Day out

You might remember Mark’s prediction that my home-melted massive candle would turn into an inferno one of these days, and indeed tonight he turned out to be correct.

He laughed a lot as he put it out in the sink, and suggested kindly that in future oil-drenched pine cones might not be the best decoration to scatter liberally all over the top of a candle, and I suppose he was right, although they burned beautifully and the house smells rather splendidly seasonal now.

Of course we are at home again now, as you will have worked out for yourselves. We woke up in the funny little hotel in Ripon this morning, wonderfully refreshed and ready for bacon and eggs. My parents, who had stayed in the same place, had found that their bedroom had the sort of character which turns out to be a euphemism for ‘plumbing issues’, when we went through the bar on our way to breakfast we noticed to our great amusement that their bath had emptied itself through the ceiling rather than down the drain provided.

This did not spoil my appreciation of the hotel in the least, especially since the shower in our room had worked perfectly well, and although we made sympathetic noises over breakfast we started the day off in the nicest of holiday moods. We left my parents to explore the things about Ripon that they thought might be interesting, and went to poke about in the cathedral again.

The cathedral turned out to have an ancient crypt and some impressive statuary, and we wandered about and investigated its corners for ages. This experience was further enhanced by the choir of Queen Mary’s school, another local independent girls’ school, busily practising for their end of term carol concert. We enjoyed this very much, and ambled out into the grey morning feeling culturally enhanced and also having bought a new bauble with a picture of the cathedral on it. This was to hang on our Christmas tree in order that we would always remember the days of Oliver’s school carol concert, even when he is forty and we are ancient and gnarled and not able to collect interesting new memories any more.

After that we wandered about in Ripon for a while. I bought some knitting wool and a brilliantly coloured tin fish inside which you are supposed to put a little candle. Mark looked at it and said that it needed fixing first because of the candle bit inside it being on the most awful slope, but I liked it anyway and I am sure he will sort it out so that it works properly.

We got home in the early afternoon and had a pot of tea in my newly-arrived teapot. I have finished paying for this now, and it arrived just as we were leaving yesterday, so its inaugural tea ceremony was this afternoon. It is heart-stoppingly pretty, it is stout and chubby and decorated with pink roses and gold leaf, and the tea tasted splendid. It felt very celebratory, to be using such a lovely thing, and I appreciated it very much. Mark thinks it is too big. He didn’t say so but I know he is thinking it, but obviously he is wrong about this, it is a perfect round fat size, like me, and I love it.

After that Mark buzzed off to the farm and I spent the rest of the day manufacturing Christmas presents. I like making Christmas presents, although always get a crisis of anxiety when I come to wrapping them up and wonder if people will actually like them or are just going to be polite and really would prefer me to go to Debenhams and buy them a cardigan or something.

Ah well, too late now.