Mon Beau Sapin

I had absolutely no intention of decorating my new pad for Christmas, even though MMJ was due in on Christmas Eve.  His idea of decoration last year was a single 70 year old toy tree about 6" high that had couple of scraps of tinsel attached.
 
I was last-minute shopping on the 23rd after work and there in Bastins window was a sorry lump of green all bundled up under a group of pretty 'pencil trees', lying on its side, miserably waiting to be thrown out.

'99p' said the assistant as he hauled one of the pretty trees away for another customer. 'In fact, you can have it half price. I found it in the back from last year and I'd like rid of it.'
I could almost hear the tree sigh.  I picked it up.  It was intact, with a good wide base and its branches, although rammed together tightly, did seem to be in good condition.  I felt so sorry for it that I tucked it under my arm and took it to the till, where the assistant grinned and charged me 45p.  Bargain.

I wandered round Bastins again and saw a red mini-bead garland for £1.99.  I could hear the tree rustling with anticipation, like a little girl seeing her grandma eyeing up a pretty dress.

'Oh, go on then,' I told it, and bought the garland.

Biscuits, grapes, Alka-Seltzer, WD40, all the other essentials were bought in other shops and for some reason I went into PoundLand.
 
The tree prickled at me through its plastic bag, hopeful and wistful.  I'd stopped in front of some boxes of tiny glass angels, four for a pound ...

'Oh, go on then.'  I bought the angels - three boxes of them - and a mirror so that the tree would be able to see itself.

Just along the same aisle there were some weeny metallic baubles which were just the right size for a tiny tree ...

'Oh, go on then.'

When I got home, I popped the tree onto the table in the 'lounge-diner' (God, what stupid names the estate agents come up with) and unpacked.  I found some old LED mini-lights, a tiny string of them in the cupboard where I put the WD40 and when I'd stuck some new batteries in and fiddled with the on switch for five minutes, these dear little lights came on (and eventually stayed on) and I hung them round the little tree.

 I swear it grew taller and wider it was so proud of its jewellery.  The metallic baubles each needed a bit of thread so that I could hang them from the newly spread branches.  The mirror reflected the lights and when the tiny angels were added, I realised that by sticking an LED up each of their dresses, I had made real fairy lights!

My tree was so beautiful and so pleased and proud to be the only decoration in my house.
To humour it and to add to its pleasure, I turned off all the other lights so only the Christmas tree was shining.

Two and a half hours I spent fussing over that one bloomin' decoration.  Thank goodness there was only one or I'd have been up all night with the glue gun and the icing sugar and moving furniture around to show it all off to best advantage.

MMJ said, 'Oh for goodness' sake.'

Mon Beau Sapin said, 'At least I bothered getting dressed up for her.'

I said, 'Merry Christmas,' and added a butterfly I'd found for 50p to the top of the tree, in place of the more usual star.

The Moon Room

A 'sun room' is a special room where the sun (when it deigns to shine at all) fills the space with light and makes one feel one is outside in the garden.  There's a lot of glass to clean of course, inside and out, but that's a price worth paying.

That's the normal sun room anyway.  My new abode has got one, but the sun never seems to shine when I'm at home so I don't get the benefit.  Or so I thought, until the early hours of the morning when I woke and wondered where the brightness was coming from.  I hadn't left a light on and the angels from the realms of glory weren't about, casting their light over all the earth.  The sliding door between my bedchamber and the euphemistically-named 'sun room' was fully back and the silver brightness was from the glorious full moon, free from her imprisoning clouds and sailing round the night sky in luminous splendour.  High as a summer midday sun, she was pouring forth beautiful reflected sunlight in through my windows and turning a very cool and otherwise uninspiring room into a magical place of silver and sharply outlined monochrome shadows.  

I got up and went out there to sit on my second-hand sofa to enjoy the Moon Room, feet on a sheepskin rug, back supported by pillows ... yes, I did fall asleep.  When I woke, very cold - there isn't any heating in that room - HKCs 2 and 3 were curled up against me, purring their approval of the midnight outing.  The moon had moved only a little in the twenty minutes or so I'd been dozing and my eyes, accustomed to the night, were able to pick out all the trees and shrubs and heather-domes in the moonlit garden.  What a treat to be awake to see the shadow-patterns made by 'the seven dwarfs' (mini-conifers) and all the other features of my new garden.  I was quite literally seeing it in a new light and suddenly I wondered if it isn't going to be such a boring garden to work with after all.  

The coolness sent me back to bed.  I left the sliding door open so that I could still see through into my Moon Room.  You'll be hearing more of this one! 

The Sixty-Nine Steps

It's been ages since I spoke to you. No point apologising, because it's going to happen again.

Those with long memories and even longer patiences might remember I lost 18lbs a couple of years ago, in 3 months and by walking a million steps at the rate of about 10,000 a day.  Here's the proof, bar three steps, that I did it:

I really did take the extra three at the end, but if the blessed thing goes over its million, it has the audacity to return to zero and I just couldn't face another million.

And therein lay my problem.  I went down to MMJ (My Mate John) for Christmas that year (2011, the photo was sometime around November) and it's all his fault that the weight started creeping back on.  By November 2012 all my clothes had shrunk again, buttons were screaming at me to release them, zips were sliding down to the bottom (well, another part of the anatomy anyway) and elastic pulled so tightly round my waist that I got indigestion on long car journeys (see March 2012)

Worse, I went to MMJ for Christmas again. He's a seriously good cook and even makes his own ice cream and ... no, don't even think about it.  I hit 62kg again.  Dis-bloody-GUSting.
New Year's Resolution: Dump the flump
But I'm 2 years older now and the Lump doesn't wish to leave me this time.  I've been walking my 10,000 steps a day for 3 weeks and only lost 800g.
'Can I really be a*sed to do this?' I e-mailed to MMB (My Mate Baggy) she of the Dorset Diddlers fame (http://thedorsetdiddlers.blogspot.co.uk/) at ten to eight this evening.

At ten to nine the answer was in her mailbox.

Treat yourself: when the night is cloudless and the moon high, get out into the country and just ... be.

My front door (circa 1670) faces south and all I had to do was step out of it ... and keep stepping.  According to my nerdometer I was 4005 steps short of the requisite 10,000 so, dressed for the night - no, not for the knight - I set off on my apparently useless quest.

Oh, what a night.  The air was lung-achingly cold, crystal clear and smelt of freezing snow. The moon, waxing, was just over half-full and Orion was climbing up into the southern skies.
The snow reflected the bright moonlight and fabulous shadows fell across the lanes and fields.  Every hedge had a different shadow-story silhouetting along its length, like a living monochrome Bayeux tapestry.

There is something magical about a deep country night in winter.  I love the peace and the silence.  In the hour I was out, not one owl called, not a fox called to its mate, not a sheep to its flock.  The only sounds seemed to be my boot steps on the frost-damaged lane and the rustlings of my clothing. The only light was God's designer-shine and its reflections on the whiteness of snow.

All's right with the world.

Oh yes, and I did 4069 steps back to my door, so tomorrow owes me some ...