Boxing Day.

........ and Christmas Day. 

Christmas started for us with a special Christmas Eve meal, no meat, followed by Midnight Sevice at the local village Church. Each year the numbers grow less which is sad to see. We spoke to a few people afterwards including a lady who used to cook the school dinners at the village primary school. (Only 2 classes for all the children.) She was quite impressed with the size the boys have grown to. I was not the only one coughing and spluttering away during the service and I had to drop all my singing an octave to be able to join in at all with the traditional carols. It is a lovely old Church and there are times when the 'old' traditional wording of the service is appropriate though our usual Church has no set form for the service and the worship is wonderfully enthusiastic.

There was an absolute mountain of presents under the Christmas tree. That's what happens when there are 7 adults in the house, ( and there were presents for other people as well). 
Once every one was up we gathered in the sitting room with cups of tea to start the distribution of presents. 

Vytas and Kate sitting amidst the growing heap of wrapping paper.

After an enormous dinner , slightly late because the Rayburn was burning very low due to the wind direction, we crashed out in the sitting room in front of a roaring fire and watched TV. Vytas had a very old Jackie Chan film, Wheels on Meals, that was so bad it was funny. Vytas has been doing karate seriously since he went up to university, discussed technical details of the fight scenes with Pete who did karate in his youth. I have to admit to falling asleep occasionally, waking up in time to watch Strictly and the very funny new Wallace and Gromit animation - A Matter of Loaf and Death. It's amazing how much expression plasticine models can have. 

Today Peter and I went for a walk along the cliffs at Mortehoe. 

A Band of Morris Men were dancing in the village as we arrived. They are the Pilton dancers who put on a big display for the Green Man Festival in Pilton in the summer.

In contrast to the grey weather of the last few days a chill north-westerly had blown all the clouds away and the sun was shinning in a bright blue sky. ( True to form the Rayburn is now burning efficiently with a decent temperature in the oven).

The cold wind was chopping up the waves and at times made it hard to stand near the cliff edge. We managed to see one fat seal just bobbing about close to the rocks.

Vytas, Kate and Romas drove to Putsborough and ran the 2 mile length of the beach to Woolacombe, (just seen in this picture) and back again. There were a few surfers out but Romas decided not to take a chance as he still has this cold that is affecting most of us. I'm about to do my sit-ups, in between sneezing, and then hopefully we'll settle down in front of a roaring fire and some easy viewing.