This time of the year above any other, is filled with happy traditions to which we look forward.  Avening WI’s Christmas party is always a fun affair with Shirley’s imaginative games and quizzes, including cheese tasting this year: Could you tell your Edam from your Emmental or your Camembert from your Cambozola? 

The stakes were high!

The morning after, there was the usual shopping to be done with a seasonally inappropriate bag to carry it in, don’t you think?  I’m having a thing about people dressed in seasonally inappropriate clothes right now, but when there’s blossom on a tree and primulas flowering in the garden, who can say what the season is, exactly?

Hardly typical of a December garden, is it?

It was the Stuart Singers’ Christmas concert weekend, so we had our traditional house full.  Perhaps not quite the same as every year, for sadly some friends couldn’t make it.  But two evenings of seasonal music enjoyed by a church full of appreciative supporters made for lively conversation over a glass or two the following day.

There’s a bit of tradition associated with our Sunday lunchtime affair too, which began, as always, with the arrival of our sweet neighbours bearing mistletoe.  Somehow, everyone knows the routine and helped themselves; we needed to do nothing more than enjoy their company and crank up the chocolate fountain.

When everyone had left, the “home team” enjoyed a peaceful couple of hours chatting over hot drinks and sweeties, looking through old December journals and remembering when. 

Sadly, both young government professionals had early starts on Monday morning, so they loaded up their little Nikolaus houses with the roof made of Smarties and the CurlyWurly fences and went off to catch a Sunday evening train back to London.

When he got back from the station, my hero and I kicked off our shoes and normal life resumed in front of the telly.  Another happy tradition