Christmas is just around the corner

Couldn't help but notice this weekend that Christmas is well and truly drawing in on us. Fingers crossed it should be a great one with Emily being old enough now to take on the magic of father Christmas and with mrspumps doing a fine job of internally creating our second, it should be quite a memorable one for all the right reasons.

Christmas adverts on the tele, Christmas decos in the shops, neighbours returning home with car loads of Christmas shopping - it's frightening how much of the calendar year Christmas (as a commercial franchise) has a monopoly on.

I captured today's shot on my phone camera having not taken old pointyclick out. We were at a local farm park and these ducks were pretty entertaining and lively until this great clucking pomposity stomped around the corner [see background].

He knows in his biological make-up that December is rapidly approaching, so he was fluffed up to the eyeballs chasing all the birds around looking for any final conquests to add to his coup-posts before his comeupance. The ducks knew this too well and proceeded to quickly curl up and hide well away beneath their wings, in a message that seemed to project "you're not having our kind, you overdressed, vainglorious Christmas dinner!" A beautiful moment to witness!