Turmoil

I spotted the sunset out of the window, rushed out, and wished I hadn't. The wind was the kind that blows tiles off roofs (there was visible evidence). I didn't dare go any further than this, so not a great foreground, but I like the progression of streetlights.

The forecast had been for wind all day, 50 km/h with gusts of 85, and this was certainly true. I went into town this morning to shop and drop off my poor sick Olympus camera. The screen's only been working intermittently for a while, and now it doesn't work at all unless you tilt it to a certain angle. It must be a loose connection I think. The camera has a viewfinder, but it's still very inconvenient not to be able to see the screen. So I decided to bite the bullet and send it off to Olympus for repair. Who knows when I will see it again, given that it's Christmas?

I went into Lidl and was delighted to find it piled with seasonal treats. I bought some mini stollen there when we were in Spain and was terribly disappointed -- they were clearly a different recipe, majoring on nuts, dry and crumbly. The French ones make no bones about it: the packaging proclaims 45% marzipan, 10% butter. Yum!

I also bought a free-range chicken for a very reasonable 12 euros, and for lunch S made pot-roasted chicken with 50 cloves of garlic, also yum. Fewer cloves than that actually, because they were huge. We all enjoyed it, although Mystère skipped the garlic.

Apart from that, we stayed in. It's not cold (13C this morning), but I didn't envy the people out pruning vines in the howling gale.