The seeds of festivity being sown

After yesterday's uplifting weather came the swing of the pendulum. Rain all day and now all through the evening as well. I really couldn't find the motivation to pick up a camera.

We watched tv together, even watching a programme about Christmas No. 1 chart songs, where I saw a quick image of myself in one of the promos videos. It does remind me of some rather halcyon days, which feel like a former life nowadays. Woodpeckers seems amused by it too. She was reminded of one of her former lives recently, when she got a Christmas card from Dana, her friend from her teaching days in the Czech Republic, whom I met a couple of years ago when she came to stay here on her summer holiday with her teenage daughter. She has blipped the card today.

But by eleven fifteen this evening, the smell of baking mince pies provided the necessary blip prompt. I knew that Helena wasn't happy, worried that the oven hadn't been hot enough and that she'd taken them out too early. While waiting for the temperature to rise, I sneaked a couple of pictures.

I think they look rather good and golden. They certainly smell like Christmas should. I may even have to break a habit of a lifetime, by not refusing a mince pie, which I have come to dislike for some complex and forgotten reason, probably based back in childhood.