Today I worked from home, and had, as was usual on these occasions quite a productive time of it:
~ the main reason for working from home was so that I could head out for a lunchtime date with the dentist to have my mouth frozen up for the afternoon and a filling repaired. I took the opportunity to turn up a day early for our veg from Hayley in Bicester Sheep Street and some meat from the butcher in Launton. John The Butcher can sometimes be a bit of a grump but he was on good form this morning. Not sure how we got on to talking about it but apparently for 20 years he lived over the shop in the butchers until he bought a small place in Bicester. He wasn’t sure about it at first but has looked back because he no longer gets people turn up 3 hours after they’ve closed saying, ‘I know you’re shut but you don’t have…’ or once, worse, someone knocking on the door on Christmas Day complaining that their turkey had no giblets and that their Christmas was ruined?!? What the?!!
~ discovered the difference between white and bronze turkeys. Both are free-ranged, and ethically reared, but the White turkeys have the freedom to go in and out of the barn but tend to spend most of their time in the barn, whilst the bronze turkeys get turfed out of the barn in the morning and not allowed back in until evening. Also, apparently the man at Peachcroft is upping his prices a bit too much, and so John has found someone from the same farming association.
~ I also had to stay in this morning for the TV repair man to come out and have a look at the mysterious 1 pixel wide red line running vertically down the screen for a few minutes after first switch on. The engineer came bright and early as we were the first on his call list but sadly the TV was not as cooperative and refused to show said line for the nice man. He’s going to try and get us a new screen anyway though, and in the meantime we have his email address in case it comes back and we can take a picture of it.
~ following my day’s work, spent mostly working on the staff profiles section and the ‘International students’ section of the new School of Education website that I’m working on, I relaxed into Christmas cheer and stirred-up this year’s Christmas cake. Reading back on last year’s entries I see that I made it this weekend last year too.
~ have erected the Christmas tree (awaiting decorating as Emma was out seeing her mum and sister) and made a start on my Christmas cards this evening. As regards cards, I’ve been debating whether or not to do a Christmas letter this year. I have done one ever since 1994, and I think (hope) that it is not one of those awfully showy off, stereotypical one’s, but is instead wryly amusing and suitably self-deprecating. However, do I really need to in these days of facebook and twitter and online journalling. More than ever, our friends know more than they ever have about the minutiae of our daily lives. That said, as I worked out this year’s Christmas card list (rising to 49) there are some who either don’t do facebook, or I know do genuinely do like receiving it, so I think I may do one but with a lower than usual print run.
