By the pricking...

...of my knees I get useful clues as to what my next step should be, and I give thanks I'm beginning to decipher their code. If it's just a little prick (funny - doctors don't seem to say that much any more do they?) it's safe to carry on a while, but if it's a big prick then a major electrical storm is brewing in my leg and I need to seek horizontal refuge immediately and lengthily. Whether it's possible at the time is another matter of course, as is the gamble when there's no pricks around at all and I have to decide whether to gratefully stay still and enjoy the respite or get up and risk disturbing them again!

I give thanks for a bit more sleep in the night, and a bit less pain during the day so that I've been able to tackle a few small tasks that were only going to get bigger if left to their own devices...like cleaning the kitchen sink!

'Tis the season for my social anthropologist soul to be jolly fascinated by the revving up of what passes for ritual...and I give thanks for musing on the mysteries. Otherwise, being only marginally involved, it's often a rather poignant time as most human interactions involve listening to other people's plans for gifts and menus and social arrangements while dreading having to share mine in case they feel sorry for me...and make me wonder if I should feel sorry for myself as well - never a good plan!

This year I give thanks for my autumnal incarceration meaning I'm avoiding a lot of that...and also, so far, resistible charitable offers... but I do give thanks for a plan to meet some ladies from choir for a cuppa and maybe a mince pie! Of course there's things do I enjoy doing at the turning of the year but they're not likely to be on the agenda this time, so I can but give thanks for years of practice at not doing what I enjoy...and for memories of when I have. What are they? Well two of them are a) to be in the middle of the seemingly sleeping British countryside b) and to sing Tchaikovsky's Crown of Roses in four part harmony. Just listening to it is not the same...but on the other hand I do find it hard to sing because it always makes me cry...and, heathen that I am, it's the music that does that not the words! Thus I give thanks for finding a link in a its (original?) non-distracting Russian...and also because in this recording the mic picked up the bass line so well. The bass is ace! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Zwjn-2n_A