The kings arrive at last!

It's ok, I've checked, the Vatican keeps up their nativity until Candlemas on 2nd February. I may do the same.

Late last year, when I was getting ready for Christmas, I found the three kings and their gifts stashed in a cupboard. This explained why I had not been able to find them the previous year. They were not in the official nativity box. I tucked them in a little cubbyhole in a cabinet, ready for 6th January, their scheduled arrival or epiphany. The day came, and I checked the nativity box and various other places ... no kings! I was pretty gutted about that. Today, after an early start, I began tidying the house. Decided to put the nativity set away, figuring that the kings would just have to remain lost. I tucked the figures in the box, and, on a hunch, checked one last place for the missing kings. There they were, exactly where they'd been resting for the past three weeks! Guess what? I put them all back up. I even put the lights on again. If anyone asks, the kings were delayed because of CoVid quarantine, or light pollution affecting the visibility of their star.Of course, no one will ask, because no one comes into our house except us.

My school has started lateral flow testing for CoVid. A testing centre has been set up in a large room, with nursing staff present, and only one person testing at one time. This means that some part-time staff have to come in on a non-work day to be tested. This is a bit of a pain, but when I saw the scale of the operation and the fact that the nursing staff are working their socks off to get the whole of the staff tested every week, I decided that it's worth coming in for. I got the result by text a couple of hours later, and it was negative. The set up was impressive compared to the testing centre I blipped at Cirencester on 24 August last year. I never did get a result.

Back at home, after the episode of the three kings, I put a load of Christmas stuff back in the loft, and then went on to transforming the spare room. I had made it into a sort of studio late last year, making space for doing larger jigsaws, but after completing one jigsaw of 2000 pieces, I decided I prefer smaller ones. The room soon silted up with junk.

Today I made it back into a spare room, not for guests (what guests?) but in case one of us gets poorly and needs a bit of space. All the boxes of old files went back under the bed. One day I'll throw them out. I did actually manage to throw out some stuff this morning: only remembered it when I woke up, and I could hear the bin lorry coming up the street already. It was completely dark outside. I got one bag out in the nick of time, and the other can go out in a fortnight.

After that I was knackered, so I watched TV and did my current jigsaw. Was amused to find Grange Hill (all four series) on Britbox. It used to seem so gritty, so inner city. Now the kids sound so posh in the way they speak, and the school seems to be set in an affluent suburb. No council flats! One of the kids, Benny Green, is referred to as West Indian rather than black. Times have changed, though he is stereotyped as the kid from a poor family and I wonder if that would be the case today.

What on earth would Grange Hill look like if it were remade, 43 years on? More knives, more gender and sexuality discussions, more drugs, more sex, less love. I hope Tucker Jenkins would still be in it. I wouldn't be the same 14- year-old watching it, but I still have a soft spot for children's books and films.