Fireside Stories

Daylight snuck round the edges of the blinds at nine o'clock this morning, after a night of rain and just 4 days short of the winter solstice.
If we followed Europe's time, as has been suggested by the southern half of the country, it would be nearly ten o'clock before the street lights went out.

In 1969, there was such an arrangement, a trial, when the clocks stayed at summer time. I remember pushing the pram and attendant children to the shops for grocery shopping in the half light of cold winter mornings.
I can imagine that in the Shetland Islands, it must have been almost lunch time before daybreak.

Incidentally, in those heady days of child rearing, it was considered quite safe to leave the fruit of your loins strapped into that universal big pram, with the space of a small basement underneath the mattress, outside the supermarket while you shopped, secure in the knowledge that no one on their right mind would kidnap the drooling inhabitant.
The only hazard was forgetting that the pram was there and arriving home with the shopping but no baby; I've known it happen.

However now, with the bus pass secured for the time being, we can linger behind the blinds with the lamps on until we can see the way to the cosy bookshop for a coffee and a browse.

Not only that, today we can potter at home until it's time to go out to lunch with a daughter.
What a pity that all this leisure time comes at a price - a veritable conflagration of candle power on the birthday cake.