Museum piece

Today has been so unutterably dreich that, holy mysteries over for the day, I stayed in and made my Christmas cake. I've taken only three photos, in complete contrast to yesterday - one of the grey church against the grey sky as we went in this morning, and two of the cake-making. The sharp-eyed among you may notice why I've titled this entry as I have: I've been using that Moulinex hand-held beater ever since I made my first Christmas cake, 50 years ago, and though I have since gone through two slightly more advanced mixers that have to sit on my (very limited) worktop, I can't think of making this recipe (the Egg Board's Christmas Wine Cake, from the early 1970s) with any other implement. Every year I take it out - and nowadays it's actually only this task I use it for - and wonder if it'll blow up in my hand, or merely stagger to a halt with a sad smell of burning. This, my friends, is not that year ... 

And as I went through the laborious task of putting it all together (the cake, not the mixer), with Leonard Cohen blasting through Himself's rather splendid sound system (Himself being in the cold church practising for Advent Sunday), I indulged in nostalgia. I thought of my own pregnant state when making my first cake (I'd shared my mother's in the three years before that, and only made one this time because I was on maternity leave and bored), and of the imminent birthdays of two of my grandchildren, now both in Edinburgh. I even looked up a previous blip to see if I'd posted a poem I once wrote about this nostalgia, and I had (https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2513513488647718470) - so won't inflict it on you again. I thought also of how things seem to take longer every year - I'm sure it was an arthritic thumb joint this afternoon that made me drop the knife with which I was smoothing out the top of the cake, so that cake mix went all down my front as I trapped it between worktop and belly. I have to tell you that the apron which I'd been sensible enough to wear, is now in the washing machine with all the tea towels and aprons from yesterday's skivvying. The cake is in for its first hour, after which it acquires a foil hat and goes back in for longer and cooler until it's ready, and I shall make up for this afternoon by doing some Pilates in the front room. 

In non-domestic news, today is the Feast Day of Christ the King, in which the church celebrates the paradox of the kingship of the baby whose birth  soon we shall be awaiting next week. Our service was entirely lay-led this morning: Di was preaching, a Lay Leader conducted the service using the Reserved Sacrament, and I did the Intercessions in place of someone who was ill. I took the chance to remind everyone to pray for Ukraine as well as for the people of Palestine/Israel - they seem to have slipped down the news. 

It's strange, finding myself laying out the reasons behind a festival that spills out into the dark streets from now until the New Year - but it's a time when it seems more necessary than ever. And I think I sound as old as repeated rituals make me feel ...

Even older than my mixer.