Some pre-Christmas nonsense.

Yesterday evening they switched on the Christmas lights in our village centre. This caused some problems for some friends of ours who were due to arrive because it is not possible to drive directly to our house because of the roadworks. Normally we would just tell them to drive round the village but this was closed off. So Phil went and met them and took them on a long detour. The fireworks at the end of the switch-on were impressive though.

Christmas is coming on apace. Are the frosty mornings a sign of this? I am not sure. The fact remains that I must think about organising myself. The weekend magazines are full of (helpful?) suggestions of possible gifts, including such things as a sleepmask for £55.

In an article about what people spend at christmas one gentleman stated: “I spend £10,000 on Christmas presents for my family.”

This is a Mr Phil Smith who lives in Salisbury with his wife and two children, 22 and 24.

“I’m not a rich man as such” ( but he does own a haircare brand!) “but I always like to spend at Christmas.”

He has bought a Gucci bag for his daughter in the past, Chanel for his wife. “They all get new iPhones each Christmas”.

Amazing! 

Another person, Marguerite Spina from Edinburg stated: “We make gifts for each other.” From one extreme to the other!

Eva Wiseman writes today about receiving news of Marie Kondo’s new online shop. Like Eva Wiseman, I am intrigued and a little disappointed. Surely Marie Kondo was all about decluttering, not about selling us more clutter to fill the spaces we made by throwing stuff out.

It’s Christmas, you see, making us buy stuff nobody needs.

Words - I read that crazy originally meant full of cracks or flaws. Interesting that we also talk about someone being cracked or crackers. It comes from Old French “acraser” meaning to destroy or smash to pieces. Hence crazy paving - which I always thought was so called because it is a crazy way of putting paving stones down but actually refers to their being broken. Who knew!

Silly facts! The black labrador is the second poshest dog breed in Britain. The poshest is the chocolate labrador. I must tell my granddaughter, who has a black labrador.

She will be impressed.