Broadway

After cleaning the conservatory yesterday, R and I brought out the boxes of Christmas decorations, and discovered a file note in R's handwriting, stating that we'd discarded one of our sets of tree lights when we packed everything away back in January. This was both surprising - given that neither of us had the slightest recollection of doing it - and unwelcome. But we searched all the boxes, just to be on the safe side, and discovered that it was true. The joys of old age, eh?

(The upside of this geriatric absent-mindedness, by the way, is that when R was bemoaning the other day the fact that he couldn't remember which birthday cards he'd sent me in previous years, my response was, "Well, if you can't, you can reasonably rely on me not being able to either. So just send one you like and I'll be duly surprised and pleased.")

Anyway, the insufficiency of tree lights drove us out of the house this morning, in search of another set. And not a day too soon, I might tell you - the garden centre had very few left, though luckily we were able to get what we needed. It was a miserable, cold, wet day, but as we were out anyway we thought we might as well carry on in shopping mode, so we fuelled up on coffee and then swung round to Broadway. A couple of hours later we'd made sufficient inroads into the Christmas shopping that we felt we deserved more coffee, and some lusciously sticky cake.

We didn't actually buy anything at the Broadway Deli today (though we have some items earmarked, and might go back), but simply walking past was enough to trigger the taking of my annual photo of their outdoor vegetable display. Or possibly bi-annual, if I run out of subjects this side of New Year: the temperature having plummeted, I'm leaving the garden invertebrates to their hibernation, and the concept of spending long hours in freezing bird hides is not especially enticing, so I may be posting more of this kind of thing until the end of the cold snap.