This week I am
Cancelling tea with the Mayor. Yep that's the kind of high living person I am. I just throw the Mayor to one side because I get a better offer. (Actually, we have a couple of people off work which means that there are literally no phone answerers if I go swanning off. Am hoping Mayor is ok with this. Am thinking that he is as he as already cancelled on me once)
Reporting back on the Paddington movie. It's really good. The spirit of the books is there in all its glory. He's funny and sweet. The Brown family are exactly as they should be and the house they live in is just beautiful in its eccentricity. It is also an unashamed plea for racial tolerance and welcoming strangers into our lives. I don't expect UKIP will be giving out copies of the DVD for Christmas. (Didn't get to see the one about the nun. We weren't sure if we fancied it. The day after we didn't go, it promptly won a big award at a film festival. Of course it did.)
Trying to find a sensible place and then noting down where I am keeping presents. This will hopefully avoid the usual scene of me having to remove all the clothes from my wardrobe on Christmas Eve in a mad panic because 50% of the presents I have been buying are missing. It's never a good time.
Thinking - blow the whole thing and sitting down on Saturday afternoon with some chocolate and watching Hello Dolly. How lovely it is. Am almost not bothered about being found later in kitchen high kicking and singing Put On Your Sunday Clothes.
Attending FOW2s A Level Certificate presentation. Am hoping against hope that it will be as funny as the year they invited a contestant from The Voice to make the presentations. The faces of the Board of Governors as he sang "Your Sex is On Fire" has kept me happy on many a cold night.
Wondering why a elderly man who was drunk as a monkey was trying to shoplift a bottle of suntan lotion. (Bit of a commotion while I was waiting in the Chemist for medication for Aged Parent) I wouldn't have thought there was much call for it at this time of year - even on what I presume is a thriving Black Market in Plymouth. Maybe it was just for the thrill of it. Anyway, I was more unhappy about seeing it replaced straight back on the shelf when the bottle was recovered. It could quite clearly have done with a rinse having been down some rather unsavoury trousers.
Finding out about Advent Candles. I didn't know that each one was supposed to represent anything. (I come from a Christian background where any candle in church is the beginning of a slippery slope) So when we lit ours on Sunday, I heard that it represented John The Baptist and this was news to me. I like John The Baptist though. A voice in the wilderness. A light in the darkness. In the busy times, in the mess that is in my head, in the darkness that lurks in my thought life, in the sadness of buying a coat for a child in a refugee camp because they have fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs, in the startling realisation that the people we trust to govern us think that we will be ok with torture. During these times it's helpful to remember that God is there - a small light in the darkness sometimes or a still small voice of calm and wisdom.
Linking up to A Pause in Advent
This week I am
- Receiving FOW 1 back into the fold for Christmas - We are stocked up on Pizzas and toilet paper - we are braced.
- Going to the flicks a couple of times. Off to see Paddington tonight (with my stern "I love Paddington - this had better be good" face on). Then something about a nun on Thursday I think. Will report back.
- Having aged parent round for tea. Remember no onions. Unfortunate consequences for her belly (and for all concerned)
- Spending time struggling to get into cupboards. We have replaced a mattress on a bed but are keeping the old one for a Christmas visitor as the only thing that is wrong with it is that it is a bit saggy in the middle (bit like my good self) Thing is, we have nowhere to keep it so it keeps being left against wardrobes and my big cupboard at the top of the stairs and I keep having to wrestle it to get in anywhere.
- Praying for an early fitting of our blinds. People are getting chairs out and sitting in the road outside our house now to watch us. (Well it feels like it)
- Putting in very chunky amounts of toil at work. All shopping buses and scooters and wheelchairs are choc a block with people trying to get their Christmas stuff done. There is nothing like a determined pensioner on a shopping mission - trust me.
- Being very pleased that HOH was able to mend Joseph in our oldest Nativity set after an unfortunate incident with Morecambe last year. (Or was it Liam? Can't remember) Anyway - at one point we thought we would have to marry Mary off to a shepherd and that would not do at all.
- Looking ruefully at my planning book and wishing I had the time to sit and plan in it - never mind actually DOING the stuff on my to-do list.
It's all going very well - as usual. Carry on.
If only. I am still struggling to pause. I am up to my eyes in various bits and pieces and life etc. Nothing to bother too much about. I am reading all the other blogs and it seems that, for lots of reasons, other people are the same. I will not go gently into that Bah Humbug though. I LOVE Christmas and I will not sink under all the detritus so I don't enjoy it anymore. I am well aware that this one is up to me. We had a guest speaker at church today and he told us that the secret to contentment is a decent dialogue with God - which makes a lot of sense to me. I have to find the time to do it - especially at this time of year. It is up to me to cut back on things where I can. So, here are my Christmas Resolutions. Unconventional I know but that's the way I roll.
1. If I see you every day. Sort of "Hello - nice weekend?" as we sit down at desks opposite each other. Or, if I usually send you a card after you have posted one through my door saying "To all at 22 from all at number 48." because neither of us know each other from Adam - then don't hold your breath for a card from me. Cards this year will be to people who live a long way away, people I need to re-connect with and to my Mother, who takes the size of the card we send her as an indication of the amount of affection she is held in. (Can be tricky when the lady who does her hair once a week has sent a bigger one than me because I went for quality rather then size)
2. I will be making several meals for visitors and on Christmas Day and all that. This is fine. I am looking forward to it. However, know now that the mash will be Marks and Spencer. The pudding will be ready made and Mice Pies will be Mr Kipling. Come to terms with it. I have. It is happening and it is happening in this house.I will probably make my own roast potatoes because I like them best but, have to be honest, there will be a bag of frozen ones in the freezer in case of emergencies.
3. My house will not be a picture of domestic perfection. It has just been through a traumatic time with the windows being replaced and half the front rendering being ripped off. We don't have the new blinds in place yet so getting dressed in the morning is like permanently dressing under a beach towel. If you are coming here to see a beautifully tidy and serene home you are a) barking up the wrong tree completely and don't know me at all and b) Seriously? Why would you do that?
4. I will not be losing that last half stone before Christmas. All my clothes are fitting (more or less) and I reserve the right to seek solace in an emergency bag of cheese and onion crisps if the need arises.
Good Grief - that feels better.
On a more positive note - everyone else went out this afternoon and I took the opportunity to put some Christmas music and give Hark The Herald Angels some welly in the privacy of my own kitchen. Wow I love that carol. Top Notch.
Linking Up at
A Pause in Advent
This is our hallway - last year. Because I haven't put any decorations up. Not yet. We couldn't if we wanted to but we don't want to. Not yet. We have just had the windows replaced, as well as the rendering on the front of the house. I am all of a kerfuffle. I have lost three weeks of my life to dust, unplugged phone lines and wi-fi, scaffolding and big spiders. I am barely back in the habit of having regular showers - let alone Christmas Decorations. And it's TOO EARLY! I am downcast by Black Friday - watching people who fought last year in Tesco's car park for a 28 inch telly, now coming back and fighting again for a 40 inch telly because the Internet tells them that they have to. Bah!
I am bad tempered, tired with little positive to say about Christmas and I love Christmas. According to the You Tube people - this week is Jingle Week enabling me to buy my Christmas clothes and make-up. Hah! Well you know what you can do with that.
Yet, in the middle of all this, there is just a tiny hint. Something is stirring. Think of the Wise Men. They had maybe spent years and years studying astrological charts, watching the skies and reading the stars. Looking to make sure that they had got it right - that a king - a promised Messiah was on the way. Maybe they just noticed a few subtle changes in the skies, before they ever saw THE star.
Just thinking about Mary, alone and quiet - rubbing her belly and thinking and wondering what was to come. In the middle of the madness that has so successfully claimed Christmas, I'm trying to stop and look at the skies. I'm wondering how it felt, if it felt any different at all, in those moments, just before the miracle, when God's great rescue plan began to move into action. And I want to claim it back. I want Christmas to be about the baby who would be Saviour and before it all starts, I want to quietly take my time and think about what is to come.
Linking up with Tracing Rainbows - A Pause in Advent
Can I just bung in a review for this book? I was given this, not to review but just by someone who thought I would like it and I really did. Set in 1536 when burning or horrific executions were waiting for anyone who held convictions contrary to the state view, it is just a rattling good read. There is a lot going on here. There's a big picture which will appeal to people who like Wolf Hall and the Sansom books and then there is a smaller, more intimate picture of family and friends during the time.The author also manages to weave in the changes and challenges to the Christian faith without it being, well a bit obvious. I think the idea was to tell a good story, really well and job done. Highly recommended
