It is Epiphany, Twelfth Night, and that means that the Christmas decorations have to come down. In the old days decorations were often left until Candlemas on 2nd. February and Rachel says that she is going to leave a few things up until then as well. However, tonight the tree and other greenery was given a send off using Rachel’s BBQ chimney, a gift from our churches when I retired. So here she is out in the courtyard, smoke billowing everywhere as she goes about her task. Later she served us all mulled wine around the chimney, it was good – but the courtyard was very cold

Up and went off for an appointment at the local doctor’s surgery, as a result of which I had to go off to Melrose for a precautionary x-ray (Rachel drove me there and on the way home she told me that she thinks it would be a good idea to move everything around as I suggested yesterday).

Back home I got the Presbytery computer fully operational (and talking to my printer) and started on some of the emails and telephone messages which had already built up since the start of the year. My friend Peter telephoned either to commiserate with me or to laugh at me, I’m not sure which – and before I knew where all of the time had gone it was time to join Rachel in the courtyard for mulled wine, before a super meal by candle-light in the farmhouse to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Mum’s wedding.



By candle-light: Mum, Scott, Sue, Olive, Digger and Rachel with drinks in hand. We toasted everyone we could think of with a final toast for anyone we had not yet toasted -- so no-one was missed out. It was a happy evening

We were all around the table and Mum reminisced about the day of her wedding and all of the events which surrounded it. We sat over coffee around the fire and it was after ten before I made my way back to the Granary, just in time, in fact, for the start of the final day of the Test Match from Wellington which New Zealand duly won – it has been a real good Test Match and I still wonder that I can share in it sitting in my retirement home in Scotland while the match is played out on the other side of the world.

Over the next few nights I shall be going to bed early to make up for all of this missed sleep, but it has been worth it – and one of real bonuses of being retired!

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