Light Show

We are mid-way through a good movie - Red Island - about the last days of French colonial presence on Madagascar. One of the leitmotifs is stone: exotic gemstones; the bleached white stones in the impecable gravel path to the officers' mess; and a sub-plot about a table - apparently highly patterned marble, but identified in the dialog as 'aragonite', which I've never heard of

Now I know that it is both formed in sedimentary rocks and found naturally in the shells of some marine creatures - crustaceans and corals but, for millions of years, in the shells of ammonites. I think the patterns in the movie table were ammonite fossils

Chemically, aragonite is 'just' another form of Calcium Carbonate, like the calcite in limestone (though there is some aragonite there too), and in the limewash on the kitchen wall. The calcite crystals were almost blinding in the morning sun. An hour after I took this picture, the next front had come over and cold rain was lashing in from the west, in temperatures only just above zero. Take your chances

We are not into the fashion for decking the house in an LED light-show. Our Christmas tree is in its 4th or 5th year - outside with some coloured lights. This is the only external decoration of the house itself. Less is more