This time of the year is often when I’m glad to settle into a routine. The days are dark and this year, they’ve been particularly wet, so having used a burst of energy in the pool this morning and done the supermarket shopping, staying at home and getting on with a few things is something to be enjoyed. I always have something to do.

Last week, I had an online social in my diary with a few colleagues whom I usually meet in a more formal setting. Our Chair suggested I might provide the “entertainment” in the form of a demonstration, so I did a quick arrangement of the “raffle prizes” and invited them to ignore the background!

I had bought a bunch of tulips as one of those “prizes” and as the week went on, I’ve loved watching them open and develop the most interesting shapes and colours. I think that today, I must finally throw them out, but really, they have been spectacular.

My worktables have been overflowing with “stuff”. That’s partly because I’m still struggling to work on my Christmas Journal, which for some reason just hasn’t taken off this year (or should I say last year?) I finished this page about cards and stamps a few days ago but the postman brings more cards each day and I have a few more interesting stamps to add to the page after each delivery. Thank you so much faraway friends who sent us Christmas cards which are only just arriving!

Other long-awaited deliveries are arriving too. Yesterday, we had three boxes delivered by the same courier company but by different drivers, one of which contained small gifts for Bettine’s visiting carers. These Christmas packages were supposedly “lost” by that same company whose organisation could clearly do with an overhaul.

It being the New Year, of course there are far less interesting envelopes arriving too, though pleasingly these two boring tax reminders - car tax and income tax - had a little ray of sunshine from Austin TX snuggled in between them. Thank you Jordi!

Paddington and Aunt Lucy have changed out of their Christmas outfits into their Winter things, prompting me to think that perhaps they could use a woolly hat each?

As I contemplate the style of each of them, my eye falls on my current knitting, the scarf from Denmark which, although it’s come some way since the last time I mentioned it has got quite some way to go. Why did I not remember how boring knitting a scarf is? And how LONG it needs to be! I have this ball of yarn to finish and then one more before it’s done. Then, I might dare to begin the Shetland hat I planned! (Oh Paddington, sorry but I don’t think you’ll get a hat for a while yet!)

Anyway, with the InstantPot in slowcooker mode and the chili simmering away, needing no attention from me, afternoons like this are for adding a few lines of knitting until the light gets too poor, when there’s a jigsaw to finish.

(with an extra piece “just for fun”!)

I’m tea girl at my monthly WI meeting tonight, so there are biscuits cooling in the kitchen and I’d better change into some comfortable clothes because our speaker is going to lead a “dance for wellbeing” activity which sounds interesting.

I just wish it would stop raining!!