Boxing Day

on a foreign shore: icing-tipped waves
toss tinsel into the clear air. We play
at Wenceslas in the sand, taking it in turns
to be the page. We look for sea holly and sing
carols under the curious gaze
of a parrot in a palm tree.

old habits

When the family went on holiday when I was a child, my parents always took books with us so we could identify the birds and flowers we saw in the different parts of the UK.

I’ve been visiting my mother this week, which I suppose counts as being “on holiday”, and she still has the same books. Not that we needed them to make a list of the birds we’ve seen from the lounge window while I’ve been here:

happy hollydays

Yesterday was the solstice, the shortest day, and, officially, the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere.

When I get back to the village, maybe we’ll burn a yule log to encourage the sun to return.

all the rage

I haven’t been following the X-factor/Rage Against the Machine story, but it’s one of those things that filter through even if you aren’t the least bit interested in it, and the headlines this morning make it unmissable.

Even so, the only real interest I have in the story is that it’s triggered a memory of being asked by a Swedish friend’s son, back in the early Nineties, what Rage Against the Machine meant.

monkey see, monkey puzzle

A while back, there were a number of stories in the news of villages in the UK where they had decided to cut down old monkey puzzle trees because the needles were deemed to contravene health and safety regulations. (See here for one such story.)

I was glad, then, to see that the one in the village where my mother lives was still there when I walked down to buy a paper this morning: