The weather outside is frightful

Well, MOST things went according to plan. Everyone got here in the end and we had a wonderful Christmas. What didn't happen was our anniversary trip to London. The snow was bad there and we saw there had been accident on the M40. We've postponed seeing the play till February.

But that meant my car wasn't in London and husband heroically drove up on Christmas Eve to fetch one couple, while I, less heroically, fetched another from Oxford. The third couple and my sister had arrived on 23rd. So we dug in, with log fires and lots of lovely food and drink.The big carafe of cognac I won in, well, Cognac was very popular.

The big snow arrived last Tuesday and it already feels as if it has been here for ever.
This is a picture of it from my "magic" window.

I got a terrific haul of books and have read two of them: Leanne Shapton's Important artifacts ...etc, etc and Susan Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing. I hope to blog about them both over on the Book Maven (http://bookmavenmary.blogspot.com).

I've also seen quite a lot of TV, including Cranford and Dr Who (the latter was pretty dire). But what I enjoyed most was Avatar in 3D at our new local cinema. We can now do a 15 min drive, park for free and stroll across to the multiplex and see films in comfort. So much nicer than driving at least twice as far to Oxford and paying to park miles away from the cinema.

The story is pretty clunky but the visuals are spectacular.

We didn't stop entertaining till 29th and since then I've written two essays - one in English for Art History and one in Italian on Vitaliano Brancati. So I can start revising the adult novel next week.

Oh, and I didn't win the Costa; Patrick Ness did, with The Ask and the Answer. But I DO get to go to the presentation on 26th and to take a guest. Not a dinner this time, just a champagne reception, but how nice to go to something like that without feeling nervous about whether you might have won!

Adventitious

Because we can't get to the Bourton-on-the-Water turning on of the lights for the third year running, we tried Woodstock, which was terrible! Ghastly Frank Sinatra (or was it Bing Crosby? anyway a 50s crooner) on tape and then a live rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing by a young woman with a strong voice and Pop Idol style, who couldn't fit the words to the tune, making a real muck of "Hail th'incarnate deity" and singing "rysen with healing in his wings".

And the tree had just one blue star at the top and light blue strings of them in its branches. Pathetic.

We had been Christmas shopping in Oxford Street the day before (which also had poor lights - is the credit crunch already creating an austerity Christmas?) so were quite tired and wished we hadn't turned out again.

But all was redeemed by the Bath Abbey Advent service by candlelight on Sunday. A wonderful choir washed our ears out with lovely motets and we sang lustily O Come, O Come Emmanuel, Hail to the Lord's Anointed and Lo, he comes with Clouds Descending. And went out into the frosty night carrying our candles.

Then hot cinnamon-spiced pear cider at the vegetarian restaurant where we had dinner. And now we have an Advent calendar and candle, so if we don't feel Christmassy after all that, there is no hope for us.

I'm seven chapters into City of Ships and getting into the rhythm of a new Stravaganza but the copy-edits for Troubadour came today, which will take up quite a bit of time. And I have a meeting at my picturebook publishers in London on Thursday, which ditto.

We had a lovely family gathering to celebrate the November birthdays the previous weekend and just-back-from-New-York daughter had brought all the US papers celebrating Obama's victory, since she woke up there on 5th November. Also a baseball cap and badges for me, so I could feel part of it.

I've read Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde and am now reading The Well of Lost Plots. I rather feel that by the third one he is stretching the idea a bit. He seems to have run out of plot himself, paradoxically and be caught up in just inventing things.

We also had an assessed discussion in Italian Literature about a short story by Verga called l'Amante di Gramigna, which some of us have read before. It's a nasty ittle piece - how I dislike "verismo".

We've continued to watch Little Dorritt, in which Claire Foy is luminously beautiful. I wish I could like Eddie Marsan's Pancks better. He was wonderful in God on Trial and everyone else likes him but I find his snot-snorting mannerism revolting and it's hard to believe he is the fine character that Pancks is.

We also saw Andrew Graham-Dixon oiling himself round the subject of Vasari and the same tantalising glimpse of the Corridor. If only someone - not him! - would make a full length programme about it. You can't even get a book that tells you all the paintings that are in it.Ah well, maybe I'll get inside it one day.