Frosty beries too. Oddly the birds don't seem to like these much.
Freezing fog and deep deep frost make staying at home the most desirable option but I have to go to the Post Office and then on a quest for curtains to give me privacy in the now closed shop. It's far too cold to think of working in there at the moment; I'm sitting here in fur boots and my coat - inside the house!

Frosty webs everywhere. I spent most of yesterday in bed with my new polar bear hot water bottle, a good book, the occasional dram, and chocolate. Very deliciously cosy and sybaritic.

Skype skype hooray!

Christmas day was warm (in the extreme, Iain's wood burning stove could warm a drafty castle with some left for the heavens,) delicious, (leg of wild boar much recommended) and family-full. Skype brought the Cambridge people into the living room so we saw Sandy in his Santa outfit, Costa downing his first dram of the day, Fin quaffing orange juice and Theo holding his head up (almost.) I'm definately getting a camera for this iMac.

The extra pleasure this year was the addition of new family members in the persons of Iain's parents who are very kindly folk, and I'm sure his father, who was a branch manager for the Bank of Scotland when I was running up overdrafts there, is much too much of a gentleman to remember me from those days! He says he stopped enjoying it when he no longer had the authority to authorise loans by visiting the builder or farmer or whoever to see if it looked as if they knew what they where doing. Now-a-days its all ticks on a check list and off to head Office with the application. I'll bet he got a few drams offered along the route in those pre-nanny state days.

The downside was that Iain is still in pain and standing almost at a right angle. Chloë not only has Sandy to be concerned about but a partner who is getting more and more depressed because he can't work. As he is a partner in a small forestry company that depends on him being able to wield a chain saw and climb trees this situation isn't good. The verdict on his back seems to be a prolapsed disc which could mend itself in time or need surgery. Either way chain saws and shinning up trees don't look like activities he should be undertaking in the future. He is getting VERY fed up with doing the accounts and watching day-time TV. Understandably.

On a lighter note, when I started to rise from a chair last week I got stuck half-way at about the same angle Iain has been forced to adopt for the last four weeks. I, unlike the poor lad, wasn't in pain, as long as I didn't try to straighten, so I found myself dissolving into unhelpful fits of laughter at the thought of Chloe walking down the High Street with one of us on each arm wearing a T-shirt advertising her osteopathic services. It was cured by kneeling down on my way to try lying flat, so if anyone sees me curtsying in the street they should understand I am just putting my back - er - back.

The shop is open at the moment but I'm not sure how long that's going to last. I have a need to hibernate, not have to talk to anyone... I think I might shut the doors again in a minute..

Oh my goodness, I've just been given a tray of Ferrero Rocher from the manager and volanteers at the Red Cross shop. I'm not sure when I was last so surprised or touched by a gift.

Earlier today I gave a large box of biscuits to the women (and man) who work in the Post Office for their tea breaks. They were pleased too.

Maybe there IS something to be said for Christmas after all.

Queues in the two Tesco's within eight miles of each other were, reportedly, 35 minutes long yesterday and causing creative shopping amongst those lucky enough to have a partner with them so one could start queueing whilst the other did the shopping! What madness! The shops are open again on Saturday. Customers coming in here said it was a haven of tranquility and possibly they spent more as a result because the takings were good.

Now that closing day is here I find myself thinking of opening between Christmas and New Year. It's going to be harder to finally shut the door than I had thought. Lots of clearing up to do before I can allow myself to settle to any new project so hopefully a new routine will arise naturally as I clear up my mind along with the rest of the chaos.

The need to drive south has faded as grandson becomes integrated into the busy family life in Cambridge. His fire-lighting skills have been appreciated and he's good with the toddlers so everyone is happy and he doesn't seem so needy of a visitation from an elderly grandparent. Thanks be to his overlighting angel!

To toad-watchers everywhere - he is back in this area and therefore not sponging on new, unsuspecting ladies, which is good news.

Suggestions for after-dinner games?

It's surprising what disappears from the shelves at this time of year. I can't believe all of them are destined to be Christmas presents. 'The History and Reconstruction of the Athenian Trireme' doesn't sound like a present, even for the man who has everything. I did wonder if it was a sort of after-dinner activity for all the family, a bit like Lego only large scale.

Lots of crime novel are going too. Wishful thinkers no doubt, plotting aunty's demise before she changes her will. It must be obvious by now that I prefer the crime novels from the Golden Age of crime. The motives were so much more obvious, just the primal drives of love and lust for flesh or money. Much less subtle, psychological and realistic, therefore less depressing. It's all got too shlock-horror and forensic for my taste lately. If I have to contemplate another beetle's life cycle in order to age a corpse I may lose the will to live myself.

Boaring

It seems feeble but I have started a course of anti-depressants. The events of the last few months- longer even - have taken their toll and I reluctantly decided it was necessary before I become a complete bore to everyone around me. Whilst I would never find it amiss for friends to resort to pharmaceutical aids it did take me a while to admit I might need them myself. About fifteen years ago I took Efexor for six months and was impressed by how much better it made me feel; I remember catching myself really enjoying something and being startled by my own enjoyment. We can bump along on the bottom of the emotional floor without realising there is anything wrong. A level of anxiety and unhappiness becomes normal. Probably that is why the shop has ceased to give me any pleasure and why I feel tired all the time.

Right now I'm in the first uncomfortable days when the drug (not Efexor this time) is permeating my brain - hopefully - and there are uncomfortable side effects with no appreciable improvement in mood. Even so the very act of taking them has given me a more hopeful attitude. Two days ago I serously doubted I could produce any Christmas jollity at all, which would have been a shame as it's the first Christmas dinner I'm not in any way responsible for except for steaming the pudding. We're having roast wild boar. I was asked to find recipés and Google did not disappoint. The one I was most pleased with was found on the walls of Pompeii - I suppose they needed a relief from the erotica. In the end almost all the recipes (including the Pompeii one) involved long marinading in sweet wines with spices. So that is what is happening.

Other lives.

I celebrated the shortest day in Scotland by lighting
a candle and snuggled up under a blanket in front of the TV with the central heating on high but today I had an email from friends for whom the last month has been very different. I'm including it here to cheer myself up really - otherwise this place gets as cold and dark as the days feel at the moment.
I would like to tell you what
our solstice was like, to give you a flavour of our stay in our beloved beach
resort in southern India, close to the equator.
For me the day started with 2 hours superb Ayurvedic treatment (that
is one reason why we always go here), followed by breakfast with
freshly pressed fruit juice, looking out onto the sea, watching the
surfers, and taking in the daily promenade theatre, which is the
usual hawkers, occasional beggars, and a lot of new, pale tourists.
Then walk along the beach to our sunbeds and work sensibly on our
tans. At weekends the beach is entirely Indian, the women in their
beautiful saris or salwar kameezes, and I feel naked in a modest
swimsuit. Still, a long dip and swim in the warm Arabian Sea, and then more sunbathing and a fruit salad in the afternoon.
Back at our hotel a nice swim in the swimming pool, watching the
sun set on the shortest day, which here was almost 11 hours. We have been here all of December. We will stay here until just after my birthday. Then we will move up the west coast, including Mysore and other places of interest, ending up in Goa for a final week to soak up the last Indian sun, before we
hit cold wintery Scotland. Dear friends, I deliberately left out any info on our travels so far, because you can't sum up 4 weeks in the north of India plus 4 days in
Kathmandu.

The Pagans and Wiccans and those who just like the earth-linked traditions have celebrated the Winter Solstice (shortest day, hooray, all up from here) and the Jews have begun Hanukkah, and the rest of us (worshippers of Mammon?) are battling our way round the shops trying hard to find the Ho! Ho! factor. I thought the High Street would fulfill my every need and subsidised by on line shopping it did with no battling, but there is still food to be bought and Tesco was like one of those inner rings of Dante's Inferno this morning. I can't understand why as the shops are hardly closing for the holidays at all. It has always been understood that the real holiday is Hogmany and two days are (or were) allowed to recover from hang-over from that so that when I first came to live in Scotland I was slightly bemused at the absence of panic buying for Christmas, then taken aback by how long it took the food shops to open again after New Year. there was no supermarket in town then. It seems that enough incomers from the South have crept up bringing with them their bad ways.

Happily the buying people have included my shop in their itinerary and, although the takings are way down on last year because my stock is so depleted, I'm still getting a bit to spend on the Christmas Day stocking fillers and some alcohol.

Everyone seems to be catching the Puritan fear of intoxicating liquor. I thought it left with the Mayflower and we were therefore shot of it but there's a disturbing element creeping back. It's true the Scottish tendency for melancholia and alcoholism is a problem - worst on the islands and the isolated places of the West Coast where there's nothing much to do through the long winter nights. The Scandinavians have the same propensity for depression and inebriation. Still I was slightly shocked by the reaction of two different doctors to friends of mine who turned up for their appointments after, in one case a glass of red with lunch, and in the other a tankard of real ale. Both where told to come back next week when they hadn't been drinking!

Yuletide cheer - not yet.

No-one in our family seems to be having fun at the moment. The Cornish family are suffering from a virus that isn't about vomiting so still have that pleasure in store. Sandy is OK but predictably homesick at night and as he is one of these strange beings who Can't Sleep (unlike his grandmother who seems to sleep all the time) if it continues there may have to be an emergency rescue dash, always supposing I manage to stay clear of dastardly bugs.

Hey ho. It's all this trying to be cheerful that's to blame in my opnion. Abolish Christmas and we'd be better off in more ways than one.

I have packed and dispatched two very large boxes, confidentally expecting to see them boomerang back here, as has happened in the past at this time of year. Whilst I fought with one this morning I remembered, unfondly, parcels I have dispatched over the years since the children started to wander - mainly to Costa as he alternately ski-ed and windsurfed. There was a Christmas pudding and cake that I fear never did make it into the principality of Andorra, and then there were the skis that had to be sent to an almost inaccessible part of France (or so I was told by the courier service as they held out their hands for their extortionate fee.) The French postal service in those days was erratic at best. I think the skis got where they were wanted in the end but it had been a difficult wrapping operation involving a lot of old underwear instead of bubble wrap which is too easily pierced.

Just had a phone call from Sandy who is bewailing my stay-at-home plans... oh rats... He untactfully said 'But what have I got to look forward to then?' His poor hostess was sitting next to him in the car. I imagine she would like to wring his neck.

Fin auditioning for a new TV junior chef programme.

Introducing Theodore Bjørn .... (and I don't think the parents noticed that that computes as Teddy Bear....)

Wassail

It's been a long time since I felt like writing anything here. Not for me the wondrous Art Deco glass, juke boxes, pin-ball machines, meat loaf, really powerful showers and being in at the birth that Chillside talks of with such relish. Nothing to inspire craft-work or word-spinning for me.

There was a very pleasant ten day interlude travelling to Cornwall to see the new grandson who is highly satisfactory, the terrible-twos toddler who is highly entertaining, and the woolly dog who doesn't make me sneeze (one of the fashionable poodle crosses that Obama missed) but then came the return into a nightmare situation with Number One Grandson which had to be resolved, at least on a physical level, with a solicitor's letter delivered by sheriff's officers.

I may not have needed valium to fly but I reached for it a few days in to this episode; it is just so upsetting, enraging and ultimately depressing that someone can mess up a child's life so utterly selfishly. The story will run and run but at least Sandy seems to be standing up to his dad a bit and is behaving like a child again.

For the first couple of weeks since I got back the shop has hardly been open; I just couldn't face making small-talk and answering the usual queries. Now it's open a bit more consistantly with a sign on the door to say that it's closing at Christmas I'm having to field a constant barrage of 'Oh what a shame. What are you going to do with yourself? What are you going to do with the shop?' and etc. I'm still not in a mood for chit chat so they get rather short shrift. Many are clearly hoping for a clearance sale and look very dissapointed when I say I will be selling on line.

There was a point when Christmas wasn't going to happen for this family this year but once we had the lad back things gradually picked up and now I'm swept into the usual reckless money-spending round, made rather worse because Sandy has chosen to go to the Cornish family for the holiday (I think he imagines himeself windsurfing... some hopes as it's winter and Costa has to work) Their Christmas will include their own children and two other infants, plus three more adults. As they are all being very good to accept Sandy into their celebrations I want to show my gratitude by sending presents. The idea is nice the actuality less nice. I panic at these times and end up buying far too much and probably all the wrong stuff. I could open another shop with scented candles, Demon cards (like angel cards only more amusing I hope) bath salts, Yogi teas, fudge, angel mobiles, toy trains, rocket gizmos that will probably take someone's eye out, miniture bottles of booze, finger puppets, a little pink crocheted hat with a green stalk on top, a set of metal tubes to mke music with, photo frames, jigsaw maps of the world, silk bead necklaces, more candles..... now all I've got to do is wrap them all and post them. I'm planning not to put names on the adultish things so they can lucky dip them and swop as they feel moved.

Urrgh.