It’s getting to that time of day, the light has almost gone from the sky, and the garden is a mass of dark shapes. It is only 4 o’clock, and winter without the sparkle of Christmas is not such a jolly time. Mind you I am glad the tree is down, and the house is tidy and calm. All that clutter was beginning to annoy me. Today is the epiphany, the day commemorating the arrival of the three Kings to the baby Jesus.

I went to church this morning, and listened to the minister telling us how irritated he gets when people  say to him, ‘This  must be your busy time!’ and he reflected  how we all sit back on Christmas day, after the food has been eaten, the presents exchanged and we all sigh, ‘Phew, that’s it for this year.’ And yet…it really was just the beginning. The babe was just born, and only now the Kings have arrived. Years ago, I had to learn by heart, T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Maji’

‘A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.’

We did brave the icy wind on Christmas Eve to go to St Mary’s for the Midnight Mass. There were over a thousand people, and I was bemused with the incense and the treble voices of the choir boys, and the pomp and self-importance of it all. Beside me two girls suddenly let rip and sang the descant with all the force of two Divas…I was reduced to childish hysterics, and couldn’t sing for laughing. It always happens in church…the only good laugh you get nowadays. It was a far cry from the simple stark purity of the church in Glenelg, with its blue carpet and white walls, and only the pulpit and the lectern for distraction.

Last night I laughed at Dave Allen, that wonderful Irish comedian, who mocked the hypocrisy of the church with such wonderful irreverence. The sketches and jokes were spot on, about priest and nuns and what not. But it didn’t stop me going to day, and struggling with the organ as I tried to reach the high C, the chords in my neck twisting up like ropes, and I could barely squeak. This was quite a blow as I had been so uplifted by Handel and his Messiah on the 2^nd, imagining myself as part of the choir,  listening to the sopranos soar above the roof off the Usher Hall. I have a sore throat now from all my strangulated efforts this morning, no descants for me to show off with, no pretty black outfit to stand and sing Hallelujah  in, it has all been quite a journey of self-awareness. I shall just have to warble alone.

Family time was good on the Day. Natasha and Leo had journeyed up from Wales, braving the rain and floods and Gerry and Cathal breezed in from South Queensferry and their new home, and we all ate and drank and it was good.

Everything was harmonious until John produced the game of Risk…then we saw everyone’s true colours…I had never played before so naively claimed the whole of Asia with one little soldier in each country bravely defending all the borders. (Big mistake.) John and Leo fought for Africa and the Americas, and Natasha hung on to Europe. Evil Leo, charged on, with his million troops and behaved like Napoleon. I ran off and left Asia to its fate, and had a bubble bath instead.

Natasha and I had a fun shopping day in John Lewis….the new baby now has a large fashion range of outfits for all occasions and a bassinette and a bath! Tasha doesn’t have long to go now, it is all getting quite exciting.

New Year was fun, we saw in the Bells at the West End Bar, and sang Auld Lang Synge with other revellers and outside the sky was wild with fireworks, and explosions and then John and I came home and had another ‘wee dram’ and decided to take a few ‘selfies’ in the sitting room, which are just too terrible to show.

A New Year, and I think it will be quite different from previous years. I did do the Fortune Telling Cards, the Tarot and the Chinese Sticks, and there was no doom or gloom, but I feel as though there is a shift in our plates, a change of wind as in Mary Poppins, an adjustment of the fine balance of my world.

Lang may all your lums reek.

(I hope your chimneys smoke for a long time)