Showers.

Sunshine and showers brought rainbows too one of which was almost touching down at the bottom of the garden.

One of today's jobs was to make carrot and swede mash with all the carrots I bought yesterday and a swede that was lurking in the fridge. Apart from a tub to go with Christmas dinner and a generous portion for tonight there are another 16 portions in the freezer. I've gone with a tip I read on-line and put them in freezer bags, labelled of course, patted flat. That not only makes the bags easier to pack but the contents will defrost more quickly when needed. What I do need to get is a large pan that will work on the hob and go in the oven too. While my enormous casserole dish is still fine for the oven I can't put it on the hob to brown off meat or fry onions or spices. I'm kicking myself because there was the right kind of dish at Lidl's but I held off because it was £20. I'll try and buy it on my next shop as I'm assuming Argos is now closed. Might try B&M first when I go to Morrison's.

With the plasterers coming tomorrow I had a final clean up in the two rooms they'll be doing and sorted out some old dust sheets that we found in the garage. The floors of the two rooms they're doing are concrete but they will also need to walk right through the house to plaster round the French doors in the sitting room and I want to protect the laminate floor. Those dust sheets can then go straight in the bin. That might sound a bit wasteful but with plaster dust and not being 'our' sheets I don't want to keep them. Plus I have boxes of our own dust sheets.

I went for a beach walk later on and called in at the shop to see if they had a jar of mincemeat so I could make some mince pies. No mincemeat and though there were a number of brands of mince pies that's not the same as home-made. Peter's already missing Sally's home-made mince pies.

Somebody has been creative and made this reindeer with driftwood. Looking at the photo I can see that there are Christmas lights wound all over which must look very pretty when they are lit up. An idea for next year as there's a paved space behind the gates at the bottom of the garden where a reindeer or tree could sit.

Speedy is back to normal now and has been begging for his supper since 3.00. There are fields behind the houses at the top of the road so he could have hunted himself a rabbit.