Friday

Good morning!  Yesterday turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day, sunny and mild at first.  Overnight, we've had a frost though so right now it's somewhat shivery outside and I reckon it is time to bring in the chilli plant that I'm going to try to keep alive until next Spring.

Yesterday was a busy day.  It started well and ended not so well.

I got online to Kelly's of Danbury, the happy turkey people from whom I always get my Christmas turkeys.  So that's one thing off my mind - the Christmas turkey has been ordered.  Not such a big one this year, just 5k, but they always come heavier and there will still be plenty of leftovers - we love turkey leftovers.  Delivery day is the Monday before Christmas and it will be a lot simpler than last year when I had to pick it up a couple of days earlier as I did an early Christmas dinner at Mum and Dad's and then another one here at home.
Their turkeys are more expensive, significantly so, but they are so good, the birds have a wonderful life and it's a very local business which I do like to support whenever possible.

On the same track, I've ordered a front door wreath and a table centrepiece from a friend who has her own small business.  Inevitably, I taught her son in year one many years ago and, as she was the SENCo at our associated pre-school, we stayed in some sort of contact after that so when I heard she had started up a small floristry business, I was happy to support.
(and it means I don't have to faff around with holly, etc!)

Christmas is looming large on the horizon now and I'm well up with things!  I love it!

I caught the bus into town and got off at the station as planned, to get my tickets to and back from Stratford next week.  However, tragically, further up the line towards Colchester, someone had been hit by a train so all services were seriously delayed and the ticket area was swarming.  I decided to leave it, go on into town and walk back later, which is what I did so now I have my return tickets and HAVE to go!  Yay.

In town, I wandered around, enjoying the sights and sounds.  I bought some red candles in a shop that sells them very reasonably and then had a good nosey around John Lewis.  I liked their decorations but nothing grabbed me.  They had some lovely Christmas trees but I have decided I will take a look in Bickerdikes, a garden centre local to Dad, as I remember they had some beauties last year before making any decisions.

I've been looking for my next year's diary.  I'm not that fussy but I do want a page to a day and it must have an attractive cover.  It's amazing how many of the really nice covered diaries are the whole week ones and how many of the page to a day ones have boringly dull covers - for business, I expect.  Also, this year, I wanted to get a titchy little one to keep as an exercise log.
I got both in WH Smith, would you believe, so I'm pleased about that.

On the way back to the station I headed off into Primark and got the cardigan I actually went in to town to get and, right next to the cardigans were some zip up fleece hoodies so guess what!

By the time I got back to the station, everything had calmed down again so I popped in there before catching the bus home.

The afternoon passed peacefully enough, as did tuition.

Later on though, there was a bit of a stressful and worrying thing.  I can't go into details and things are fine again now but I didn't stay very long at pottery and, once home, dived into the carbohydrates!  A shame about pottery but there's always next week!

Today, I have the morning at home and then I'm off to Dad's.  We're eating at the Millstream this evening so that should be great.  As always, if by any chance I don't get to post over the weekend, don't worry, I'll be back on Monday.  xx