December
An early Christmas treat for Teresa and Jay
was a meal at the Lygon Arms in Broadway, courtesy of Teresa’s spa loyalty
card. They chose to go for an evening
meal, generally a livelier time than lunchtime, and had a beautifully prepared
and presented meal.
◄
The table d’hôte menu (click to enlarge) and the choice of desserts
(below)
Jay
contemplates her dessert ►
As
regular readers will know, Christmas is rarely complete without a plumbing
crisis, this year’s being evidence on the cloakroom ceiling of a leak from the
area of Jay’s bathroom above. However,
all appeared to be dry under her bath, suggesting leakage from hidden waste, or
even central heating, pipes. It was only
after the visits of two plumbers that we remembered Teresa had vigorously
tackled cleaning the bath surrounds a few weeks earlier, and the heavy duty showering
had obviously penetrated some loose grouting.
By the end of the month the stains had dried out, and were readily
repainted.
In
the run-up to Christmas, Teresa and Jay went to the local late shopping
evenings in Broadway and in Winchcombe, where they joined a gathering of happy
carollers in the town centre (below); Jay is in the red coat, foreground to the
right of centre:
The
month increasingly focussed on Christmas preparations, with Teresa
implementing, as usual, her well-prepared plans for presents, meals and
entertainments. Helen returned home on
Saturday 20, so we were all together for Christmas week. The mild but murky weather gradually gave way
to a clearer, crisper Christmas week and was ideal for Teresa’s walks through
the village.
She visited Toddington’s church, St Andrew’s, looking
splendid in the sunshine …
… but Toddington Manor is still in shrouds, part of
the process of renovation being undertaken by its owner, the artist Damien
Hirst.
Teresa captured a beautiful sunset beyond the fields.
And Teresa’s
Christmas cactus, grown from a single severed lobe some years ago, excelled
itself by flowering for the first time, not just once, but several times over:
All
too soon we were driving Helen back to Oxford on Sunday 28 to catch one of the
few post-Christmas trains to London, thankfully just missing the massive
disruptions of the previous day. A
record of our Christmas activities is available here:
