Welcome to my perfumed garden

'Deed we are. An exciting quantity of Christmas comestibles has been purchased including several large slabs of fine cheese, potato cakes, oatcakes, gingerbread, mince pies, Very Nice bread, proper marzipan, goose eggs, a slab of toffee, various chocolatey things - oh, loads of stuff. *g* We set off at 8.30, were parked up by 8.45 when the car park was empty (and entirely full by 9pm) got our shopping all done while the shops and market were relatively empty and home scarfing buttered potato cakes by ten o'clock of th' morning. This is a Very Good Thing. ::is smug::

Chorley market was looking very festive, all tarty in lights and holly. I should've done some pictures, shouldn't I? I never think of these things till it's too late.

So, gotta get the last of the cards and parcels posted, clean the kitchen... I found out last night (after a full 30 minutes of alarmed rooting around in the loft) that most of the Christmas decs have been taken to be stored at Dad's and not by me, Mark being a little too eager with the stripping of the loft I suspect. So alas, we are on very short rations indeed. I have lots of baubles as I bought a ton reduced in B&Q last year but no drawing pins to hang them. We could go and get some new stuff but it wouldn't be the same without the same old tatty wonders around the place. But we have decked our humble halls nonetheless. There are  whole forests of evergreens dripping off every surface, lots of lights, many candles, a single strip of tinsel (heh, poor lonely thing) and it's all looking rather fine and - what more do you need, really?

I went up in the hills yesterday where it was frosty and delicious; gigantic moon hanging on the horizon - to get the holly and pine and stuff but lo! Not a berry to be had on anything, not even the ivy. The holly trees I've gone to for years were completely bare. I suspect the poor birds have had them all, maybe the harbinger of a tough winter ahead. And no snow in Moscow! Has their weather shifted our way I wonder?

Anyway I have more cards to write, a kitchen to clean, cards and parcels to post, drawing pins to buy, a novel to plot and a chapter of fic to write. I shall see you on the dark side - and it will be dark, too. Sun's dropping down behind the moors at just after 2pm now and I have much to fit in before it does.