....and relax.....

I can't move my head this morning.  This is most alarming as I've not been doing anything vigorously enough to ensure my neck goes into spasm apart from trying to get my turquoise footless woolly tights off last night without bending down or falling down the stairs but managed to get entangled anyway.  Maybe that's the problem.  I've been sat sitting on this sofa, in the same position, with a laptop on, um, my lap for what feels like most of this year and perhaps, just perhaps, my body's decided it's had enough.  But, listen here body, causing the muscles in my neck to lock up so that I have to dose myself on Ibuprofen and Paracetamol just so I can turn my head is hardly conducive being more active now, is it? Hmm?  No, it's bloody not. I can barely twist my top half enough to reach the giant sized tube of Smarties on the side table, so I'm hardly likely to head off outside into the freezing wind for an invigorating jog now, am I?  Didn't think that one through, did you? Asshole.

So, here I am, sat sitting on the sofa with the laptop keeping my bits warm, necking Smarties directly from a giant tube, and reflecting on the Christmas that has come to pass.  On the whole, it was pretty good.  There was snow on the ground so it was a proper White Christmas for the first time for many years.  Log burners were lit, champagne imbibed and food crammed down the gullet, which is as it should be.  Sadly I didn't get to see my family beforehand due to the weather, but we're meeting up next week for present-swapping so that's a New Year's Day to look forward to (probably the first ever!).

I discovered the joys of the Amazon wish list a few months back and was using it as a handy place to keep note of the books that I fancied reading at some point in the future.  Then it dawned on me (razor-like brain that I have) that as Xmas approached it could usefully work as a christmas list so when family asked what I wanted, I’d just point them in that direction. They bought me the lot! Nine books in total, including some on knitting ('Domiknitrix' by Jennifer Stafford and 'Purls of Wisdom' by Jenny Lord) and crochet ('Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots and More' by Christen Haden) as I'm intending to teach myself how to knit this year; a big vegetarian cookery book (Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian); a gardening book telling you how to grow interesting stuff ('A Taste of the Unexpected' by Mark Diacono); a thriller set in Eastern Europe at the start of WW2 ('Night Soldiers' by Alan Furst); two anthologies covering the entire six books of the Mapp & Lucia series by E F Benson ('Lucia Rising' and 'Lucia Victrix') and finally 'Auntie Mame' by Patrick Dennis.  These are all very fine books indeed and will keep me quiet for an extremely long time.  Bizarrely I have discovered that it takes me ages to read books - I'm yet to start reading books I got for christmas last year!  I've found that if I start reading in the afternoon, after half an hour I have to have a nap, so I mostly now like to read in bed but I don't get the chance to do that very often, hence it takes ages to get through a book.  Perhaps I should make a New Year's Resolution to try and read a bit more....

Apart from the lovely books I got perfume. a scarf, a CD, waterproof gardening gloves, general bits and pieces, but my favourite presents were from The Lovely Husband.  He normally gets me something really special and pricey (in the past I’ve had a camera, or a kiln, or a diamond ring, or an expensive charm bracelet, etc. - yes, yes, I'm materialistic but I'm helping to keep the economy going.  Don't judge me) but money’s been hard-won this year so he’s scaled back - I don’t care because they’re gorgeous:


Beautiful purple Celtic Sheepskin slippers - mmmmmmmm, toasty!


Gorgeous fingerless gloves, handknitted and crocheted from handspun, hand-dyed wool.  Just look at those colours and wallow in them.  Lovely, lovely, lovely.



This is most definitely something to aspire to with my future knitting projects.

So today is a lounging around day.  Look, it's after midday and I'm still sat sitting here in my dressing gown and purple slippers, and I really don't give a toss.  Sylvester's been fed some smoked salmon so he's happy.  I'm listening to The Lovely Husband plinking away most proficiently on the ukulele while he's waiting for labels to soak off the many empty wine bottles in the kitchen sink before he spends the afternoon bottling up the Blackberry wine and Damson wine that's been sitting, getting all fermenty, in demijons in our garage for the last six months, and It's. All. Good.