Three Small Seasonal Anecdotes.

In an earlier post I mentioned how pleased I was that my daughter was gathering all her family together for Christmas. Being alone myself at Christmas is fine, but I know that other people feel differently. It surprised me that I should feel so pleased, but I suppose you might say that it offered a vicarious insight into the value of togetherness. I had an email from her just before midnight on Christmas night to say that the central heating boiler had failed and the house was unheated. I went to bed unhappy.

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Tonight I’ve been getting the odd feeling that the cold, windy darkness beyond the walls of the house is pressing in on me. Anyone familiar with Algernon Blackwood’s best known horror story, The Willows, will know what I mean.

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I still don’t know whether the young woman I saw jogging around the lanes yesterday – and who offered a brief wave – was the Lady B or not. The figure was about the right size, shape, and age for said lady, but I paid little attention to her face. One reason for that was because I felt ashamed to be encased in several layers of heavy winter clothing including a beanie hat and gloves (but only cheap woollen ones) while she was so lightly clad that I might have walked into a six month time slip. The other was because I was fixated on her pale pink shorts. I’ve seen the Lady B in shorts before, but never pale pink ones.