But once a year ...

But I'm never ready. I don't really like to think about Christmas until about two weeks before the day. So it is that I find that there is only one weekend standing between now and the 25th and I've yet to buy the Christmas cards, stamps, presents and whatnot. Of course, I am helped by my policy of only sending cards to people I won't be seeing and only giving presents to six people.

To be fair to myself, I did oversee the baking of the Christmas cake on Sunday (my twelve-year old daughter made it and it seems to have come out perfectly). I also looked in the decorations box in the loft to see if we'd any cards left from last year. We had, and with a sprinkling of Christmas serendipity, I found the thing I'd bought from Grand Illusions last year and had been searching the house for ever since. It was in with the box of tinsel and I don't think I shall tell you what it is. You will have to guess.

I shall go into Reading tomorrow as it is my day off and see what I can accomplish in three hours. I also need to buy myself a cardigan as I honestly and truthfully only have one I can wear. (I don't know how this happened aside from leaving my favourite cardigan at the Knitting and Sewing Exhibition and allowing for the shrinkage of a jumper in the wash. I suppose the weather has been quite clement until recently and I had not appreciated my lack of knitwear.) I'm telling you frankly that I had even resorted to wearing to school one of the man's jumpers I'd bought in the jumble sale for my rag rug making. That's how bad things have become.