Nadolig Llawen

Idyllic Cotswold Weekend

Every year, two old school friends of mine meet up near Christmas to go for lunch at Highgrove, Prince Charles' house just outside Tetbury. For the past three years, I've been going too, and we always have such wonderful fun.
This year was a bit different, because my friend who lives in the Cotswolds is in the middle of moving house, so we decided to camp out at the new place, in the beautiful village of Rodmarton:

This was the original village school, built in 1828, and it's right next to St Peter's Church (which may well have Saxon origins) and looks out onto the village green.

The lunches at Highgrove raise money for the Prince's Trust, but they also have to work around the Prince's diary. In previous years, they've opened for six weeks, and got a lot of extra stock in the shop for Christmas, but this year they were only able to do it for two weeks, so we were quite lucky to get tickets. The food is excellent - I had beef that melted in the mouth, followed by a gingery sweet pudding.
The shop, too, was just the usual shop for people visiting the gardens, with a few extra Christmas things. I was very pleased to see the Christmas Pudding Wine was there, and also managed to get a few Christmas presents.
We also stop at the Honesty shop attached to the Prince's organic farm - you turn up a side lane next to a giant sculpture of a carrot:

So these are the ladies who were in the same class as me at school.

On the way back to the house, we passed a gypsy caravan parked on the grass verge. The chap was selling Christmas wreaths and mistletoe, and we made a fuss of his dog Duchess. The horse was grazing a little way further along the verge.

I've got some lovely mistletoe hanging up in my window now.

Merry Christmas

My New Christmas Fairy!

Here's Emmeline, my new suffragette Christmas fairy, who will be sharing the place of honour with my little Christmas policeman, who I bought in Harrods in the 1980s (he's looking pretty good for his age, I think) and for a while was the "fairy" on the top of the Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Police Reference Library in New Scotland Yard.
The suffragette came in a little pack from the Amnesty International Christmas Catalogue, and I just couldn't resist her. Also in the pack are sheets of paper in green, purple, and white with slogans, to make up an old fashioned paperchain (I fastened them together with a stapler) and a sheet of 6 cardboard baubles to cut out. The slogans include "Shoulder to Shoulder" and "Sister Suffragette" as well as "Jolly Holiday" and "Peace on Earth", and the baubles have words like "Equality", "Rebel" and "Sorority". I coloured her in with the suffragette colours of purple and green, with silver stars and a gold hat (since it does look a little like a halo).