't was the penultimate Saturday before Christmas

By Heck, kids, but it's going to be chilly tonight.

There hasn't been a cloud in the sky all day and though the sun was shining the temperature didn't trouble the mercury over much. As soon as dusk started to fall, you could feel the temperature go with it. I confidently expect a crunchy hoar frost come morning. Maybe rings around the moon tonight.

Furtle and I wandered into Barnet late this afternoon for a poke around. We were mainly after a baking tin for Furtle's continued and increasing interest in cakes. This time we were after a round one with a removable base for making fruit cakes. We also picked up a few other bits and pieces, but that was the most important. We didn't manage to find a small Christmas tree for the bedroom. Or rather we found a couple but they looked too tacky and so we will do without (we have some spiffy lights strung around the room anyway to make it look particularly grottoesque).

The last of my outstanding CDs has arrived from Play.com: Revolution Days by Barclay James Harvest featuring Les Holroyd. I have a couple of albums by John Lees' Barclay James Harvest, one of the other iterations of the original band since it went on "sabbatical" in the mid nineties. Both versions of the band are competent; the Les Holroyd version is the harder rocking, the John Lees variant more melodic. Neither is as good as the original band featuring the pair of them where they sparked off each other. Still, all quite listenable, if no new classics.

I didn't realise how tired I was yesterday until I found that I couldn't get up this morning. Apparently Furtle went bounding downstairs sometime around 9.15 to answer the door to the postman. I was oblivious. I know it takes me a good hour to wake up - Furtle says it is like watching someone get drunk backwards - so even if I hadn't been entirely in the Land of Nod, I doubt I should have heard the bell go. Anyway, it was Elle's pressie from Amazon; mine has yet to show. According to the tracker it is in Glasgow for reasons as yet unexplained. So much for paying for delivery on a specified date. Parcel Farce do it again!

We have finally started watching Heroes season 2 and are about halfway through the episodes that were completed before the screenwriters' strike stopped US TV in its tracks. All I can say is that the Athenaeum Club are thoroughly enjoying it (cod-Irish accents not withstanding). Those who complain that the story is going nowhere have truly bought into the MTV generation goldfish attention span. It's building nicely; creator Tim Kring only had reason to apologise if he is after an audience that demands nothing but immediate gratification through special effects and constant alarums.

't was the penultimate Saturday before Christmas

By Heck, kids, but it's going to be chilly tonight.

There hasn't been a cloud in the sky all day and though the sun was shining the temperature didn't trouble the mercury over much. As soon as dusk started to fall, you could feel the temperature go with it. I confidently expect a crunchy hoar frost come morning. Maybe rings around the moon tonight.

Furtle and I wandered into Barnet late this afternoon for a poke around. We were mainly after a baking tin for Furtle's continued and increasing interest in cakes. This time we were after a round one with a removable base for making fruit cakes. We also picked up a few other bits and pieces, but that was the most important. We didn't manage to find a small Christmas tree for the bedroom. Or rather we found a couple but they looked too tacky and so we will do without (we have some spiffy lights strung around the room anyway to make it look particularly grottoesque).

The last of my outstanding CDs has arrived from Play.com: Revolution Days by Barclay James Harvest featuring Les Holroyd. I have a couple of albums by John Lees' Barclay James Harvest, one of the other iterations of the original band since it went on "sabbatical" in the mid nineties. Both versions of the band are competent; the Les Holroyd version is the harder rocking, the John Lees variant more melodic. Neither is as good as the original band featuring the pair of them where they sparked off each other. Still, all quite listenable, if no new classics.

I didn't realise how tired I was yesterday until I found that I couldn't get up this morning. Apparently Furtle went bounding downstairs sometime around 9.15 to answer the door to the postman. I was oblivious. I know it takes me a good hour to wake up - Furtle says it is like watching someone get drunk backwards - so even if I hadn't been entirely in the Land of Nod, I doubt I should have heard the bell go. Anyway, it was Elle's pressie from Amazon; mine has yet to show. According to the tracker it is in Glasgow for reasons as yet unexplained. So much for paying for delivery on a specified date. Parcel Farce do it again!

We have finally started watching Heroes season 2 and are about halfway through the episodes that were completed before the screenwriters' strike stopped US TV in its tracks. All I can say is that the Athenaeum Club are thoroughly enjoying it (cod-Irish accents not withstanding). Those who complain that the story is going nowhere have truly bought into the MTV generation goldfish attention span. It's building nicely; creator Tim Kring only had reason to apologise if he is after an audience that demands nothing but immediate gratification through special effects and constant alarums.