a turkey isn't just for Christmas

Christmas 2025 is finally over.  We had the last portion of turkey in the freezer for dinner tonight.

on a technicality...

Today is Twelfth Night, or the twelfth day of Christmas, so it's still (just) Christmas season.  So does this mean it's technically a white Christmas?

8:08 GMT, looking north

9:29 GMT, looking west

Despite it now being clear sky and full (if low) sun, we have very little solar PV generation.  It has to get through an inch of snow covering the panels first!

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His'n'hers Christmas presents (including a DVD, for a change)

looks more like ginger

After our previous successes with our potato harvest, we planted some to have home-grown new potatoes at Christmas.  I don't think we are going to have home-grown new potatoes at Christmas.

Fortunately, when Christmas was delivered earlier today by Tesco's (a so-called "small" turkey now taking up a surprising amount of space in the fridge), it included sufficient non-home-grown potatoes to cover us over the festive period.

Next year, we will try planting a little earlier...

tree time

Christmas has officially begun.

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His'n'hers Christmas presents (oh, there was also a soldering iron and mat, but they're not books...)

tis the season to bring trees indoors

We got our tree a few days ago, but left it in the conservatory for a few days, before bringing it in to be dressed.

tree indoors

with lights, tinsel, baubles, and lametta

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His ’n’ hers Christmas presents:

traditional tree

We got our Christmas tree a little earlier than last year, so we had more choice, and could get a somewhat bushier one.

signs of the times

Christmas cards have started arriving. There are two obvious changes in the stamps.

First is the barcodes.  I used to collect stamps as a child, and remember looking carefully at the phosphor bands on them, used so that the sorting machines could tell the difference between first and second class stamps.  Barcodes are the 21st century version of making life easier for machines.

Second is a new head.  For my entire life, the only time I have seen a UK stamp with a head other than the queen's was while looking in my stamp album, or at antique postcards and letters.  So when I saw the first new king's head stamp, I had a weird flashback to this period.

festive hats

Out for a walk this morning, I spotted that someone has made a festive decoration for a pillar box:

The base is knitted/crocheted; the decorations are felt-work.

I looked out for the next pillar box I passed, and sure enough:

Here the carol singers are also knitted, and some have clearly had a little too much mulled wine.

Thanks, mystery yarn-bomber, for raising a smile!

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His ’n’ hers Christmas presents:

another year, another tree

Due to a variety of circumastances, we got our tree a bit later than usual this year.  The first place we went had only four tiddlers left.  Fortunately, the next place had a decent one.

Twelfth night

We take the Christmas tree down on 5 January, as is traditional.  In the past, we have taken it out the patio doors into the garden, as in its unfolded state, it's too large to go out through the lounge door.  (It can come in through that door, as it is at that point in its body stocking.)

Well, now we have (most of) a conservatory through those doors, we can no longer exit that way.  Another option was employed.

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 His ’n’ hers Christmas presents:

Giving someone a book on infrared astronomy on the very day the James Webb Space Telescope was launched is either prescient, or premature.

'tis the season

 We put the tree up today.  It is now beginning to feel a bit like Christmas.

The white sheet hanging up over the books behind the tree is to protect them from the electrical work being done for the conservatory.  It has been there for a while ...

A turkey isn't just for Christmas ...

We like to have turkey at Christmas: it’s traditional.  But turkeys are big, and there are only two of us.  A medium turkey (for some reason, there no longer seem to be small ones) typically is advertised to serve 10–14 (or in our case, serve two, 5–7 times).  Although we did eat several turkey meals durng the festive season, the excess was frozen.

Today, we ate the last of the 2020 turkey.  Christmas is officially over!

And we probably got closer to 30 regular servings out of it, without stinting.

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 His ’n’ hers Christmas presents:

some normality

 It's certainly been an atypical year, but some things don't change.

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His ’n’ hers Christmas presents: