Alert

House clean and decorated.
Supermarket order received and put away.
Presents bought and wrapped.

Getting there.

R and I worked solidly through the morning and into the early afternoon, knocking items off a massive Christmas to-do list. When we came to a natural pause at about 2pm, I said I was going to make a cup of tea and take it to my desk to drink alongside some computer work I also had to do, but R persuaded me that it would be better if we both took a proper break and went out for coffee. So we went to Broadway, which was looking lovely in the golden hour sunshine, and had our coffee in Leaf & Bean. It's possible that cheese scones may have been eaten too.

The only problem with trying to photograph Broadway is that - even though the A44 has long since been routed around the outside of the village - the High Street is always so full of cars it resembles the Euston Road (I can put hand on heart here and say "not including ours", because we'd used the car park on the Leamington Road and walked into the centre). So although I did take quite a few photos, hardly any were worth keeping, and none appeals to me nearly as much as the handful of shots I took through the kitchen window before we went out.

My favourite bird of the day was a little robin which I was surprised the R5 managed to capture so well, given that it was down on the grass in the shadow of the patio wall. But this squirrel gets top billing tonight, for its pose as well as its magnificently furry ears. Like the robin, it was highly alert for danger - in the squirrel's case, because one of its four relatives who were also searching the top garden for food at the time seemed to have a particular grudge against it, and chased it hither and yon on the least provocation. The poor thing, which is fairly small, and I think might be one of this year's kits, was barely allowed near any of the food we'd put out, even though there was plenty of it, spread across a wide swathe of garden. In fact the aggressor spent so much time chasing furiously after anyone that crossed it, that it barely managed to eat anything itself - a lack of reward that I felt was just and proper.