wrappings

OK, I know- I haven't been near a computer for 3 days and there are a lot of emails, etc to catch up on, so please bear with me. I know it's not that unusual, but I seem to have been glued to my laptop of late, so 3 days seems like a long time.

Sooo... Saturday night, well, I saw Dick Gaughan at the Trades Club along with 3 friends and 196 extremely folky Dick Gaughan fans with beards. (Where did they come from? I heard a rumour it was Huddersfield.) He is like a cross between Billy Connelly and Christie Moore, who takes himself too seriously, and can sing and play the guitar really well and gets really pissed off if anyone decides to get up to go to the bar during his performance, even between songs! "would you do me a favour? and shut the f*** up? I'm trying to sing here." Ahem...
Anyway, so Sarah and I walked Kelly home and we ended up at hers till after 2! Then I decided to give Sarah a lift home as it was so icy cold, so I made it at least half way up the track. When I got back Freddie was up, of course! But at least the fire was lit. I got to bed at 3 o'clock. I had been woken up by a very annoying cricket-sounding BlackBerry alarm at 5am that morning, and only managed 2 more hours sleep...how did I stay awake that long? Must have been having a good time.

So, Sunday of course I did almost nothing, well, I did manage to produce some meals. I watched a film on TV.

Monday I spent all day doing about 5 loads of washing. I tidied and hoovered my room, which involved completely sorting out Freddie's and Fergus's drawers so I could put their clothes away. I also had to sort out the leaky ceiling as it was dripping on the stairs again and creating a bit of a danger zone. This involved emptying the receptacle in the loft which catches the rainwater. I can't get into the loft, I can just about get my head into it to see. I managed to get a hose into the container and syphon the water out. Of course I had to suck on the pipe and as I was so much lower than the water, and teetering on the top of a stepladder, which was at the top of the stairs, I ended up with more than a mouthful of water before I got it in the bucket. At this point Joy very kindly pointed out that the last time the hose was used it was to empty out the fish tank- bleurh!!

I had been trying very hard not to go on the computer all day, so as to not ignore the children, anyway I was too busy. Meg wouldn't let me in the evening and shut my laptop when I tried to glance at it. Then I had a phonecall- at 11pm, if you please. Then I had to go to bed. So no 'me time' at all.

Today I had to go shopping, so we did that after dropping Joy off at school, and called in on the way back with my offering for the fruit rota, which was "obviously too much" so I took away some of the satsumas- they don't eat much fruit those children, "obviously". I also brought I hideously chocolate Santa: my comment on/contribution to the chocolate tombola ;-)

When we got home we did a bit of present wrapping, for which I found his rather lovely paper, which, in the words of many a Blue Peter presenter, I made earlier ;-) . It is made by rubbing with leaves under the paper, using a gold crayon and block beeswax crayons. Freddie made some gift tags, using card, a hole punch and gold stars while Fergus did some wrapping with paper and string.

Aw, what a lovely pre-christmas scene! Have been thinking about christmas trees- they were talking about the one we had 2 years ago that was enourmous and shed needles everwhere. It was a hired one, and it came far too early but I had to bring it in because it was really windy. It must have been 11 feet high!
Actually it doesn't look as big as all that now but you can't see it's bent over at the top.