Advent

Just before we went to bed last night, Big Dreamer and I laid out the nativity set on the landing sideboard. We draped it with fairy lights and hung Little Owl’s advent calendar behind it. When she woke up this morning she couldn’t believe the magic that had appeared in the night. I wasn’t sure if she would remember about advent calendars from last year but she certainly did! “Choc-at, mummy!” she said gleefully, pointing at the calendar. The advent calendar chocolate will add itself to a strict diet that Little Owl has put herself on. She appears to be mainly living on peas and ketchup at the moment. I don’t know if she really likes the ketchup or whether it just serves the practical purpose of gluing the peas to her fork. I’m reassuring myself with something I once read by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s mum. Apparently he went through a phase of only eating cake and we all know he certainly eats a variety of things now!

You will probably have heard of the wild storms over Scotland at the moment. The burns are pouring down off the hills and our main road through the valley is a torrent. The icy rain has a suspiciously fuzzy appearance, definitely bordering on snow. I looked out of the kitchen window this morning to see that the whole entire top of the bird feeder was missing. We found it in the garden but two of the seed holders were smashed and had to be sacrificed.

I’ve put up an illustration I’ve produced for one of my final projects this term. I based this image on a line from a Wilfred Owen poem called Anthem for Doomed Youth. The quote reads “And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.”