Black Night

The shortest day of the year, and the longest night. The day has been mainly spent doing the Christmas food shopping and the night at the last Panto rehearsal before Xmas.
The shops were not particularly busy, but the shelves were not exactly fully stocked. The biggest problem was that no one seems to cater for couples wanting a quiet Christmas on their own. Everything is geared towards large family meals and we’d have wasted loads of perfectly good food if we’d bought some of the quantities on offer.
Eventually - and by accepting a few compromises - we acquired the makings of a decent meal on Christmas Day, some reasonable meals for the other days of the holiday period, and even a few little treats! Only a few though, because we’ve got to be careful not to overdo the choccies and undo all the good work in the gym this year!
Panto rehearsal was slightly fraught, as illness, missing cast members and struggles to remember lines all made for quite a “bitty” run through of Act 2. I think we all just need a break from it now, and hopefully we’ll come back after Xmas healthy, rested and raring to go, with all lines learnt.
I thought I’d go for a minimalist interpretation of the longest night by taking a carefully composed picture of the aircraft warning light on top of a crane, silhouetted against the dark skies. Or, to put it another way, a hurriedly snatched snap on the way home from rehearsal, just so I had something to blip today. And then discovering that the sky was not as black as I’d hoped - thank you light pollution!