Saturday

 Good morning.  I was wide awake at three thirty this morning which was a right pain.  I stayed in bed and started to read the Christmas Radio Times.  It looks like there's loads of programmes I would dearly like to watch over Christmas so that's good.
I haven't looked out yet but I expect it is pretty damp after the brighter weather faded yesterday and the drizzle started.  Today's forecast is not encouraging but that's life.  

Messenger seemed to be working fine again so Chris and I got our chat - until her signal started breaking up.  Never mind, we had half an hour of most enjoyable non-stop chatter and fixed a time for next week.

I spent the rest of the day very lazily.  After sorting out some piles of clutter (there are more!!), I stet to with my cross stitch which is coming along quite nicely.  I've reached the point where one starts to worry that maybe there isn't quite enough thread left (there always is!) so getting there.  It's the second of the three I bought so maybe I need to go rootling in my box upstairs and find another one to do when these three ate all finished - sadly, I do have quite a number so really should never have bought those three.  I'm glad I did though.

I finished watching the second Christmas Chronicles film on Netflix.  I've enjoyed both films in the series very much - soppy, sentimental but with more than a hint of grit in their own way, very good family viewing all round.  Worth watching, if you can.

There's another blank diary today but I do have a few things to do.  I must get the spare bed ready for Alex, I have a parcel to pick up from the post office, annoyingly.  It seems they need ID and I didn't hear the door.  I'll do that this morning.  Also I have some baking - Alex takes some feeding so I shall bake some bread, make some cinnamon biscuits and have a nosey in the freezer to see what I have for main meals.

And there's always the stitching.

A later edit.  I forgot the most important thing - today I am getting out the nativity set.  It's a beautiful wooden carved thing, bought when my two were very little so it has to be coming up forty years old and out every year since.  I love it and am hoping it will be valued when I am gone too.

Musical Advent Calendar number eleven is 'Thorns in the Straw' from the now fairly old album 'Rumours of Angels' by Graham Kendrick.  I just love this one.

Since the day the angel came
It seemed that everything had changed
The only certain thing
Was the child that moved within
On the road that would not end
Winding down to Bethlehem
So far away from home

Just a blanket on the floor
Of a vacant cattle-stall
But there the child was born
She held him in her arms
And as she laid him down to sleep
She wondered - will it always be
So bitter and so sweet

And did she see there
In the straw by his head a thorn
And did she smell myrrh
In the air on that starry night
And did she hear angels sing
Not so far away
Till at last the sun rose blood-red
In the morning sky

. . .