Thursday

Good morning!  It's a cold and frosty one.  I know because I woke with a jump realising that I had forgotten to put the bins, etc, out and they come very, very early.  It's all out the front now and it's definitely cold and frosty!

Yesterday started off with Sharon working her usual magic with my hair and with Beth's too.  I feel so lucky to have someone who comes to ones home and who is so good (I think she is, anyway). 

I'm still full of cold so, after making the biscotti (delicious), I settled down to some reading, knitting and telly watching with the occasional snooze until it was time to walk round to school for the Infants' Christmas Show which was a delight from start to finish, mistakes and all.  I've been involved in enough shows in my time to know just how much sheer hard work goes into them so well done, everyone.  It was jolly nice to be able to walk out at the end with no responsibilities, knowing full well the chaos back in the classrooms and that the hall would need to be sorted out.  I smiled all the way home!

Today the diary is empty until tuition and then pottery.  That's nice because the aches haven't gone so I'll be good to have time to rest.  However, I definitely will be walking round to the polling station to vote like a good citizen, even though I am dreading the outcome!

It's a double treat of Christmas music today.  I have many 'favourite' Christmas songs but one, I think, stands a few inches above all the others and that is the carol 'In Dulci Jubilo'
So here's the first version.  The so, so happy interpretation by Mike Oldfield.  It makes me want to laugh, sing and dance and I love that every instrument was played by him.

But here's the best one.  It was a standard choice in the school Christmas concert when I was a teen and so, so singable.  It's Pearsall's arrangement of the carol, sung by Kings, so different from the Oldfield interpretation, more thoughtful and 'deep' and it's just wonderful.