sheffield care home at the age of eighty five: she had been in increasingly poor health, so the news did not come as a shock, but I always liked her, will very much miss her, and commiserate with her lovely family.
All the very best for the future my dears.
I also miss
old pal Anonymous John who has had a troublesome year healthwise. Hope next year is vastly better for you, John.
And I have fingers crossed
for our brave, brave daughter Roz, who will enter hospital early in January for a double mastectomy and afterwards move, with our grandson, from Newport to take up home with us for a while. I don't pray but I do a lot of hoping.
On the bright side.
The
replacement of radiators apart (where
are you, Dean?) there is only the carpeting - bedrooms and stairs -
left to do and the upstairs accommodation will be ready for Roz and
Ellis to move in. Our thanks again to Stuart (proprietor Stuart
Boyd-Kerr Property Developments Limited),
for installing the truly splendid en suite shower room (pictured
above), and to Mick Birmingham (MGB
Painting and Decorating)
for breaking his 'quiet December' rule to plaster and decorate before
Christmas the bedrooms, en suite, stairway pictured below, and hall
of this sadly neglected former surgery.
What a relief.
TELEVISION.
I am not going to dwell on the paucity of decent tele over the festive season.
We did see and enjoy Agatha and the Truth of Murder, The ABC Murders, Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film, The Midnight Gang and The BFG. The old boys and girls tackling University Challenge were fun, too.
AND
THAT'S THE LOT FOR THIS YEAR.
Hope your Christmas was good. All the best for New Year.
This is our mantlepiece.
We no longer know why we bother.
Our children and grandchildren are well beyond the age when the Santa's Grotto look interested - let alone impressed - them, so I guess it has to be habit and, maybe, a roguish desire to prove that old age is not necessarily allied to wisdom.
I long ago shattered that supposition anyway.
HOME.
A sometimes sad year.
Early in the year our friend Joan Keep died and a week before Christmas my late cousin Don Stanley's wife, Thelma, with whom I have maintained affable occasional telephone contact over the years, died in a Sheffield care home at the age of eighty five: she had been in increasingly poor health, so the news did not come as a shock, but I always liked her, will very much miss her, and commiserate with her lovely family.
All the very best for the future my dears.
I also miss
old pal Anonymous John who has had a troublesome year healthwise. Hope next year is vastly better for you, John.
And I have fingers crossed
for our brave, brave daughter Roz, who will enter hospital early in January for a double mastectomy and afterwards move, with our grandson, from Newport to take up home with us for a while. I don't pray but I do a lot of hoping.
On the bright side.
TELEVISION.
I am not going to dwell on the paucity of decent tele over the festive season.
We did see and enjoy Agatha and the Truth of Murder, The ABC Murders, Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film, The Midnight Gang and The BFG. The old boys and girls tackling University Challenge were fun, too.
Hope your Christmas was good. All the best for New Year.
No comments:
Post a Comment