The sun did not shine/ it was too wet to play/ so we sat in the house/ all that cold, cold, wet day.  I sat there with Sally/ we sat there we two/ And I said, “How I wish we had something to do“.

It’s been a cold, grey, pinched and anxious December.  Gloomily overcast during the day and properly dark by mid-afternoon.  It’s been too grim to want to venture out, even to escape our drafty old house, which never heats up properly in mid-winter.  I have shivered through the month wrapped in a fleece hoodie – surely the least attractive garment ever invented – plus thermal socks and leggings, clutching a hot-water bottle. 

I’ve been trying to devote myself to the necessary job of re-focusing the business plan, thinking up alternative sources of income to fill the gap  left by public sector cuts.  But in all honesty, at the moment it feels like whistling in the dark and it’s hard to keep plugging away at it.    I need a break – an odd thing to say after the relatively idle few weeks I’ve just had – but for once I’m going to make like an office-worker and knock off for Christmas.  Time to stop worrying about work and money – or the lack of them – and enjoy what looks like is going to be a properly snowy Christmas with the family.