Advent calendar 7 - Chinks...

Of course what would Christmas be without a few drinks? 

Well, today is Sunday and as usual my Sunday afternoons, particularly the ones where the hail and rain freezes on the windows, are made just a little warmer with a Mojito or two.

Today's Mojitos were particularly required as we spent most of the early afternoon putting up Christmas decorations. Over the years my joy at doing this has become less with each passing year and today - to be perfectly honest - I almost couldn't be bothered at all.

Thankfully they are up now and it won't be too long before we are taking them down.

So with that I formally declare the time of day to be Mojito time! Please feel free to join me.

Here's what you need...

70ml white rum

Mint Leaves

Lime wedges

25ml sugar syrup

Soda water

Here's how you do it...

Crush the mint in your palms to releases the aromas and place at the bottom of the glass.

Chop lime into slices and place on top of the mint.

Add sugar syrup on top of the mint and lime.

Muddle gently to release the lime juices.

Fill your glass 3/4 full with crushed ice

Pour in white rum and soda water.

Stir everything together well, sugar rim the glass, and garnish with a lime slice and mint sprig if you can be bothered.

Chinks!

Advent calendar 6 - And what will poor robin do then poor thing...

Well, the North Wind has blown today, it's been bitterly cold, and when I got up this morning the little robin, who visits my back yard occasionally, was perched upon the rotary washing line.

I'm not sure what he was doing there. Maybe the walls surrounding my tiny garden offer him some protection from the cold, maybe he came to peck at the meal worms I leave out for him, or perhaps he simply came to say hello.

He always seems to turn up when I least expect him and it wasn't until quite recently that he began turning up at all. In over 25 years living in this house I'd never seen a robin in the backyard, and then this one appeared just a  few months ago, dropping in a couple of times a week for a few minutes or so.

Some people believe that when a robin visits and perches by your side that it's the spirit of a departed loved one bringing you comfort. Well, try as I might I can't think of a single departed loved one who would come and sit by my side, let alone offer me comfort. In fact most of the living so called loved ones wouldn't turn up either, not that I'd give them the chance.

The robin keeps coming though and, regardless of why he comes and who he might be, I'm always pleased to see him. There's something about his bright read breast, his soft snowy grey underside and his delicate red-brown back that seems to fit very well into my backyard. He makes me smile and, if I'm honest, he does give me comfort even when the coldest wind seems to blow.

NB- He was back again this morning.

Advent calendar 5 - Broken things…

The shop windows are all lit up with sparkling lights and wherever you look, behind the plate glass windows, Christmas trees and white wicker deer abound. I always stop to look, I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the glitter attracting the magpie in me, a   watching magpie waiting for his chance.

I seem spend a lot of time looking in from the outside. I always have done, not in a Peeping Tom kind of way you understand, but I am fascinated by the interior of things. When I was a child I was constantly taking things to bits – my toys, scalectrix cars, torches, my Uncle Mick's new indicator light, clocks, I even pulled the stuffing out of my teddy bear once to see what made him tick. 

I kidded myself that I was trying to find out how things worked and that I’d be able to put them back together again. In reality though, once I’d broken into a thing it stayed broken. It got me into all sorts of trouble.

It remains a problem to this day and I’ve lost count of the number of watches and clocks I’ve broken after first prising off the back just to check. What I am checking for I have no idea, but there always seems to be a spring or a cog that ejects itself a la James Bond the minute I gain entry. It’s almost as if they are waiting to escape. Springing the spring one might say.

Anyway, a fixer I am not. I’m that man who went in search of a tiny leak in the bathroom and ended up destroying it so badly that it had to be replaced. I’m that chap who tried to get the boiler working and practically blew us all up. I can make things, but don’t ask me to unmake them. If I take them apart I never know how to put them back together again and usually I don’t want to. Time is not always the healer people pretend it to be you see. Particularly when the guts of the clock are hanging out for all to see. 

Sometimes it’s best to leave broken things broken.

Advent calendar 4 - The Christmas shoe...

‘Bold in Ballerinas’. Yes, Cinders you shall go to the ball.

The everyday has such stories to tell if only we walk slowly and take the time to notice the little things that might show us a bigger picture. Of course, with my knees I have little choice (a blessing), but I see so many people rushing when they really could take their time, with a tut on their lips as they avoid and pass my snail like pace. Sometimes it feels like their whirlwind is trying to suck me in and drive me along to the march of their drum. Well, I’m past all that – I really can’t and won’t be told what to do; no matter how hard they hit the snare.

Plod on, plod on, my own pace, and if not to a drum then at least to the beat of my old heart keeping me in time with the music around me.

That shoe though.

That bold ballerina shoe with the black and silver bow buckle (size 3) discarded upon the pavement not five-hundred yards from my house. The shoe that even I, slowcoach and all, almost failed to miss as it lay on the pavement by the concrete wall surrounded by the last of the damp autumn leaves.

That shoe.

Just who did it belong to and how did they come to lose it?

Well, it is panto season and it’s always behind you so I don’t turn around - my mind immediately drawn to Cinderella rushing from the ball on the stroke of midnight, Beauty fighting off the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin stamping his way to Hell. But this was no glass slipper and, as far as I am aware anyway, Prince Charming doesn’t live on my road in his castle.

The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen, Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood - and the WOLF…

All the old winter tales come tumbling into my head and in a moment I am swept up by snow geese and carried away to the ice palace to play with the shards of a broken mirror like some old bloated Kay with a splinter in his heart.

Just a shoe that’s all. An old shoe probably dropped by the bin men as they heaved the rubbish bins to the waiting lorry. Just an old ‘Bold in Ballerinas’, size 3.

That splinter hurts.

I wonder?

Advent calendar 3 - Frost...

The first real frost of winter settled upon us overnight, covering the cars in a white rime and freezing the sap in the flowers that have so valiantly struggled on past autumn. Well, it had to come didn’t it, the cold snap; it wouldn’t be winter without a touch of frost.

I volunteered to scrape the wife’s windscreen and I was surprised just how thick the film of ice was. Of course I neglected to wear gloves and by the time I’d finished scraping my hands were freezing and my fingers felt like icicles as I scratched the word 'Frost' in the white stuff.

Icicles, now there’s a thing. As a child I loved looking at the icicles that hung from the guttering above my bedroom window. They sparkled like diamonds in the cold white moonlight. Of course I wasn’t so keen on the ice that formed on the inside of the windows overnight, but those icicles were a little bit of magic in a world where I needed as much magic as I could get.

My bedroom was at the corner of the house and my bed backed onto an outside wall. On bitter cold nights I would put my hand on the wallpaper and feel the cold permeating in from the outside through the brick and plaster. No central heating then, no heating upstairs at all.

Those childhood icicles were magnificent, often growing to over two feet in length and I was always sad when the inevitable thaw came as they slowly dripped away to nothing. It was worth the artic atmosphere of my bedroom just to let those massive icicles form, which they surely wouldn’t have done if there had been heating upstairs. Every cloud has a silver lining they say, even if it is made of ice.

Advent calendar 2 - Premium Christmas trees...

The old green wooden shed at the end of my road, up from the bowling green, adjacent to the Baptist chapel, the one that used to be a joiners but has stood empty for years, now has a new purpose in life. It’s become a reclaimed architectural and shabby chic furniture shed selling all sorts of bric-a-brac and other assorted wonders. 

I’ve not been in yet but I may pop in to see what they have on offer. Who knows, I may be able to pick up and Aladdin’s lamp and get myself three wishes (well it is the pantomime season) so watch out you-know-who.

Walking past the place this morning I happily noticed some very fine fir trees in the yard. Christmas tree vending has come to my road and for once I am pleased with change. That old yard has stood empty and unloved for far too long and I hope that whoever has taken it on does well with their trees and junk.

They’ve had a big hand painted sign made with a fat cheery Santa and the legend ‘Premium Christmas Trees available here’, which judging by the examples I saw, propped against the wall of the Baptist Chapel, is exactly what they are.

It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Advent calendar 1 – bubbles and hearts…

Here it is December the first. The countdown to Christmas has officially begun and Advent calendars everywhere will be opened as small children eat the first of the Christmas chocolate.

Those calendars come in all shapes and sizes from 1D to doggy treats to scented candles and bath bombs. I’ve never really been into advent calendars and I can’t remember having one as a child, but then my memories of childhood often don’t include everything that I know happened.

It’s a busy time of year, particularly in my glass painting emporium where it’s been Christmas for quite a few weeks now. I think, given that I am so busy, that I’ll need to keep blog words to a minimum (hooray you scream). But I’ll try to post my advent calendar image each day and if there are a few words, well that’ll be a Christmas bonus for you.