I was brought up believing that Twelfth Night came on the 6th of January – a subject upon which my mother brooked no discussion – but according to Wikipedia you start counting from Christmas Day, not Boxing Day, and the Twelfth Day was actually yesterday.
Whatever. I’m not superstitious in any case, and I was far too busy celebrating the Grandsons’ birthdays yesterday to faff around with Christmas decorations. So I took them down today – a job I always blitz in a single furious burst of activity, because to my mind the only thing worse than half-put-up Christmas decorations is the sad sight of them half removed. During a coffee break I used the Christmas tree to provide bokeh for a couple of quick shots of the last Schlumbergera flower of the season.
As soon as I’d closed the final cupboard door on Christmas 2024 I went back to trying to finish our second jigsaw of the holiday – a fiendish affair, based on a linocut by Angela Harding. When we started it R and I weren’t at all sure we’d ever manage to finish, but ten days on we only have the wings to fill in, and then we’ll be done.