Rituals

I may have mentioned before that I'm an obsessive diarist, having kept a written diary since I was 10 and now, because of Blipfoto, maintaining two records of days one after another at bedtime. Knowing this, my grandsons have in the past decade given me two five-year diaries, which mean it's all too easy to see what I was doing last year - or five years ago - at this time of year and to measure my progress or lack of it in relation to getting stuff done. Hence my title - but it's better than that. The photo today shows another daily ritual involving Rituals products - the Advent village that has been my younger son's generous Advent gift for the past four years now. First we had to build the village - for you get nothing for nothing - and fix the lights under the base so that they lined up with the windows and doors in the houses, allowing the windows to light up after you remove the gift of the day - which we do ritually in the evening when the lights show up best. 

So what did I get done today, do I hear you ask? Well, apart from another leisurely beginning, I washed a few things - like the jersey I spilled mango chutney on last night (the stickiest thing in the world) - and did my Italian, making far too many silly mistakes. After coffee we went out, as I'd decided that it was no longer sensible to go on steaming Christmas puddings in a 54 year old plastic basin. I found a new version of the same in the hardware shop down the road, and was seduced into also buying a stainless steel bowl described as a mixing bowl but just the right size to press into service for a spare pudding ... I stopped to speak to the man maintaining a witness outside the Burgh Hall  for Palestine's suffering, just standing there with a flag and a banner saying "Silence is Complicity". Two people came and joined him while I was there, and when I passed later there was quite a bunch of them. 

We then walked the mile or so to another hardware store for batteries and a stray gift for someone, and walked home in a fine drizzle. I didn't go out again, but instead ticked off another part of the rituals by making two puddings, about which I harboured some doubts as they don't look as pale as usual. Himself, meanwhile, practised the organ and then took all the cards to the post box - another cog in the ritual. 

And that was that. I was going to past a dramatically wonderful dawn sky, but I'm quite pleased with the village photo. I finished watching You Only Live Twice - what stilted rubbish we used to watch! How have we changed so much in 60 years?