Opera for idiots

We survived Christmas.  Cog came to midnight mass for the first time.  It was lovely to be walking home in the pitch black the council turn the street lights off here at midnight as a family, calm from mass, a lovely closeness and anticipation of the next day.  Well it would have been if teen-terrible hadn't have been so tired she needed to throw a complete strop as soon as we got home. Sigh.

I sported Christmas arms and legs for the day.

The kitten yes, I know she is about 4 now, but she is still tiny learnt to play tri-ominoes.

And the gingerbread house was demolished.  Ironic that OH looks so guilty as he hardly had any.

Oh yes and the quote of  Christmas from my brother to my musical loving mother "Musicals: can't be doing with them, opera for idiots."  Went down like a lead balloon.  It amused me though.

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The best tea and cake view of tower bridge

The north bank by the Tower of London is a lovely walk, past the Tower and towards Tower Bridge. 

But so very cold mid-winter.

There's a new restaurant opened up right down near the bridge.  And by sheer luck we seemed to be given one of the best tables in the house, despite only wanting tea and cake.  I think maybe we got the time of day right, in the lull before all their evening people arrived.  We had a lovely cup of tea, coffee, green tea, juice, hot chocolate and different cakes. The hot chocolate was served as warm milk with a little pot of melted chocolate to mix into it yourself.   As the waitress left she said "call me if you need more" she meant hot water to top up our tea pots with, but our little friend was enjoying her special hot chocolate so much after only a couple of mouthfuls she said "can you tell the lady I will be wanting more of this!"

So I thoroughly recommend The Perkin Reveller for a lovely view, a great cup of tea and a slice of cake, I did notice they do tea cocktails for the more adventurous.

 

On the walk back I noticed this. The gates to the Tower have ER on one set as you would expect but GR on the other still.

I wonder how they will do it when CR is crowned? There's only the 2 sets of gates.  Someone will have to go!

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The Twelve days of the Christmas CanCan

Remember the CanCan ?

Today is the start of the Twelve days of Christmas

But If I'm brutally honest, the start of this is still my favourite: "beer" !

Merry Christmas!

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Christmas Chill Out

Our local Churches do a lot of community events together.  One Sunday in December they do a 'Chill Out'.  It's a free event at the village hall.  Tea, cakes, soup, games for children, crafts, facials, manicures, chocolate fountain.

They always have a table for making Christmas table decorations. My mum helps to run that one.

Afterwards we chilled at home making Cogs friend's Christmas presents.

Best Friend biscuits, all the ingredients (minus butter and egg) layered in a jar.  I think they are a lovely personal thing to give.

She does her own wrapping now too.

Our friends in Switzerland gave us an Advent calender when they were here recently.  We have been a bit lax about opening it this week, which meant a lovely chocolate feast for us in one go.

And it also reminded us to get on with burning the Advent candle which was still tucked away in a cupboard.

Finally we settled down together and read all our favourite Christmas books.  Bill Frog to the Rescue, Mini Mouse's Christmas and others.

Yes, I know she is 14 but I'm past 40 and if I'm not too old for it, then nor is she.

A lovely day of togetherness.

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Christmas Ginger Bread

This year we decided not to make our usual Christmas Ginger Bread Tree

And set our aim a little higher with a house.  My kitchen has never been so messy or sticky.  The making and cutting the sections wasn't too hard once we had added extra flour to the sticky dough that really didn't want to roll.  Rolling it straight onto the baking parchment, cutting it on it and then transferring that straight to the baking tray was the key.

Once we had the cooled sections, we made royal icing, got it into a bag and slowly got to grips with putting it together.

The roof had to be held for a while, whilst it stuck but we were totally amazed that it after a while it stayed put.

The chimney was a challenge but again it stuck and stayed.

Sticking the 'roof tiles' on was just the best fun.  I piped and Cog stuck.

Overall we are very proud of ourselves.  We managed it without tears or tantrums.  We got stuck in (literally), we sang, we laughed and we ate sugar until our teeth hurt.


What a great way to spend an afternoon.

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The Digital Nativity

If you've not relived it yet this year then it's time for the reminder.

Jesus is the reason for the Season.




Oh go on then, BWGWF:

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When will it ever stop?

"How many kids have to die before you say less guns not more?"

For the first time, almost ever I think, I have found some respect for Piers Morgan.

This is an argument worth watching:


How many parents are looking at their children today thinking "There but for the Grace of God go I?"

The Dunblane School Massacre was horrific.  How familiar though do these words sound today:

"After gaining entry to the school, Hamilton made his way to the gymnasium and opened fire on a Primary One class of five and six-year-olds, killing or wounding all but one person. Fifteen children died together with their class teacher."

I am so very grateful now to those that started the snowdrop campaign and helped to start the control of guns here in the UK.  I know we have a problem still with illegal weapons, but imagine where we could have been if the Government hadn't have acted.

Australia also clamped down after the Port Arthur massacre which happened about the same time as Dunblane.


The list of countries by firearm-related death rate by per 100,000 of populations makes for interesting reading.  Sort it by the homicide column.   If you are interested in the laws by country then this appears to be a good website http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/

Those poor families today in Newtown.  One man, one day, a life time of pain and hurt.

I just keep looking at my Cog and can't imagine how horrendous it was and is for those parents.

When will it ever stop?

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Christingle

I love Christingle.
It starts for us on the day before the service, when a familiar group of Church ladies join up to make the Christingles.

The orange represents the world.
The red ribbon around it is the blood of Christ.
The dried fruits and sweets on cocktail sticks pushed into the orange are the fruits of the earth and the four seasons. And the candle pushed into the centre of the orange is Jesus the light of the world.

We make lots and lots of them. One for every person that comes to the service.

And have fun doing it.  It is part of our traditional build up to Christmas.  Something we never miss.

The service is really well pitched for children and it has a lovely family atmosphere, hymns and of course, the 13th century church look so beautiful by the light of all the candles.

The collection from the service always goes to the Children's Society.

For me it really is the start of our Christmas journey.









This week I also did my day helping the local primary school take every pupil to the local church for a Christmas navity service.  We have to do 3 services to fit them all in.  It is a lovely day and a great privilege to be a part of it when I no longer have a small child to awwwww and ahhhhh over these days.  They always sing a particular song that I cannot help myself welling up as I hear all the little voices singing it.

This isn't our school but it is the song :



I know Easter is the most important time in the Church but Christmas is such a special time for coming together and bringing such a closeness back.  I've missed it recently.

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Gregos in Paris

Montmartre has lots of lovely side allies with steep staeps going between buildings.    Every time we walked past a particular one, going to and from our hotel, there was a group of tourist taking photos of the wall.  I had absolutely no idea why and on a quiet passing I did the same.

Once home I investigated further.  Turns out I was witness to a Gregos,  a rather famous street artist in Paris (and elsewhere in the world).

I'm rather chuffed I decided to go take a look.

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Cooking Fat and the Christmas Wrap

This week's Gallery is 'It's starting to look a lot like Christmas'

Like many, I started the Christmas wrap this weekend.

Do you see the fat cat top right.

She loves helping

"I can pick the bows"

"That wasn't supposed to happen"

"need ribbon? I got ribbon"

"am I in the way?"

And in came the kitten: "What? What's happening?  I lurrrrve crinkle-jingle-let me at it"

"Balls, I love balls, and boxes and ribbons and"

But like toddlers, they can't play nicely for long. A cat scrap where I'm trying to wrap can lead only to one thing:

Two little kittens, one stormy night,
Began to quarrel, and then to fight;
One had a mouse and the other had none,
And that's the way the quarrel begun.

"I'll have that mouse," said the biggest cat,
"You'll have that mouse? We'll see about that!"
"I will have that mouse," said the eldest son;
"You shan't have that mouse," said the little one.

I told you before 't was a stormy night
When these two little kittens began to fight;
The old (Kelloggsville is not old!) woman seized her sweeping broom,
And swept the two kittens right out of the room.

The ground was covered with frost and snow,
And the two little kittens had nowhere to go.
So they laid them down on the mat at the door
While the old (I've told you already, not old!) woman finished sweeping the floor.

Then they crept in, as quiet as mice,
All wet with snow and as cold as ice;
For they found it was better, that stormy night,
To lie down and sleep than to quarrel and fight.

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A bedside view of the Eiffel Tower

This was the view from one of  the windows of our hotel room.

And the other window was right next to the bed.  In fact, whilst HWMBO slept, I lay there in the dark just watching it hoping I would remember the feeling forever.  

The feeling of togetherness, the quiet of the night, the sound of his breathing, the lovely hotel sheets and masses of soft pillows all around and the Eiffel Tower to watch in the distance.

Just perfect really.

It's a beautiful place.

So beautiful even brides choose to spend an evening there.

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Climbing the Eiffel Tower

When we went to the Eiffel Tower in the summer the queues were horrendous. Hours long, you can buy tickets in advance but I couldn't actually work out how you used those tickets even if you had one. The whole system seemed to be utter chaos.  

In winter it still seemed like chaos but with shorter queues.  We joined a fairly long queue for the stairs only and queued to a single ticket desk.  It could have been 2 but of course one was closed.  We then had to walk back down the stairs we had queued up, to walk around a barrier, to then walk back up again to go through the entrance to the stairs.  It was all most odd and held up by a bottle neck of inadequate and slow security checks follwed by an inefficient ticket booth,  vive la France queuing inefficiency.

But as seems to be the case in much of France, it was really cheap, only €5 each.  Bargain.  They really could have charged much more.

We made it to the first step in less than an hour.

And despite all the other climbers looking a lot younger than us, we held our own and made level one then two without our legs or lungs collapsing!

The whole tower really is a marvellous feat of engineering.

We were really lucky to be up there as it started to get dark.

It was really cool to see the lights of the city coming on.

Whilst using the stairs only goes to the 2nd floor, I was more than happy with the beautiful view. Although for all it's glory, I was not swept away in romance as I am from the view from the Sacre Coeur or as excited as I was watching the traffic from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.







But as the metal work turned that glorious gold, I was happier to study the fretwork much more than the city view.

The walk down was much harder than the walk up because of the extra pressure it put on my back, so be aware that it's not just about fitness for going up.  I really had to take my time coming down but that just meant plenty more time to stand and stare at the engineering and electrics.

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