Christmas Eve meli-melo

The blue tits, and others, wait for Christmas dinner. I put out sunflower seeds and millet, and some overcooked, soaked cantucci biscuits, but the latter provoke little interest, except from Molly, who spends much of her time today sneakily trying to find a way to steal them.

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Flapjacks, ginger in syrup, bramble jelly. The crystallised ginger in the flapjacks was an inspirational thought, a couple of euros bought enough to boil some in syrup to put in jars also.

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Sisal tree fairy, some years old now, the right size for the small artificial tree.

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Physalis and lychees.

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The windowsill geranium, stringy, pale and weak, turns yearningly to look out of the window, puts out a hopeful, light red flower.

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Figs in red tissue, which made them irresistible. I imagine I'll bake them in Muscat filled with almond paste, but the surfeit of sweet and spice at this time may mean I don't, and we'll eat them as they are.

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E's gate, with mistletoe. 'I take it from the chateau gardens,' she confessed with glee 'they have so much! I just throw Moos's lead up over the branch and pull it down.' We take flapjacks and banana, date and walnut cake, but she's not there, neither is Moos. We become the antithesis of burglars, gaining covert entry to her house to leave things there.

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Baubles.

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Molecular structures of rosehips.

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A white rose, Winchester Cathedral, with just the smallest, anomalous flush of pink, blooms in spite of the frost. It often does at Christmas. 'There is no rose of swych vertu...'

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The elderberries never ripened, but hang on the tree still, where no leaves do. In the evanescent morning mist, they trap the droplets.

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The fog turned glitteringly to mist, then softened sunlight, but returned again to plunge us into cold greyness. Somewhere just beyond it, we knew, was a bright sunny day, its blue and gold suffused the atmosphere and yet eluded us. We found it later, as we drove beyond the watershed ridge, where everything was bathed in the day's last liquid copper sunlight.

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The last obligation of visiting and exchanging has just been pleasantly discharged - except for the drive home in the once more dense fog, on roads we didn't know well, and even the ones we did know seemed unfamiliar and uncertain. We're just ourselves tomorrow, which will be just fine.

Happy Christmas, one and all.