Catching up on housework and exercise.

Up at seven thirty to a cloudy morning, it has rained overnight and the garden is very wet when I let Norman out, the sky overcast and the day not yet broken, as we slide into the darkest seven days of the year. Despite the best efforts of the church over the last two thousand years, there is something distinctly pagan about the approaching winter solstice, and the comforting sense of the cyclical nature of death and rebirth in the natural world. Living in the country and being outdoors on a daily basis, makes this a much more tangible feeling, and the warm feelings of Christmas and the start of lighter days, a very positive experience. Normy waits patiently for breakfast and after we have eaten, sits patiently in his basket until it is time for our walk. There are two things I wish to achieve today, a swim and catching up on housework, but first there are the dogs to walk. We arrive on the Westwood for ten, it is a mild morning and the cloud is just starting to break up, but the mud is as bad as ever. By the time we approach Black Mill, the sun has come out, very low against the southern horizon and we cast long shadows over the grass. I am very tempted to wander for another hour, but resist and limit our walk to an hour, skirting the gorse bushes at the Western edge of the common, before following the path down the valley back to the car. We return home for half past eleven, Norman has dry dog food, with the last of the beef gravy for lunch, and I a pot of tea and a couple of oaties, before starting on the housework. The window frames in my bedroom have become coated with mould and mildew, so I spray them with a special preparation and leave it to work for half an hour, whilst I clean up the kitchen. The spray loosens the grime on the windows and it wipes off easily when I return, I air the bedroom for an hour every morning, but the air here in Tickton is damp in the winter time, as we are very close to sea level and this area was originally salt marshes. My sister in law, Liliane, emailed this morning to say she has bought Graham a slow cooker for Christmas, perhaps inspired by this, I make a beef casserole with some frozen stewing steak and a load of vegetables left over from the weekend, that need to be used up. It only takes fifteen minutes, to fry the onions, meat and garlic add a couple of oxo's and then pop it in the slow cooker with carrots, swede, parsnip, cabbage and leaks. I also add some garden peas and broad beans from the freezer. It might just be ready for a late dinner, but most likely, I will let it simmer overnight in order to release all the flavours and will eat it for lunch tomorrow. Next is some ironing, I have three week's worth of shirts, in baskets in my bedroom, and intend to iron a weeks worth, before going for a swim around two. I iron to the one o'clock news, the government are halving the statutory notice period for large scale redundancies from ninety to forty five days. I get more and more cynical as I get older and it seems to me that politicians use crises to pursue their own party political ideology, irrespective of the evidence. The Liberal democrats are now so far behind in the opinion polls that they daren't object to this right wing agenda, for fear of triggering an election, in which they would face political annihilation. The nasty party is fully in charge, and filling it's boots, retoxification is in full swing, Cameron's modernisation platform has been blown asunder by the right wing thatcherites, who are now calling the shots. The same ideology, coincidentally, that got us into this hole in the first place, lets hope Milliband grows some balls and tells it like it is, deregulation and privatisation, massively benefited the top ten percent but at the expense of the rest of us. The anger motivates the ironing, and I clear away and drive to the leisure centre for two thirty. The pool is quiet and I have the far lane to myself, and complete a 2,000m medley swim and then shower and change before the children start to arrive for their swimming lessons. With luck, I will manage another couple of swims this week, next week being Xmas is more problematic. After tea and a couple of oaties, I drive to Morrison's for some shopping and then return home around five. Norman is waiting for his dinner, so I open a tin for him, and make Camembert and French stick for me. Later, around seven, I take the old boy for his evening walk, his winter coat freshly washed and dried on the radiator. It is another mild night, no stars are visible due to low cloud, and more Christmas decorations are springing up in the village. The little girls, who comprise Normy's fan club, have an illuminated snowman and a reindeer outside their house, on the other side of the Green. We haven't seen them for a few weeks, as it is too dark to play out after school at this time of year. Clement is home tomorrow from university and I am picking him up from Paragon Station in Hull at ten past one. To bed for nine.