Christmas Resolutions

I have made one or two decisions about Christmas:
1.NO fancy wrapping paper, I will wrap all presents up in the Guardian, and stick pictures on them cut out from my eightieth birthday cards and Good Luck in your New Home cards.
2.I will not make a Christmas cake with burnt currants round the outside and marzipan that nobody eats.
3.I will make an enormous quantity of mince pies and freeze them as they always come in useful
4.I will not go into WH Smiths, Boots, or Marks and Spencers until the New Year.

Grand daughter M is on a Sit In at UCL and texted me to say she would not be coming home this Friday after all as they are having `negotiations with management` This fills me with alarm even though I have been saying I am proud of my grand children going on demos as I used to do.
I have been busy lately writing my memoirs though that seems a grandiose term for an account of my uneventful unremarkable life.  The problem is, what do you put in and more importantly what do you leave out?  No good just writing about the good times.

I am just back from four nights away staying with two separate pairs of octegenarian friends. We exchange symptoms: deafness, arthritis, memory loss, insomnia,cramp, the list is endless, but we are all cheerful and enjoy life, and I had a good time.    Back today after over threehundred miles altogether of luscious English countryside with lots of interesting radio 4 en route.  The cat greets me rapturously and it is good to be home. 
I have just waded through the post, emails, and December`s issue of the Odie magazine which makes me laugh.      H whom I stayed with has given me one of his paintings and with the post was a self portrait from dear friend E  so I have two lovely new pictures to hang on my sitting room wall tomorrow. All the pictures in my house are painted by my friends and family. They give me great pleasure.

Another film, another year.

I went to see Mike Leigh`s new film Another Year yesterday afternoon and as usualI am totally immersed in the characters and story today, trying to work out in my mind whether the two main actors were really the kind good people that they seemed to be, or if they had to surround themselves with needy,disfunctional hangers on to survive. As a background, the film shows the four seasons on their London allotment, with them working in all weathers, and I found that very moving.
I am interested to hear that the Queen is now on Facebook too, so another octegenarian is poking and writing on walls with the rest of us.  I gather that any offensive messages are edited out by her lackeys.
Today in the Guardian, there are pictures of the students revolt yesterday and granddaughter M has texted to ask me to save them as she made some of the posters.  I am glad that two granddaughters have taken on the mantle of going on demos. I have recently given up after about forty years due to my feet which are no longer up to shuffling along Whitehall.  

no news is bad news

I went to the Ditchling Film Society last night in the Village Hall to see The White Ribbon, a surreal German film :a whoduunit where you never found out whodunnit, partly a ghost story and with a cast of strange children and sinister characters.  This morning, there was a bus queue sitting on the wall outside the chemist next door, and we all discussed the film. That is what I like about this village. There is always someone about for a chat.
There is a strike today of journalists (it makes me remember my dad who was a keen member of his union the NUJ) so there was no Today programme, no World at One and no Five oclock News programme either. I feel very bereft, I am so accustomed to it burbling on with all the familiar voices. I hope they are all back tomorrow.