My goodness, it is cold today…a sure reminder for us all that Autumn is well and truly over and Winter is now in full swing. As if we hadn’t realised it, Christmas is fast approaching now and although I know it is a sure sign that I’m getting old and grumpy, all the preparations here in the UK seem to start earlier and earlier. We have noticed quite a lot of fully decorated Christmas trees twinkling in windows all around us already…needless to say not here! Our tree does not go up until well into December! Although we have already been asked to register the said (as yet non-existent) tree for collection in January! I despair! My Op shop shifts recently have been very busy with folk grabbing bargains galore to decorate their trees and homes and you can’t move in the shops in town without being bombarded by Christmas songs and music. I do miss France at times where, when we lived there, nothing even remotely Christmassy was seen in the shops before 1st December…but I am told this is no longer the case now. Before I start sounding mega bah humbuggy let us move on and look back over the month.
November got off to a good start as we watched the giant bonfire and firework display, which is an annual big event in Carlisle, from the roof rotunda of Tullie House with Hazel and the little one. We chose to go there to avoid the crowds in Bitts Park, the muddy feet which are normal there, and the loud bangs of the fireworks, as we felt the little one wouldn’t like any of those! Although we couldn’t see much of the fire as the Castle was in the way of course, it was great to see the fireworks with the said castle in the foreground. It was very spectacular and the little one loved it especially as she had room to run about too when she got a bit bored and cold. We declared it a very successful night 
I seem to have had a month of appointments…some of them pleasant and others not so much! I got my hair cut (the pleasant appointment!) and then had two dental appointments and my regular eye injections appointment too. The dental ones were for a check-up - which I think is an unnecessary and expensive evil – followed by an even more expensive “scale and polish” session. I remain sceptical about both these procedures, but my dental surgery bombarded me with e mails, letters and finally a phone call, so I found it hard to refuse in the end! At least I got the satisfaction in the end of the dentist congratulating me on my “courage” (I am almost dentaphobic remember) and the fact that at the age of 72 I still have most of my own teeth! And I persuaded him that once a year was quite enough for all this nonsense! I have given in though to his request and have bought an electric toothbrush! The eye clinic appointment went smoothly and I also now have an eight-week reprieve from there, too. Youpi!
We have continued with all our usual stuff such as my craft sessions, where I handed over all the Christmas stockings I’d knitted, filled with sweeties, pickleball playing for Geoff, U3A French-speaking sessions and my monthly evening at Speakers club where I was “Topics Chair” for the evening. I really enjoyed that, as I was able to give the assembled members a topic (centred around the theme of Happiness) and they had to give a short, improvised speech based on that topic. It was fun as I chose all things that make me happy…and obviously some of the recipients did not always agree with my choices! I also got the chance to put my public speaking skills to good use as I was asked to speak at our church’s Wives Club the week afterwards. I chose the topic of “Vive La Difference” and highlighted some of the many differences between life in France and the UK…such as driving on the wrong (?) side of the road, food and mealtimes, shopping etc etc. It went down very well and I enjoyed doing it.
I also did another session, this time with a Christmas theme, with one of the Guides Troops who meet at our church. This time it was to help them paint rocks, something which I’m sure you all know by now is something I do all the time! Again, it was great fun and the girls produced some very good stones with robins, trees, fairy lights, snowmen, Santas and holly themes. I tried to emphasise how much children (and adults too) like to find them out in the countryside and neighbourhoods and it must have gotten through to some of them as I did get reports afterwards of some of them having been found locally, which was nice.
In fact, we have spent quite a bit of time this month on Church linked activities one way or another. As it was also our Christmas Fair there too one Saturday. Geoff was asked to repeat his starring role dressed in red and white and thoroughly enjoyed doing that, snug in his grotto with Hazel as his little elf helper, whilst the rest of us were busy selling crafts and cakes or serving coffees etc in the main hall! It was all a great success though and we raised over £1000 for church funds so everyone was very pleased. He is delighted to have been asked to perform again at a local playgroup’s Christmas party next month too…so I suppose I will have to play elf that time! We also managed to spend a very pleasant afternoon at another of the churches in our circuit, assembling all the Shoeboxes we had been making or collecting stuff for over the past month. I still think it is a very worthwhile thing to do and I hope all the children who receive those boxes enjoy all the little gifts we put in them.
We have, of course, continued to eat out on Wednesday lunchtimes all this month and have enjoyed re-visiting some of our favourite eateries such as The Trout at Cockermouth, Upfront Gallery, the Crown and Thistle at Rockcliffe and the Metal Bridge near Gretna. I also met up with my old nursing chums at Hexham last week, where we had a great catch up with family news and put the world to rights as always! We laugh that after 50+ years of friendship we always have plenty to talk about…even if the topics have gone from parties and social events to grandchildren and ailments!! It is great though to see them all again.
One more sober event this month was the USA election. I watched the news coverage with mounting horror and hardly dared to turn on the news the following morning. I, like many others, am astonished that Trump is once again going to be the president of the USA. I cannot understand how anyone
(and especially any woman) could vote for him and his policies and I confess to being more than a little scared of the future of not only that country, but also of the world, with him and his cronies in charge. I hope my fears are not justified. We both also got very annoyed and frankly very bored by the BBC news coverage of this election. Why we had to have whole so-called news bulletins full of speculation and overkill reporting from the USA, when so many other things were happening in the world, I do not know. In fact, a lot of the BBC News these days is not really “news” as I remember it, but a series of “in depth” investigations into this and that. Geoff no longer watches any of it and frankly I don’t blame him!
Of course, during November, we have also had all the Remembrance Day events. I was very proud to have contributed quite a few knitted poppies to the stunning displays which were erected in Carlisle city centre. These displays were admired by so many people…and rightly so as they were really fantastic. We didn’t actually go to either of the ceremonies in Carlilse this year but we did take part in our church’s service, where I was asked to read the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. Somehow the thought-provoking words of the poetry of the 1st World War are still so resonant in our world of today. The 11th November always brings back memories of our time in France when most of our commune walked to the war memorial and then on to the little cemetery and flowers were placed on the resistance graves there. We always wore our poppies with pride on that day.
So, here we are at the end of November and heading rapidly into Christmas as I said at the start of this post. I now have to confess that I have done some Christmas shopping, but in spite of having received my first Christmas card already, have not yet started to write mine! We have started to buy stamps though…they cost a fortune these days don’t they? - but I refuse to go down the ”I`ll donate to charity instead” route as I still love getting cards from friends and family, I don’t see very often. And, incidentally, the tree is still nowhere in sight as yet! I will though just wish you all a very Happy Christmas my friends, as it will all be over by the time I write the next blog! Scary thought eh??
A bientot et Joyeux Noel mes amis