Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible 

 Sorry folks for the gap in writing.

Alice has been awfully busy, preparing for and then entertaining a visitor (maybe we'll tell you about that later); getting ready for a new super-fast computer (lots and lots of backing-up); being somewhat poorly for the better part of two weeks (we won't go into the details here);  then trying to set up the new machine (partial success, but she lost one of her  passwords and some programs just won't work!) So you see, you'll have to be patient with us.

Doesn't that image above make the whole page look squint? Weird. It was the best we could find that didn't need any editing - technical difficulties there too. Oh well, bye for now!

Twelfth Day 

We've now had the traditional Twelfth Night of Christmas - or whatever religious feast or pagan festival you actually celebrated. See our post on December 19th for all that stuff. So today is the twelfth day - depending when you start the count, of course. And there's that song, too, which maybe had special hidden meanings!

The twelfth day is supposedly when the three Magi, or wise men, or astrologers, or kings (if they really did exist at all) arrived to see the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. It's also the time when more heathen celebrations took place. See what we said last year about that.

I'm quite sad to be taking down the decorations and cards, they cheer the whole place up, but we can't postpone it much longer or it'll be the thirteenth day and bad luck, or so they say ...

Alice has spent some time today revising her Annual Budget, based on last year's bills. Sounds a rather boring activity to me, but she seems to really enjoy compiling her system for keeping In the Black. She even uses Excel to keep track. I've protested that she's about to splash out an awful lot of £££ on a new super-fast computer, just so she can edit video! Pretensions of fame?

But this will be a deduction from her "Big Money" savings, not the monthly "Little Money", she says.

Little Money? Actually old duodecimal coins.

Pound and ten shilling notes

I even quoted the famous Micawber saying from Dickens:  
    Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.

It's especially pertinent as Alice is old enough to remember the pounds, shillings and pence which didn't get replaced by decimal until 1971. But to no avail.

Instead she got sentimental about the little Farthing coins, worth a quarter of an old penny, one forty-eighth of an old shilling, and 1/960 of a pound. That's roughly 0.1042 new pence. It used to buy a single "chew" in a sweetie shop.

This image is enlarged, it was only 20mm in diameter.
It is pretty though, isn't it?

These attractive coins went out of circulation in 1961. Alice had a collection of them when she was a child, and never forgave her mother for throwing them away! If only she'd known you can sell them on eBay, we might be rich.

Enough procrastination: stop blogging and finish taking down the decorations. Then supper.

Happy New Year! 

Not too late to wish you all the best for 2014, I hope. Exactly how happy you're feeling about it right now might depend somewhat on how much the weather is affecting you. 

Where we are, it's mostly just very wet and windy, and Alice is putting off going to the supermarket until it calms down a bit.

Some people here have had a really terrible time with yet more predicted to come.

Looking for weather information, we found some rather pretty images, even if what they actually mean is trouble...

Click on them to see the real beauty. Better still, open in a new tab for full size. [You can do this with any of our images, as I'm sure most of you realise. However, some newcomers may not be aware of this blog feature.]

The one on the right came from Reigate Grammar School Weather Station website, with lots of other interesting charts. The one on the left came from NOAA. We got it via good old Google, but couldn't find the original. [The link is to Google's 2013 Zeitgeist video. I do so love diversions.]

Noah in the Bible

Russell Crowe in  "Noah"

Despite the current floods, NOAA is nothing to do with Noah in the Bible. It's the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

You can bet we'll be looking out for this Noah in March. Alice admires Darren Aronofsky, plus she's a Russell Crowe fan, and wouldn't miss it for anything.

Tee hee, she's blushing!

But enough on the dire weather situation. It's time to share a few of our Seasonal Celebration highlights. I thoroughly enjoy all the fuss and trimmings that go with Christmas / Yule / Winter Solstice, as you can read in our previous Post - below this.

This is me opening the last door in my Advent Calendar. Yummy chocolate Santas. Alice has a passion for dark chocolate cherry liqueurs. She got through even more than twenty-four, though there's still a few left in the second box.

We did our special meal on the 24th, so we could spend the 25th nibbling the delicious left-overs. Here it is, waiting for roasting. 

Just as the whole enterprise was almost complete, and the green veg were on the hob, Alice had a "John Cleese moment". She re-arranged the baking trays, and - Crash! - one tipped over the back of the shelf onto the gas jets below. There was swearing. Only a quarter of the jets still functioned. A lot more swearing. [Two days later she finally put her head in the oven and managed to poke out the congealed fat.]

When all was on the table at last, we had a feast much like last year's, apart from golden beetroot instead of red: less messy and just as gloriously earthy tasting.

The next day we enjoyed avocado salad, wonderful remains, DIY Buck's Fizz and some Mateus Rosé, while watching Toy Story 3.  That's a fun film, but a touch sad as well.

I think my favourite treat was the cheese board, with a little glass of Late Bottled Vintage port. Alice is a self-confessed cheese addict and is going for a repeat - right now.

We headed off to see Alice's grandchildren just before New Year. They spent some time trying out ice-skating in a special youngsters and parents session.

 The ice-zimmers (as Alice called them) looked great, but I didn't risk having a go.

What if someone had run over me by accident? Doesn't bear thinking about.

To finish, here's my photo taken under the tree with all the carefuly wrapped presents.

The kids didn't let them stay that way for long, of course. Ripping paper is too much fun.

I hope you got what you wanted, too, and had an enjoyable time over the holiday.