Hooray!

Teaching is over for the term, marking has been done, the Christmas cake is half-marzipanned (I forgot to make double-quantities so had to go and get more ground almonds, ho hum), the snow has come and gone for now, Allotment Major has been put to bed for the winter, and most of the Christmas knitting and sewing is at least under control if not actually, er, finished, and - yippee! - Service of the Heir is up and running on Amazon Kindle!!! At last! It went up on Monday but takes a little while to appear, and then there's all the extra stuff of registering the new ISBN, making sure that people who have been anxiously awaiting it know it's there, thanking various helpers, and lying down in a darkened room for a few hours recovering.

OH! The waxwings have arrived!! Well, they've been around in the town for a month or so but for the first time in a couple of years they've appeared just now on a particular tree they like just outside my study window! They are so handsome. I hope there are still some berries for them: the gales have stripped these trees rather effectively.

Now, what else is to be done? Cracker fillings have been bought, so I need to find the snaps and make the crackers; the bird and associated meat products have to be collected; there's carol singing outside our church tomorrow (I hope it's not pouring) for the local office workers, who may have already suffered enough; the mince pies have to be made; the panto has to be gone to tonight (not the professional expensive one but the amateur one, it has to be); and the present wrapping has to be done. Then after Christmas there's the lecture writing, the catching up on some craft stuff, and starting to read the next Murray of Letho novel. It has the working title of An Unkenspeckle Woman but I suspect that won't survive - we'll see.

Happy Christmas, thank you to all who have bought books from me this year and to those persuasive few, you know who you are, who help me sell them. And a New Year that is all you would wish!

Lexie