Season's Greetings to you all (at last)
[Update completed circa midnight. ]

 

I really had to pester Alice to get this done before the New Year!

But better late than never, as they say.

Ba was thrilled to bits to have her name as the first on this - but since she's at the left, it seemed just logical to me. She really liked the little Nativity scene, and I liked the clear glass bauble, so we were both happy with the rather hastily contrived photo shoot.  

Update 

Ba seemed upset that you can't really see the tiny Nativity scene properly on the card above, especially so as we took ages to choose it, with much deliberation, from several similar ones at the Christmas outdoor market, several weeks ago.

So Alice created another image for you to look at the detail. Click on it to get the bigger version. [Same goes for all the photos here.] It's even smaller than you might think, its base is just the green bit, but we set it on top of an artisitic slice of branch - elm, I think. And that's too long a story for today . . .

I told Alice she's not to take any photos of us sitting in front of a newly cooked Christmas dinner. We did that to death an earlier year.

So here's a before one instead. There's stuffed chicken breasts (insides revealed in due course - pun!) lots of veg to roast (I like the golden beetroot and the parsnip best) bacon rolls with stuffing, venison sausages (posh!) and pork chipolatas (traditional). There's green veg (healthy) to put on later. You can just see the onion and mushroom gravy in the red pan. Should the full stops come inside or outside of the brackets?? Oh dear, never mind.

Does Ba's precarious perch on the handle remind you of anyone? That's a literary poser (pun again, hee hee!) from our favourite author (hint). Answer further down.

And here's the after one: deliberately cooked extras as "left-overs" for Boxing Day. Now you can see, if you click again, the chicken breasts were stuffed with fresh herbs, a slice of onion, and a slice of orange. Pretty, as well as extremely tasty. You should try it.

Why Boxing Day? It's nothing to do with that nasty pugilistic sport. Traditionally, the 26th December was given to servants as a day off, because they had to work on Christmas Day. As they left the house their employers would give them a box of goodies, which they would then share with their families. See Wikipedia.

We watched rather more TV than usual, not only the Doctor Who special (that Peter Capaldi is quite sprightly, despite the wrinkles, isn't he?) and the sad end of Downton Abbey (sad it's ended that is, not all of the content) with our wonderful Maggie Smith, but also a new Shaun the Sheep movie.

Alice said we were obliged to see it as he's a relative of Ba's. Actually she really loves these all these Aardman stop-motion productions and wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Here's the final stage of the feasting: some yummy special cheeses with a small glass of Late Bottled Vintage Port, and a couple of those heavenly M&S Cherry Liqueur dark chocolates.

Answer to the question above? In Through the Looking Glass, Alice takes hold of the end of the White King's pencil and places the words "The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly" in his memorandum book. As she is invisible to him at this point, he is most alarmed, and tells his Queen, I really must get a thinner pencil. I can’t manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don’t intend!

See the whole chapter on Lenny's wonderful site about all things relating to the Alice books.

We'll update you with even more as soon as we can - promise.

Catching up a bit, and introducing Ba 

At last, I've persuaded Alice to stop imagining we're ever going to catch up with everything we've missed out since June or so. So here's a few photos to give you the idea. To fit several of them in, and not have to dictate screeds of information to fit in the spaces, I've insisted we keep the images small here, but if you click on them, you can admire them in a larger size!

Ba and I have done quite a bit of travelling around with Alice now - but I never got round to introducing my new friend properly in the right context!

It all started when Alice went to Yorkshire, and met up with a friend to Do Art - again. The  hotel in Wakefield was ever so nice, and I got my very own toothbrush! Alice said it wasn't really for me, but just because she'd forgotten hers... Spoilsport!

We went first to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It's just huge, and took all day to go round. Ba would have loved it, I'm sure, being mostly out of doors, but we hadn't met her yet...

I think this was my favourite piece. Sitting is simply gigantic, one of  Sophie Ryder's versions of her mythic "Lady Hare". Its body is modelled on her own.

We saw loads of Barbara Hepworth stuff at the Hepworth Wakefield. She's the one that makes sculptures with holes in, like this. You want to stroke them - they're so sensual, aren't they? - but they don't let you.

I was taken with the heron outside. It's one of the Faceless Arts performance pieces. There's a real heron that can often be seen in the river nearby, and we did!

After the friend went home, we visited the cathedral, where I was overwhelmed by the maze and admired one of the misericords in the 15th-century choir stalls. Was it a misery to stand for the long services?

Then we took a side-trip to Bradford, to visit theNational Media Museum. Alice had to wear her trendy NeverEnding Film Title T-shirt, being the show-off she is. She got it via Letterboxd, where a friend writes jolly good reviews. [Those in the know will understand why I need to be so extremely complimentary. Don't ask, it's complicated . . . ]

Here it was we rescued Ba, from a REDUCED box in the shop. Although she can only say Baaa, she's most expressive with it. Think Hodor - go on, check him out this time! We've already told you this bit in July's post.

Ba was rather anxious about sitting on a Dalek for the photo as Dr Who, in all his guises, has had trouble with them ever since 1963. So I reassured her he'd fully deactivated this one for good.

After that, Ba came with us on Alice's Arvon Foundation Writers' Retreat at Lumb Bank.

We went on lots of absolutely beautiful long country walks.

 Well, Alice did do the actual walking.

We were near the little village of Heptonstall, so we paid a visit to Sylvia Plath's grave. What a talented poet, but what a sad ending to her life. See this New York Times review of two biographies.

Yes, in case you're asking, Alice did write some poems herself when she was on the retreat. She thinks all that walking helped arouse the inspiration from its slumber in her subconscious.
Search me. I wouldn't know.

Then we had to head home again via the sprawling station in Leeds.

Luckily we had time to pause, have lunch and find the right platform.

That's all for now, folks. I hope we don't have to wait so long for Alice to find time to write the next post and bring you a bit more up to date.

And don't forget to click on the photos, will you!