Wren

This is the last Christmas card I've left up. It's a woodblock print by my brother, who started experimenting with the medium during the 2020 lockdowns, then ran out of time once the opportunity to work from home had ended. Now he has taken early retirement and plans to spend a lot more time working with wood. He learned woodturning from our father and during his student years had a busy part time career as a lace bobbin maker, but has struggled to find much time alongside a busy career, family, house renovations and garden. More recently he has embarked on some carving, including the beautiful Green Man he made for my sixtieth birthday, and the woodblock prints. I'm looking forward to more beautiful cards to join the small handful I already have.

It was a busy, indoor day, so bitterly cold and heavily overcast that I was not too sad to have no time for a walk. I supported J with her weekly Art Talk (more Scottish artists, some lovely things) and later with an AAC meeting on Zoom. In between I gave her lunch in her room, as it was the warmest place in the house, which gave us the opportunity to catch up with Call the Midwife on BBC iPlayer. The previous week's story, about a woman with cerebral palsy, was particularly engaging for us, but it's the one series we consistently enjoy together, and always something we look forward to. The current series, set in 1968, is portraying times I remember from childhood, with carefully researched and created sets full of familiar objects, and the storylines are often rooted in social issues and changes of the period.