O Rex gentium - Either side of Winter solstice

We drove over to Bristol on Tuesday to have lunch with Amanda and James and exchange Christmas presents, as we can't all be together for the feast. We no longer have a house big enough to accommodate the entire family in one go, and now that Amanda needs to use a walking frame and a wheelchair for going out, a small house with no stair lift is inadequate for an overnight stay. I realise how fortunate we've been over the years to be accommodated in large Vicarages, even if heating them was a drain on the budget, even with a subsidy from the Parish.
   

After Mass at St German's on Wednesday morning, I rehearsed the young couple whose wedding I'll be doing a week today. As it happened, the church was laid out with six large requiem candlesticks ready to receive a coffin for a funeral after lunch. It seemed rather an odd setting to rehearse marriage vows, but the couple didn't seem to mind. The tall Christmas tree was up and decorated, ready to be blessed and lit at the Vigil Mass on Saturday evening. The nativity scene has yet to be prepared. Apparently children attending the service bring the figures to be put in place in and around the stable during the service. The figures have all been spruced up ready. I'm looking forward to it.
  

Today it was time for the staff Christmas lunch. We went over to the Madeira restaurant next door to the Masonic Temple in Guildford Place. Ashley and I with three of the younger members of staff who work on our floor. The Madeira is a Portuguese Restaurant, very Iberian in cuisine and decor, much larger than its street frontage suggests. I didn't feel ready for a second British Christmas meal within four days, so I had grilled fresh sardines followed by swordfish, washed down with plenty of the indigenous house red table wine, not intoxicating enough to prevent me from returning to the office and preparing four more Overdue letters for mailing out. The office was somewhat quieter than usual.

We bought a bargain Christmas tree for a tenner last week from the Llandaff Fields allotment, where a spare parcel of land used by community group was planted with pine saplings five years ago. With the resurgence of interest in home grown food, the land is now in demand for new allotments, so the trees have to go. We got to choose and dig out our own little tree with roots from a very wet and muddy patch of soil, and kept it in the garden until this morning when we brought it in. Now it stands in the front room bay window, decked with candles, ready for Rhiannon to decorate it when she arrives on Christmas Eve.