On the radio an announcer said that the coming cold snap in Britain could be long lasting and be as severe as that experienced in the early 1960s. If that is true then the UK is in for a considerable amount of disruption.
My sympathy goes out to my fellow countrymen, but that sympathy is tempered by the fear that disruption could extend itself into the New Year and especially when I am supposed to be travelling to the country to meet friends and to have a damn good evening meal and a robust breakfast the next day.
I am only concerned about getting there on the 6th of January; I think that I can cope with being stranded in my native land surrounded by blankets of snow – as long as my friends can accommodate me!
To be fair the weather here is cold too and even the sunshine seems a little more muted today; the skies a little greyer and the weekend looking as though it might (yet again) be something of an anti-climax after the blue autumnal days that we have had during the working week!
I have decided to put up the Christmas tree as I will be in Castelldefels for most of the holiday and so I will get value for the effort that it always takes to set the thing up.
I am disappointed with the range and variety of Christmas tree decorations that are on sale. Usually at this point in the year I will have identified grotesquely expensive decorations in a few shops which might be worth looking out for in the wonderful sales which are not (repeat not) a feature of Spanish and Catalan life after the Day itself.
I am pleased with the three metallic filigree angels that I bought in Zara for more money than I have paid for Christmas decorations for a long time, but they seem very much the exception rather than rule and the cheap shops have decorations whose tacky vulgarity I cannot even pass off as Post Modernist irony were I to buy some. Perhaps I have not been dedicated enough in the way that I have approached the purchase of new decorations.
My usual way of proceeding is to plunder the sales then put away the new decorations so that their rediscovery in late December comes as something of a surprise. Sometimes they come as a total shock as one year I put the things in another place and didn’t discover them again for a few years and I really had forgotten them by the time they saw the light of day again!
But last year (and the year before that) I found nothing at a bargain price to encourage me to part with my money, so I suppose I do have some justification in buying something new.
With the newly rearranged living room where the space is now more open and not so compartmentalized there is still a problem of where to put the tree as a revolving bookcase is where the logical(ish) site should be. A slight to negligible problem in the scale of things. But a problem nonetheless.
The Indian meal this evening in the regular place in Port Ginesta was, at the start of our meal divided into two. In the major part there was scaffolding and Indians painting the superstructure of the interior of the restaurant so that the heavenly scent of the food was mixed with the pungency of paint.
The food was well up to the required standard and the conversation with Caroline just as expansive and before we knew it, it was quarter passed eleven. Caroline returned home with a small doggie bag of boiled rice and curry for her husband: a small gesture of thanks for babysitting!
Tomorrow the Christmas tree!
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