Twelfth Night: The Last Mince Pie

The festive season was sub-optimal. There I've said it, and in the cringeingly bad jargon of management consultants. But it was difficult. We overreached ourselves on all the cooking and shopping and then the cats got injured, and people got ill, and work got in the way, particularly all the calls about buildings flooding. And the weather has been truly awful. Nobody's fault and other people had far worse: the poor buggers who got flooded out or had to live without power over Christmas.

For me a certain sadness that it was the last Christmas where I technically still had a child around the table. But only technically. In reality those Christmases have already been and gone. So a bit of mourning for the days of being with children with toys and family films, of eating the chocolates off the tree and actually finding the awful cracker jokes funny.

Life moves on. Twelfth night and more rain and back to work tomorrow which is in itself depressing. The last mince pie and a glass of wine.

No dawn breaks in the bleak midwinter unless you force the sun to rise for yourself so I shall enjoy the cosy evenings, maybe have a log fire, enjoy my huge stack of kindle novels that I bought in the Amazon sale, and nurse cats back to health. Monty comes home on Tuesday after his operation, so we will focus on his and Scout's rehab, and look forward to a couple of nice social things coming up later in the month.

And anyway there are only 353 days until next Christmas ...