Walking off the feasting!

Saturday was a crisp, cold day with a clear blue sky and sunshine - time to walk off some of our indulgent holiday feasting! We drove to Kingston Lacy, a nearby National Trust property to see the house decorated for the holiday and to walk in the spacious grounds. The sunlight brought out all the winter colours. Here, a view looking down on the Japanese garden,

Contrasting with the bright sunshine the house interior was dark. The library would need better lighting than candlelight for me to be able to read the books!

My favourite decorative displays were those in the dining room, the table full of faux delicasies, mushrooms, moss balls and greenery. Absolutely delightful.

The telephone on the wall reminding us that the staff could be summoned upstairs at ant moment. (Things have moved on a bit since then, on the telephone front at least!)

The laundry room was decorated with branches wrapped in white cotton with cotton wool for snow, quite different from the opulance of the house, but very lovely and suitable for a room that will have done a lot of white washing!

Boxing Day

I do like Boxing Day, all the work has been done, the house is groaning still with food. Everyone can just help themselves to an assortment of spoils from the Christmas Eve and Christmas day feasting. We are at the comfy, sated, laid-back stage of the holidays. It's great! The boy decorated the cake again this year. He's been doing this since he was very small so it has become a family ritual.

I collected my pre-ordered food early on Christmas Eve morning and avoided any problems with parking or queues.

The gift shop window displays were lovely.

Decorations on the Christmas tree were in place on Christmas Eve and the packages under it carefully studied by the eight year old!

All the usual suspects hanging from the branches.

I do like Christmas!

Happy Christmas.

I listened to the news this morning, while chopping veg for lunch and for the feasting to come Christmas is a lovely holiday period when the family can be all together, relaxing, laughing and joking and eating tasty food. The news was about Britain's need to be ready for war. I thought what foolish creatures we humans are. We have such incredible capabilities and yet can sink to such idiotic behaviour. Who wins in a war? Nobody. If that energy were put to good use, what a joyous place our small planet could be. I don't use my blog for political or private concerns, I use it to celebrate the pleasant things in my life but the talk of preparing to be on a war footing I found deeply disturbing. How has our world come to this? We put the Christmas tree from the garden into the conservatory so that we didn't have to drag wet branches into the house. Now we've brought it into the house and the lights are in place but the ornaments will be hung when the family arrive.

I wish for us all, dear blogging friends, a very Happy Christmas and a kinder and more peaceful year to come. Last week I went with the family for a wander round the Christmas market in town. The seasonal ice rink looked cold but tempting seen through the trees. I'm now at an age where there are things I'd love to do but know would be foolish to attempt, and, since my skating ability is laughable and my bones none too clever, skating is out! Instead we ate hot, sugared turros, with a side dip of Nutella, as we wandered about. Delicious!

We've had very heavy rain and wind. It brought down a lot of brash from the trees and I went into the garden to collect things to make Christmas wreaths for the outer doors.It is easy just to wrap the falllen silver birch tree pieces around each other to make a pliable, and rather wobbly wreath.

It is very light and just hangs from the little fox head door knocker.

The wreaths have a bit of overhead cover and are holding up well to the weather so far.

What happened in November?

For me November involves a great deal of leaf clearing. I sweep all year but in November it is serious stuff, and, because of high rainfall this autumn, it is soggy, clingy stuff. It is a task that I enjoy, however and with two large compost bays full I look forward with pleasure to the the leaf mould that will be produced.

We can almost see the neighbours' house once the leaves have fallen.

Not too much more to clear now.

If we get a day of good weather we take a walk by the beach, with the pleasure of having it almost to ourselves.

A rainbow appeared at Hengistbury Head, but the grey sky told us that we'd better head for home!

A sociable weekend.

Last weekend we visited various friends who live further along the south coast. On Saturday we had a good catch-up and a tasty tea with friends who live in Lyme Regis in a wonderful former sea captain's house. We had a short walk on the cob, the harbour wall featured in Jane Austen's novel, "Persuasion" and in the film, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' which is based on John Fowles' book of the same name.

We drove on to spend the night in Sidmouth, staying at the rather tired but very friendly and quirky Royal Glen Hotel. A plaque on our bedroom wall informed us that we were in the room where Victoria had slept as a vwey small child before becoming queen. (Sidmouth is swamped with plaques as this post will demonstrate!

We ate a very hearty breakfast on Sunday morning, so, in spite of doubtful weather we set off to walk beneath the cliffs towards C0nnaught Gardens. We dodged the waves but did catch a bit of sea spray. One or two people were soaked!

The blue plaques around the town have information that brings the past alive.

A bit of bad behaviour put on record!

We met up with the book group back along the coast in Seaton at a member's home for lunch. Jane Austen's 'Mansefield Park' was up for discussion which seemed very apt after visits to Lyme and Sidmouth!