King of the road

I give thanks for my fabulous festive dinner with Rachel! For someone who wasn't feeling well a surprising amount of olive bread with smoked mackerel pate and chickory leaves, curried chickpea, sweet potato and cauliflower pie with couscous, tender stem broccoli and roasted carrots and a sort of raspberry fool with crème fraiche and cream was tucked away! I gave thanks for my lovely presents too, and for her understanding that though I put a lot of thought into her gifts, what with one thing and another thought didn't actually turn into much in the way of action!

I give thanks for a relaxing treatment while she battled with a mountain of washing up in a molehill of a kitchen...and, after seeing her off, for going straight to bed where I remained for many hours! I've been had to keep pushing myself for so long and have been feeling increasingly the worse for it, so I thought as this is the first day out of ten that there's nothing that must be done, that nothing would be! It was lush! I timed a long bath for when there was lots of hot water (but the out of my control central heating was off so I kept warm), washed my hair, read a book, watched something I'd missed on TV on my tablet and generally gave myself an easy time, enhanced by the fact that even after I was dressed most of this took place under the covers for improved body temperature and internet signal.

I give thanks for Febreze, so that the smalls I washed a couple of days ago and dripped over the bath like something out of a sixties movie have lost their slow dried smell. And for the sounds of it the building's owners putting up their decorations on the other side of the partition wall. It's a time of year when I'm often aware of the social divide but this season it's physically real! I even have a large scarf wrapped round my head and shoulders for cosiness, so that I look like a peasant as well as feel like one. I give thanks I don't mind...this downturn in quality of life results from trying to improve it and I'm sure it will in the end. I give thanks for discovering the Proclaimers cover of this song. I've loved Roger Miller's since I was seven but I think theirs is an even better version...