I actually bought a Christmas tree.  Clearly getting soft in my old age - though I still have very little excitement for anything xmas related, other than overeating.

presents and everything

It's black (bah humbug etc), skinny and 'pop up' - ie it's just a spiral of fake tree.  Came pre-decorated and pre-lit - but I've removed several hideous baubles, and swapped the harsh blue LEDs for some nicer warm white ones.

And I've added a few of my own decorations, though there wasn't really much space! Some holographic stars and mirror music notes from Ikea, a silver bead chain (instead of manky tinsel), and these tiny little hazel elves bought from the local craft market:

even cuter in real life!

The rest of my decorations are too big for the tree, so are hanging on a stand thing on the mantelpiece.

Today I've made my traditional cake - mincemeat and marzipan teabread.  It's so good!

As well as that, the last few weeks have been a bit of a mincemeat baking extravaganza:

• half a dozen mince pies
• mincemeat mini muffins
• more mince pies
• mincemeat flapjack
• yet more mince pies, but with 'posh' cassis (blackcurrant) mincemeat
• mincemeat and marzipan cake
• another batch of cassis pies to finish the jar off.

In my defence, some have been eaten by people at work and hungry kayakers.  But yes, I quite like mincemeat.. mmmmm

No Comments

When I moved house earlier this year I kind of mostly forgot to consider one of the things Gloucester is most recently famous for - flooding.  (although mostly it doesn't matter as my flat is on the first floor)

And last week it rained an awful lot.  I checked twitter on Sunday morning to see a whole pile of tweets from @Glos_Police about overnight road closures.  Flash flooding and rubbish drainage there, I think, but obviously all that water was also headed for the rivers...

So all the media rush to Tewkesbury, because that's an easy target and you get to use pretty photos of the Abbey doing an island impression.  Lots of talk of 2007.  A lot of work has gone into improved flood defences since then, but still, worrying!

Mid Tuesday afternoon we learnt that they were sending a hovercraft out to rescue some stranded people, and that sandbags would shortly be available from my local village hall.  Translation: they're still expecting things to get worse.

At this point I might have panicked a bit and legged it home from work.  Mostly just so I could be safely home in daylight, and avoiding the traffic as if any more roads had flooded it would have been a potentially long and annoying diversion.

Flood water creeping up on the main road via someone's front garden

Lots of sandbags around, and quite a few nervous looking people moving stuff around. All the 'little' brooks were huge and in the fields, with some big puddles on the road where the drains had given up trying to cope with it all.

My road is slightly higher up, and according to one of my neighbours we just about escaped in 2007, so no sandbags for us this time.

Luckily things didn't get any worse, and the Severn eventually did peak and is now dropping off slowly.  But because the peak was 70cm lower than 2007 it can't have been that bad, right?!  ugh.

2 Comments