And I hope that you are all ready for the festive season. I know that I’m not.
In fact, I’ve never felt less festive in my life, which is hardly surprising. It’s not the illness and it’s not the thought of major surgery but this relentless 07:45 start that’s doing my head in. Especially today because it’s blood test day so I have to be à jeune – no breakfast for me until he’s been.
And I had the results too this evening thanks to this e-mail subscription thing. My blood count has gone up, but a mere 0.4 to 8.1. When it was that low 2 weeks ago, they called me in for a transfusion and it went up to 9.0. I’m dismayed that my count only went up that little bit, I really was. Hence the lack of festive spirit from that point of view.
I was on my travels last night too. I was in Canada, although a more un-Canada-like Canada I have ever seen. I was with George, a former employee of the tyre depot and we were driving around looking for something in the middle of winter with bright sunlight everywhere and not a trace of snow to be seen. We were trying to make for a town that we could see in the distance and as we approached, we ended up in a different town and this necessitated a hard-left turn right in the town centre. George told me where to turn and, much to my surprise, it was a turning into a field, right in this town centre. There were hordes of pedestrians walking along this footpath and in a complete departure from tradition, a policeman stopped the pedestrians so I could drive into this field. Here, I misjudged the entrance and ended up clouting the right-hand wing of the vehicle, which was actually a right-hand drive Hillman Imp, dark green in colour. I made the excuse that I must have slipped into some cart ruts that had pulled me out of position.
So after starving myself until the nurse had been, I had a leisurely morning – in fact a leisurely day doing very little except write up my notes from Canada.
I was alone, though, in not doing very much today. Everyone else was at it, and in spades too.
The trampoline is still outside and so the kids and mummy went to play on it. And, surprise surprise, Strawberry Moose went to join in all of the fun. A very gregarious moose, His Nibs has loads of fun outside playing with the youngsters and also with Violet and Sebastian, the sock-sloths. It’s all one big happy family here and everyone is enjoying himself as much as possible.
In fact, Strawberry Moose was quite exhausted when he came back in.
After tea it was bedtime for the little ones, ready for when Father Christmas comes with the parcels. Of course we had to lay out some stuff for him – milk and mince pies, together with a carrot and some reindeer food.
But no bedtime is complete without a good story, especially on Christmas Eve.
Liz read “A Night Before Christmas” to everyone, including Strawberry Moose who enjoys a good story as much as anyone else.
Of course he’ll be up and about waiting for the arrival of the reindeer, but for reasons of his own which are entirely different from those of everyone else.
And so now he and I have some work to do, but we are not going to be up for long. Regardless of whatever time it might be, he and I (especially me) are wasted and I for one will be having an early night. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, I still have to get up flaming well early at blasted 07:45.
