Just some rambling

I made my Christmas cake today, for the first time in several years actually. And it's a full-size one because I couldn't find my notes on the ingredients for the slightly smaller cake I made last time, and I really couldn't be bothered doing all the arithmetic again! It's such a faff when you're basing calculations around the number of eggs while simultaneously tweaking the ingredients (omitting mixed peel and glace cherries, that kind of thing). But it's done now and it smells nice. 

I also went for another very quick walk to get a dose of sunlight and fresh air. It was pretty chilly and some of the puddles still had ice around the edge. I like ice patterns, there's so much variety.

Not a very good picture - I thought had a better one than that but it might be on my actual camera rather than my phone. I'm trying to get into the habit of carrying my camera with me regularly again.

Red sticks in the sun (not exactly poetry)

A clear, bright day on December is a wonderful thing. I'm trying to make the most of what daylight there is and get out as much as possible, even if it's only a 20 minute walk. I love low sunlight in winter - all the colours look so rich, especially that red dogwood.

Once again I'm blogging from my phone and finding it quite tricky to be honest - aside from apparently having huge clumsy fingertips, I seem to have a really short attention span and forget what I'm trying to type if I can't see it all at once. I was actually going somewhere with this. Nope, gone. Perhaps I should compose blog posts in haiku form.

Right, I'm boring myself now, I'll leave off boring the world at large and go back to trying to find out about SQL as the Boy has just muttered something about it.

Today's adventure

I'm experimenting with blogging from my 'phone. It's like trying to write a letter while pushing it through the letterbox. That is not today's adventure.

Technically Miss M's adventure rather than mine, but as I have my own concert band past, I rather enjoyed it.  It was the regional heat of the Scottish Concert Band Festival, and their school band got a Gold Plus, which automatically sends them to the final in Perth in the spring (I say spring but I am familiar with Perth in March, it could easily be snowing).  Miss M is very excited. I've got to say, they played beautifully. I'm really impressed with the quality of music at her school! So it was worth getting up at dark&gloomy o'clock, to get her there on time, having had another rubbish night's sleep due to my annoying cough. Still, there are worse ways to spend a morning than listening to live music and chatting to friends.  Ha, sounds like quite a hipster morning!

I had this plan..

.. to get back to regular blogging. I actually have loads of things I could ramble on about. Can I remember them? Not a chance!

I have a cold - nothing major, sore throat, cough, the usual, but I'm feeling rough.  I've spent a fair amount of today in bed - reading, sleeping, or catching up on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here on my tablet.  The cuddly boy cat has been my companion for most of the day:

I can't remember where I was going with this. He's lovely though, isn't he?

No longer having a child at primary school means I'm no longer on the PTA, and though I miss aspects of it, I've noticed how much time and energy I must have been putting into it because normally by the 1st of December I'd be stressing out big-time and this year I'm not. Not yet anyway.  I'm still busy but in different ways (ways that don't involve epic battles with a photocopier) - early start tomorrow, for example, as Miss M's in the school concert band and they have a thing on tomorrow morning. And the Boychild has his prelims (mock exams) soon so he gets me to help him revise. This is frequently comical, given that the last time I did chemistry was about 1985...