I drop the dying year behind me....

Guess what? I found a Carol Ann Duffy poem for New Year's Eve.

New Year

I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl

and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves

against the night, flowers of desire, love's fervency.

Carol Ann Duffy

champagne

Wishing you all a Very Happy New Year

2011

The Month of December

It started with snow... and lots of it...Which meant
I missed going to The Vintage Wedding Dress shop with a dear friend.
We missed going to see my parents... which meant we did lots of Christmas shopping instead.
Winter cocktails with the Best Girls at Skylon - The Winter Warmer kicked quite a punch.
Wanting to be a snowflake having marvelled at The Nutcracker with mother, Twin and Blessing.
Lunch with university girls at Browns.
Festive drinks and pizza with dear friends at Rocket.

Making Cranberry mincemeat for mince pies...
It snowed again which meant...
Walking through the snow to meet up with dear old book club friends, drink mulled wine and eating mince pies and Nigella's Christmas morning muffins.
Buying The Christmas Tree. Then decorating it. And then admiring it.
More mulled wine and mince pies this time at Beas.
Christmas events at school. Our class Nativity tableau, Christmas Parties, Staff Panto.
Morning coffee in Forest Hill.

As part of trying to be productive this Christmas holiday I went along to Somerset House to see the Rene Grau exhibition on Dior illustrations. It was lovely to walk past the ice skating.

Diorama 1955

Books read - The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, Miss Buncle's Book by DE Stevenson (my Persephone secret santa).
Films watched Joyeaux Noel and Elf on Christmas Eve in front of the sparkling Christmas tree. United 93, The Reader. A most enjoyable time watching Upstairs Downstairs on BBCiplayer whilst Warmth was at work.

Shopping - bought not one but two pairs of boots - quite different ones and there was 25% off them both - so I saved money. However with the snow it took along time to wear one pair. Thankfully neither of them are in the sales - phew right decision. Good sale shopping at SpaceNK too.

Christmas Day in Kent with my family, The Blessings were on good Christmas form, Boxing Day over eating - family friends for lunch and then a drive up to London to see Granny Warmth. Huge Boxing Day tea there including Mama Warmth retelling The Story On Top of the Christmas Cake. (There's a whole post in this but basically each year there are topical (both family and news worthy) events illustrated on top. This year an errupting volcano, the Chilean miners, a 'No to university fees' protesting Father Christmas, and then when the cricket really did go well a cricketer appeared!)

Christmas cooking on the 26th for Family Warmth.
Parsnip and Stilton Soup, Turkey, Ham and Cranberry pie, Aubergine Involtini, green salads (on my insistence), potato salad and pasta salad. Christmas Pavlova, a disastrous caramalised clementine pudding, delicious Neal's Yard cheeses and then devouring a large box of Quality Street.

New Year's Eve tapas with dear friends and then back to our own homes for fizz and welcoming in 2011

On the fifth day of Christmas

My true love sent to me

Five Gold Rings

Which one would you choose?

Monica Vinader,Agrigento, Carla Amarim, Anne Sportun, Boodles

Book Gifting

A small post about the books given and received this Christmas.

Gifted
For Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Another night before Christmas

and her 12 Selected Poems, Tim Burton The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, Wisden Cricketers Almanack 1986 and 1999
For Twin Mrs Dalloway's Party Virginia Woolf
For Brother in law The Flavour Thesauraus
For Pops John Le Carre Our Kind of Traitor
For a dear friend Hatfields Herbal
For Godchild Ted Hughes The Iron Man
For another Godchild ABC in Animals


Received
From Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Mrs Scrooge and 12 her Selected poems, a beautiful diary, A World History of Art (having mentioned once that in hindsight sometimes I think I'dd quite like to have read History of Art at university.)
From Parents Vogue covers

From a dear friend Sarah Broom Tigers at Awhitu.
Persephone Secret Santa Miss Buncle DE Stevenson

What books did you give or receve this Christmas?

Yea Lord we greet thee

I always know in my heart and the Chistmas tingle appears when this verse is sung. (I get slightly disgruntled if it's sung before the 25th December too.)

Yea Lord we great thee,

Born this happy morning;

Jesu to thee be glory given;

Word of the father,

now in flesh appearing.

stockings

Happy Christmas To You x

Giving

Our final quote from the fabulous Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory

"It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have." Truman Capote A Christmas Memory

biscuits

The gift of baking

Decorating The Tree

"A trunk in the attic contains: a shoebox of.... coils of frazzled tinsel gone gold with age, one silver star, a brief rope of dilapidated, undounbtedly dangerous candy-like light bulbs. Excellent decorations as far as they go, which isn't far enough: my friend wants our tree to blaze..., droop with weighty snows of ornament... We do what we've always done: sit for days at the kitche table with scissors and crayons and stacks of coloured paper. I make sketches and my friend cuts them out: lots of cats, fish too (because they're easy to draw), some apples, some watermelons, a few winged angels devised from saved-up sheets of Hershey-bar tin foil... As a final touch, we sprinkle the branches with shredded cotton (picked in August for this purpose). My friend, surveying the effect, clasps her hands together. 'Now honest Buddy. doesn't it look good enough to eat? Queenie tries to eat an angel." Truman Capote A Christmas Memory

Angel

candy striped

How will you decorate your tree?

Finding The Tree

" I know where we'll find real pretty trees... And holly, too. With berries as big as your eyes...
'We're almost there; can you smell it Buddy?' she says, as though we were approaching an ocean.
And, indeed, it is a kind of ocean. Scented acres of holiday trees, prickly leafed holly. Red berries shiny as Chinese bells: ...we set about choosing a tree. 'It should be,' muses my friend, 'twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star.' The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute... Lugging it like a kill, we commence the long trek out...But we have the strength of triumphant huntsmen; that and the tree's virile, icy perfume revive us." Truman Capote A Christmas Memory

tree

Tomorrow we'll decorate the tree.

What is a Marriage?

"What is a marriage? Words. A commitment. We pledge ourselves to someone else. It is probably the most significant commitment any of us can make, and it depends on our moral determination to honour it. A declaration of marriage does not mean: 'We are man and wife so long as we find each other attractive or compatible; so long as we feel passion for each other; so long as we don;t meet someone more attractive.' It means 'I will be woth you whatever faith brings. I will stay loyal to you. When you need me, I'll be there. When things are tough, I won't walk away.' A marriage can begin in attraction, shared interests or common destiny, but by moralizing the bond it lifts it to an altogether different plane. A personal commitment is stronger than passion, emotion or attraction. It is a pledge to spend a life together, come what may." Chief Rabbi Jonathon Sacks Celebrating Life

Alternative Wedding Flower Love

peony love
stem vase love

floral tin can love

Hope you've enjoyed this week.

A ring glimmers on your hand

No I'll not take the half...

No, I'll not take the half of anything!

Give me the whole sky! The far-flung earth!

Seas and rivers and mountain avalanches -

All these are mine! I'll accept no less!

No, life, you cannot woo me with a part.

Let it be all or nothing! I can shoulder that!

I don't want happiness by halves.

Nor is half of sorrow what I want.

Yet there's a pillow I would dhare,

Where gently pressed against a cheek,

Like a helpless star, a falling star,

A ring glimmers on your hand.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Oh to have had abundant candles and fairy lights....

(Alas being a 14th cemtury tithe barn there were no candles allowed anywhere vaguely in the vicinity.)

candles

dancing by fairy light

candles


lights