The shortest day

Scroll down to the entry for 3 December for the Annual Ramblings

 ...and the time of year when we start to look forward to more light from a sun that's a bit less uncomfortably low in the sky.  It has been a delight to have three fine, bright days in succession - so long as you don't need to drive anywhere.  The good weather coincided with a visit from Philip from Costa Rica, who plainly had a can or two of Central American sunshine in his suitcase.  We thus got to show him the town and a little of the countryside.  He is now in Suffolk for a family Christmas, but I fear he's had the best of the weather. 

It was fine enough yesterday afternoon for me to get out and hack down some of the dead top-hamper of perennials.  The brown stems and leaves of phlox, iris sibirica etc were starting to depress me.  It was most definitely a wellies job: the grass is waterlogged and very slippery.  (I sent the lawn treatment man away yesterday morning, telling him to put the office in touch again in April.)  The garden is hardly inspiring at this time of year, but there's a little colour left on penstemons and a couple of patio roses at the front door.  We bought a few trays of pansies the other day, so we have a colourful and welcoming basket on the wall by the front door, with the remaining few plants added to pots out on the terrace.  Some of the pots are full of bulbs, which are now very active, and will appreciate the top dressing of decent compost.  Out in the borders, the daffodils are starting to poke through.  We presume that they're floating to the surface.

Phil is a stamp collector, and was pleased to fill some gaps in his collection at a stamp shop, the existence of which was news to me, here in town.  I went with him, and was impressed.  They have a very good stock of stamps, and may be interested in some of the stamps that lurk in my cupboard.  I worked a couple of Universal Postal Union Congresses, translating turgid documents about the international postal service from French to English.  The occasional bit of light relief came along in the form of minutes of plenary meetings at which international political spats were slugged out: if I remember right, both Congresses spent a lot of time debating proposals to expel South Africa from  UPU membership (this was back in 1974 and 1979, I hasten to add). 

Though the work was sporadic and rewarding only in that it allowed me to practise a skill, the fringe benefits were good: generous expenses, vast amounts of junketing, jolly jaunts on Sundays, attractive gifts from the host administration and of course the stamps.  Many delegations dished out albums of all the stamps issued in the preceding five years.  I hope mine haven't been damaged too much by the time they spent on bookshelves in the sitting room back in my smoking days, and by the years they have spent in cardboard boxes.  Stanley Gibbons used to send a buyer to each Congress for a week or so, but I decided at the time to hang on to my stamps.  Time to ship them out now, I think.  I'll have a look through them later and decide whether there are any I still want to keep.

The sitting room is a mass of colourful cards, festooned round the double doorway between the rooms, and hanging from light fittings and the ends of the curtain rail.  They tell me that this approach makes something called 'dusting' much easier.... I love the greetings from friends at this time of year, and when it comes to the controversial topic of round-robins, you'd gather that I'm in favour.  One brought sad news this year: Mum's cousin Jean died in January.  She and her first husband Jack followed her parents' pattern of lengthy trips to the UK, and stayed with the parents in Broughty Ferry.  On one trip, Jack had a mild heart attack while they were staying with the parents, and on the next visit, he had a worse one while they were in Stratford-upon-Avon.  He was the next in the queue at the crem after J B Priestley: a somewhat ironic claim to fame.  Jean had rather lost the place in recent years, though it was a cancer that finished her off.  We shall raise a glass in her memory on Christmas Eve, which would have been her 95th birthday.