I’M DREAMING OF

 A dry Christmas, with no rain or snow or hail - actually no rain would be good.

So Happy Christmas to all those in more balmy (barmy?) climes from Welly boot land.

I have been rash and bought a small chainsaw for pruning and dealing with all the fallen wood after the snow. Unlike the banks we have lots of branches on the ground. So the stream is unblocked but the grass is so wet water runs across it and I have to paddle and squelch. The gardener wisely has stayed away. (It is raining again.)

The twenty first is the shortest day (hurrah!) so I can only get longer in the tooth from now on.

And then storm Pia came along and blew and soaked us all.

All around then garden are remnants of the summer that need clearing away -

But the weather is so unkind. I has planted grasses after seeing them covered in frost and looking beautiful in magazines but now they will have to be cut back and removed. And R and I have had some sort of cold - she coughed and I ached. No I do not know if it is Covid as our testing kit is out of date and why bother anyway. As it becomes gloomy outside the sky turns, not red, but a pale purplish grey like a bruise. And in then background is the roar of the wind.

So happy Christmas and New Year!

But there are signs of hope, snowdrops through, daffodils too and buds on the camellias.

And the winter flowering viburnum bodnantiense is well out.

And every day there is four o’clock again and again, and it is dark, no moon, no stars just cloud, and rain.

FOUR O’CLOCK 

It's four o'clock, whatever I say,  

it's four o'clock again,

a dark and drab December day,

and it's just begun to rain.

The sky is filled with dismal grey

we’re short of sun again.

Time is ever set at four

this year’s gone down the drain,

And its miserable outside the door,

its four o’clock again.

Winter - always four o'clock,

as the afternoon light falls,

I would go outside. unblock

the beck but can’t be arsed at all.

I shall makes some tea

For R and me, have a piece of cake,

take a break from the dreary rain,

Oh! It’s four o'clock again.

But the tree is up and decorated, we have bankrupted ourselves in the supermarket so for ten days Scrooge will have to go on the back burner and wait.