Creating holiday vibes

Waking to the bedroom windows totally steamed up with the contrast in temperature between our room - not exactly warm, but heated by our bodies, presumably - and the air in the centre of the double glazing, I decided that this apparently perfect, clear, cold, frosty day was going to be spent in holiday mode. This to me can mean many things, but the idea today was to disregard the timing or substance of meals until we got to dinner time (I'd planned that already), to eat whatever I felt like and whenever it seemed appealing, and to get out in the sun and enjoy this blue sky. Nae huvtaes, nae pressure...

So I finished my breakfast after 10am. I did some Italian after I'd dressed but before I cleared up. We had coffee and a little biscuit - a chocolate one. And then, as we did yesterday, we went out. This time we drove south, terrifyingly into the sun and sitting like meerkats, down to the Ardyne car park and walked up the hill, past the trees, down to the big house sitting locked up and forbidding since Russia invaded Ukraine (it belongs to the son of one of Putin's pals.) The road was intermittently icy in a scary way - usually water draining out of the fields, or out of a farm gate and over the road - but we had on boots and took to the mud to get past safely. It was absolutely lovely, and though a few cars passed we didn't actually see anyone except near the car park. There were hundreds of Canada Geese in the field, chatting to each other ...

We were back at the house just after 3pm and ate toast and Christmas marmalade - with cranberries in it, a delicious addition to the hamper our #2 son gave us - on the last two slices of bread, and half a banana each. And then Himself went off to the church to practise for Sunday (very important - will explain then) while I did more Italian, tidied away some laundry, and made a loaf for tomorrow's breakfast. 

Then I popped outside to see if there was any sign of the Aurora and instead caught the image I've added as an extra - the moon sharpened to an air-thinned blade (not me - Philip Larkin) in a dusky pink sky with Venus off to the left - and felt lucky. Himself came home and I made dinner - the last of the venison, more delicious than ever - and subsided feeling I'd succeeded in doing more or less what I wanted with the day. Now it seems to have started to snow ...

Main photo is of the ancient, shattered tree at the top of the road between the farms at Ardyne, looking south towards the hills of Arran.