Post Christmas Blues.

I hate it when we have to take down the decorations, disrobe the tree, take it outside and vacuum up all the pine needles.

I love Christmas, and this year has been a particularly fine one for us all.  No-one was ill, no-one got cross, no-one got drunk.  Everyone liked their presents, everyone liked the food, and we don't have any miserable relatives we have to be nice to over the Christmas season.  We've actually been able to watch some half-decent films on TV, we've played silly games, played with the cats and generally had a really nice good-natured time.

We've eaten almost all the Christmas goodies except for half of a very nice ripe brie, some very good cold roast beef, a packet of figs, which may just get moved to the ingredients drawer, and three quarters of a Christmas cake.  We have four sad, lonely crackers left, which I may well use on my birthday in February.  Oh! and we have a lot of shelled salted nuts.  Maybe now that everything else has gone, people will start eating them.  I can't understand why they haven't been eaten;  normally they get hoovered up very quickly!  I have several lemons which I will get Charles to squeeze for me and then pour the juice in to ice-cube thingies, to use in recipes, or in a big glass of fizzy water, which is what I'm drinking right now.

All the decorations have been packed away for Charles to take upstairs and the place looks very forlorn without its Christmas finery.

I wish we celebrated Epiphany as well, as the Orthodox do, but I suppose we mustn't be greedy.  I feel that if I weren't careful I could be like that loony who actually celebrates Christmas every day, which must be awfully dreary.

John has made a running start at making the office habitable for me (this is one of my Christmas presents) and is at present laying a floor with all the stuff we over-ordered for the bathroom;  it will be great to be able whizz about from desk to desk in my office chair on a floor like that, and it will stop all the awful draughts coming up from the freezing cold kitchen through the floorboards.  We are de-cluttering as we go, although I haven't thrown anything out today, yet.

I'm feeling rather tired today as I woke up last night after about an hour's sleep and couldn't get back to sleep for hours, because I couldn't get my aching knee comfortable, then overslept till 10.00 am.

I have one more day off before I have to plunge back into the round of things I have to do every week, so I'm not going to make myself do anything but read tomorrow!

My DLA was due on Friday but hasn't turned up yet.........just when I need to pay the rates!