More Christmassy Things

We’ve been busy lately. Well, kinda. Eva got very busy on Tuesday night, decorating the lounge with things that had, until recently, been in her babytummy. So that made for a dull couple of days’ quarantine but since then we’ve been out and about and finding some pretty, Christmassy things for you to all look at. Yesterday was particularly complex. Roo and I went to Greenwich first thing in the morning to see “Free Birds” – the most difficult part of this plan, as Reuben is demonstrating, was trying to get a 4-year-old to strike a sensible pose:     After the cinema, we spotted the Coca-Cola truck, which apparently signals that the holidays are coming. We didn’t join the massive queue for a photo, but I did get a free mini can of Coke from the elves. Pity it was open and I’d just had a massive Diet Coke at the cinema. It got jettisoned just before we got back on the tube because I was already carrying a lot and things were about to get more complex still. We were meeting Nathan and Eva at the playground next to the London Eye but Nathan’s  phone is off at the phone doctors’ at the moment so we had to do the old-fashioned thing of arranging somewhere to meet in advance and actually sticking to it. Amazingly, the plan worked, although finding the rest of our friends in the bottlenecked Christmas market was harder. Harder still was actually getting through the Christmas market to see anything. We had a slow shuffle there and back, before our friend Fil came up with the solution of nipping behind the huts and taking the fast lane as far as the pier. As we broke off from the crowd, a trail of people followed us and as we looked back, we could see that Fil had created a sort of rudimentary one-way system. I’m not sure you’re meant to do that, but it certainly worked. Shortly afterwards, we gave up on the Christmas market and nipped over the top to the food market at the  back of the Royal Festival Hall. Along the way, we saw a bicycle-powered snow globe and a huge Christmas tree that excited Reuben: We scored some free samples of hot cider and sausage and Reuben spent his hard-earned pocket money on a brownie that I only nabbed a tiny bit of. Then it was off to a party hosted by H’sMamaAndDada that involved, among other things, the small children gardening in the dark: Today was the annual carol service at church, where the choir sang beautifully…even if I do say so myself. Thanks to the difficulties of parking in the city on a Sunday, we ended up parking in Hoxton, just outside the Pure Evil department store (it’s OK, it’s ironic evil) and walked through the city back to London Wall. Look, even the back end of Liverpool Street can be pretty on a winter’s morning: Along the way, we found a giant reindeer (Reuben is in for scale) And a wistful little Christmassy tree near the giant building site at Broadgate. Even the Square Mile looks festive at the moment.   Hoxton itself has graffiti and street art on every corner, from the impressive to the mundane. But I was not at all surprised that my boys took a shine to this tile mosaic: It’s not very Christmassy, but there will be more Christmassy wanderings to come…and don’t forget that the Christmas film season is continuing at the Tea House tomorrow with “The Grinch” and “Frosty the Snowman”.  A continued Happy Advent to you!