Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Monday, December 23, 2013

Weather. And Biscuits

It was the weekend before Christmas and all through the house ...

Actually, there was quite a lot of stirring. Mostly in my various mixing bowls with my wooden spoon and my electric and hand whisks :-P

We did the (final, I hope) Christmas shop at the Marsh Green Farm Shop and in a strangely quiet Sainsbury's.  I say it was strangely quiet because the car park was absolutely packed. I don't know where all the drivers and passengers were though. They didn't appear to be impeding progress in the store!

Then we went home and I didn't leave the house and garden again until this morning.  The Builder did, but only to go as far as the dairy for some milk.

I spent most of the rest of the weekend cooking.  I made starry jammy dodgers and loads of tiny biscuits: ginger women, cocoa men, vanilla teddies and stars and Christmas trees for my snow park for Christmas Day. We had roast turkey with nearly all the trimmings for Sunday lunch - and in honour of the nearly Christmas nature of it, we ate at the dining table rather than from trays on our knees in front of the telly.  We had apple and blackberry pie for dessert and sampled the biscuits (well, someone has to taste test things - what if they had been horrible?)

We spoke to Stella and Tony on Sunday morning, and then to Lindsey, Freyja, Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki who are all at Mount Helen.  I don't think this is going to be a fun Christmas for poor Tatsuki. He's not a big fan of new people and there are going to be lots and lots and lots and LOTS of new people over the next few days!!  I'm told that when Ian and Ross turned up to collect Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki from the airport, Tatsuki took one look at them and burst into tears.  I think he's still crying :-S

Right.  Let's talk about the weather. We've been having some quite stormy weather lately. Not surprising, you might think, for England in December. But some of the storms have been unusually severe.  We in North East Derbyshire have missed the worst of it (although the Tupton village Christmas tree did get blown down in a storm a week or so ago. It's been put back up again now).  We have had strong winds and very heavy rain but nothing as exciting as has hit other bits of the UK. And the weather for today is likely to be Very Stormy Indeed. Torrential rain, hurricane-like gales, massive transport disruption, trains, ferries and flights cancelled.  Again, we are not expecting the worst of the weather in North East Derbyshire but I am definitely wondering what the state of the trains is going to be when it's time to go home.  And it's all very well suggesting that people might like to defer their Christmas Holiday travel until tomorrow - but I wasn't going on holiday.  I was coming to work.  You can't just not turn up to work because the weather might get a bit bad later in the day!!

Starry jammy dodgers for Christmas

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