Early ...

This is Argyll Street, Dunoon, this evening. I've just been out posting our votes - don't like to leave them sitting around after fretting that they were later than elsewhere - and was taken by the different lights on show. There's the town Christmas tree, which last year was pretty trashed by wind and weather well before Christmas and came down pretty soon after. There's one of the lamp-post lights, which must have gone up without my noticing - or are they always hanging there? 

Behind them are the lights of the Borough Hall, where the pantomime is being staged tomorrow and Saturday evenings. It's being billed as quite a show, including flying children (it's Peter Pan). And suddenly, across the road from our house and in several houses up and down the road, there are Christmas lights and trees.

I'm not going to go all Advent Police on here - it's daft, considering the small numbers of people who subscribe to any form of Christianity these days. I didn't actually know about Advent till I was in my 20s. It just strikes me as somehow spoiling the specialness of the season when you have to live with the trappings for four whole weeks. In the days when Christmas trees were largely real, and not particularly bred for needle retention, putting a tree up too early was a recipe for mess and much hoovering, and when I was a school child and even a teacher we had exams in December before we could think of decorations and other stuff. 

Now, I like to observe an octave of celebration for my birthday. But after it, not before. And the older I get, the more I put off acknowledging that I've accrued another year ...