These last few weeks have just gone in a blur of work. We've had four Saturdays extra in work and busy Sundays and I am behind in every aspect of my life. On Friday, I should have been celebrating at our end-of-term "do" which is really a late and extended lunch but instead I was feeling really poorly and my husband brought me home and tucked me up in bed with a hot water bottle while he went to the "do" without me. I was asleep before he had even left the house and didn't really wake up until after 9am yesterday. That is about 20 hours - I've never done anything like that before. I feel slightly more human today, for which I am grateful because I need to finish organising Christmas now.

Tonight is Carols by Candlelight at church. It is always a great service and signals the start of Christmas for me. The candlelight seems to bring something extra too. I'm in the music group so I only have a couple of hours to rest up before I need to be down there again for the rehearsal.

My neighbours had a party last night. They have kids and their extended family includes a lot of kids so they started partying early at about 6pm and carried on until loooong after midnight when tiredness finally set in for me and I managed to drop off. I kept waking up every time they changed the music so I am not sure when they finally stopped. I know our poor house was reverberating in time to theirs for far too long.

We are going to my son's for Christmas dinner this year. Another first. They are veggies, though, so our real Christmas dinner will be on Boxing Day with homegrown chicken. and some veg from the allotment. It would be nice to have a totally homeproduced meal but I am not sure we can manage without a visit to the shops for extra veg. I do like a good variety of veg with Christmas dinner. For many years we've had a tradition of 12-15 different veg and I really look forward to that - not least because it is not me that is doing all the preparation and cooking!!! My husband has always cooked Christmas dinner so I have never actually cooked one. Ever! I am glad that there has been a gap between dealing with the cockerels and eating. The strain and stress of "doing" our first has lessened in the interval of them being in the freezer. I'll report on the quality of the flavour later. They are a slightly different shape to the supermarket chicken as they are Light Sussex which is a dual purpose bird. The supermarket ones are a variety bred solely for meat. Mine look just like the ones on River Cottage on the tv with big, strong looking legs. More news anon.