Busy doing nothing....

I am getting anxious about Christmas presents. I trudge round terrible Burgess Hill gazing at `Christmas Gift Ideas` with despair. The trouble is that I only ever want to buy the sort of things I want myself, such as bath stuff, chocolate and books. Also I am hopeless at wrapping things up and usually wheedle a nearby grand child to do it, but this year the Brighton family are decamping to India for a fortnight so will not be around.    I am going up to my Newcastle family,  so I have visions of myself stumbling along from St Pancras to Kings Cross with Bradley Wiggins`s  lead getting tangled up in people`s luggage trolleys and me carrying badly wrapped unwieldy parcels.  So today I am going on a hunt for what Joyce Grenfell used to call `useful and inexpensive gifts` of small proportions.  And what are we all going to do about cards this year? Just send emails or ring people up and send the money to disaster funds?   Perhaps.
Bradley Wiggins has done two clever things lately.  I went to the Film Club in the Village hall last week and when I came back the TV was on very loud. He had sat on the remote and was on the sofa watching the ten oclock news. The week before he somehow managed to sit on the phone and ring someone up. What next I wonder,e mails?
At the Infants this week, Teacher was telling the children how to do nothing,  meditating in other words. I have been thinking about it ever since. 

Love me, love my dog......

I got told off by the Headmaster (manager of Dumbrells Court)for letting Bradley Wiggins run about on his long extending lead and barking. He said he was intimidating the inmates. I felt suitably chastened and now have him on a short lead and I carry him if any one hoves in sight. Most of said residents do seem to like him but it is easy to forget as a dog owner that not everyone loves them as we do. There was a brilliant play on at the Village Hall last week: the amdram performed `Quartet` which has also been a recent film, and is about four elderly residents in a home for retired musicians. Most of the audience was elderly too (in fact one fainted and had to be carried out during the first act)so it was a good choice of play and it was so well acted. I have never had much luck with bird tables. Other people get intersting birds like woodpeckers, wrens and long tailed tits. i only ever get big brash, cheeky magpies. and a few dusty pigeons. I wish I could get to like them.

Oh, wild west wind......

I was all keyed up for the biggest storm since 1987 and then it was quite mild here in quiet sedate Dumbrells Court, though people not so far away had power cuts. Brother P came to stay last week and we were just settling down to a play to kill game of scrabble when the electricity went off. I couldn`t find candles or matches -lost in the move, and it was a while before we could get back to our game, (which was a tie!) So I learned a lesson to buy some candles and torches. I realise that if there were more power cuts this winter I wouldn`t even be able to make a cup of tea which is a sobering thought, but in the meantime it is cosy and comfortable here. I keep discovering new and interesting footpaths on early morning walkies with B. Wiggins (better now that the clocks have gone back) and I am getting niftier over the many stiles. B W is now used to all the rabbits, geese and sheep (on a lead of course) Grand daughter M is going to a world U.N. conference on Climate Change in Poland. She is travelling to Warsaw by coach, 24 hours. I suppose I did uncomfortable things like that when i was her age, but I worry about her, though I am proud of her too for going. We had a good quiz night last Friday in the Village Hall. I was the only one on our table to know that Hans Brinker was the the name of the boy who stuck hos thumb in the dyke to save Holland from being flooded, but I was woefully ignorant of Olympic sporting heroes and pop music idols. But it was a lovely evening with delicious food, a typical Ditchling event.