Bomble in comic colorsplash

It's been one of those days. Sun came out, went in, and so on. I never did get out to check the holly-with-berries-on, to pick some for later, because the sun was so elusive. Instead, I did a few loads of washing, changed the bedding, ordered some cards with one of my photos (yay!), listened to a few audio things, and generally pottered around. Bomble followed me around all day. At one point while I was sorting out the bird feeders, he posed on the fence, so I snapped him. Once the feeders were refreshed with sunflower seeds, the nuthatch came straight in for a carry-out.

This is black beauty Bomble with the comic effect from Photogene and the green eyes from the Colorsplash app, which I used for the first time today, OLE! It is almost impossible to do a straight portrait of B with no effects because he is so black that there's no definition. Besides, if there's an envelope, I'll push it (under the bed, in case it's a bill?)

Yesterday, after a sterling effort, I finished the audio of The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather on audio, and the book of Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell. I loved the latter, and several co-incidental things have happened to me involving gentlemen of the road or hard-up people, since I started reading it. The latest of which is that my niece got arrested for selling her clothes in Brick Lane market without a vendor's licence! My sister TML has written about it here. The Willa Cather audiobook was not up to snuff, so now I'm listening to Swimming home, which I think is a murder story, and reading My Driver by Maggie Gee because Richard Donkin (I think it was he) recommended it way back when, because his tutor recommended it to him! I read My Cleaner by the same author back in the summer on the Isle of Wight, and could not put it down. Blipfoto and the WEA (workers' educational association, a programme of university-standard lectures for people in the UK who could never afford to go to uni) will keep me in reading suggestions for the rest of my life. That, and my curiosity about pretty much everything except pure maths, particle physics, and income tax!

Things I have not done today:
made the Christmas cake
tidied my desk
done any more of the jigsaw puzzle that the Martians wrecked yesterday

Other things I've done and enjoyed:
1 Howard Hodgkins on Desert Island discs from 1994 on Radio 4 extra
2 Random programme about St Andrew on the same channel. Apparently, this fisher of men was likely born in the Middle East, died in Greece, and has no back-uppable claim to links with Scotland! So all that Scottish country dancing on 30th November is just a diversion to brighten up the long dark nights. As they said on the programme, the late singer Andy Stewart has a closer link to Scottish people world wide than Andy of Gallilee! Ach well...

For the record, I had an ancestor who is now a saint.(John Ogilvie). Being a martyr, he was disembowelled at Glasgow Cross. My sister TMl, who had loads of fun in our childhood because she was the eldest (but also had the strictest education and a top-heavy share of responsibilities) went to his canonization in Rome in the 70s. She came back and said she'd learned all the words to "Ye cannae shove your granny aff a bus" and had her bottom pinched on another bus! I'd say it was definitely worth it.