Tree down!

After all the lights of Christmas, today was an appropriately gloomy day for taking down all the decorations and the tree. 

I started off by taking Dan to work, which is usually quite lovely, driving through the countryside and along the coast of Morecambe Bay, but today all there was to see was grey. I got back expecting Abi to be up but it was another hour and a half before she roused herself at midday. Those teenage years are fast approaching!

But, as ever, she was a huge help with the task at hand, unwinding the lights from the tree and the stairs, taking down the decorations, and even tackling the delicate task of getting the super-prickly holly off the shelves and into a bag. As always, there was a pleasing melancholy to the whole affair. 

In the evening, once we'd collected Dan from work and picked up Milly, we rigged up the home cinema and watched 'The Shawshank Redemption'. What a beauty of a film that is. There are so many wonderful touches, like the ambivalent dialogue between Andy and the warden (when Norton first visits his cell) and again between Norton and Tommy, just before the latter is shot. I noticed tonight, too, how each escape - Brooks, Andy, and finally Red - is prefaced by the character carving their name (even if it does take Andy a further twenty years). 

It's a film that I've watched many times, as has Milly, but I wasn't sure what Dan and Abi would make of it but, actually, they loved it. And I'm really enjoying watching films like this on a big screen (OK, bed sheet). I'm already thinking what we might watch tomorrow.

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Diet news
103.3kg 
That's slightly up from yesterday but I'm still pleased with the overall drop; it's a good start. It's interesting watching the calories. I was so far under that for supper I had a load of pasta and sauce, and some garlic bread (things I'd usually shy away from when I'm low carbing).