Towards Christmas
21 December

So, we are at the turning of the light once again.

The world's whole sap is sunk

as John Donne puts it in his Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day.

No doubt this is why we cling to shreds of light with our Christmas trees in the windows of our centrally heated homes. Ours is on display again - the eleventh that there has been in this Crosby home of ours.

The big news though in Crosby is the snow. We don't normally get any snow at all or if we do it doesn't last very long. But we had a big fall (for us) over the weekend and it looks as though it's going to last well into the festive period. We've also experienced a succession of cold nights which have left net curtains frozen to the inside of the windows in the morning. In fact, at one point, I was wondering if the garden thermometer was broken and stuck at -10°C until I went outside.

Of course, everyone is complaining.

People complained last year because there wasn't a White Christmas.

This year, everyone is complaining because travel is being disrupted and deliveries of presents are uncertain.

My other big news is that I am on antibiotics again. I've had a cold; it has begun to settle on my chest. My local pharmacist (who I trust) didn't like the sound of that. He knew that I'd had a bad do in March of this year and insisted that I go to the doctor's to get my pipes listened to.

He was right; there is a wheeze or rattle in my lower left lung. So, it's tablets for David. I don't think that I've taken so many antibiotics in one year for many decades.

Elsewhere I've had my final Hugh Baird tutorial of the year and it went well. Hopefully, now I shall be back in the student saddle from January onwards. We just have to wait to hear what the central administration says about my claim that I should not have to pay the fees for a term of tuition which I did not need.

The following day, it was the School Christmas Service and that was very cheering. It comes on top of the news that I have an interview in January for a place at Liverpool Hope University to gain a PGCE. Maybe, things are beginning to fall into place at last. I still have no news from the Building Society about money matters. I just wonder if that plan has come to grief.

Meanwhile, television has, at last, thrown up some programmes of interest.

Amanda Vickery has given us a very insightful look into eighteenth century domestic arrangements with At Home With The Georgians. This was good, informative and sensible social history which allowed a knowledgable person to present their case.

The same applied to Andrew Graham-Dixon's The Art of Germany although some of the presentation here was a little more tricksy. However, having travelled through Bavaria this summer, I got a lot more out of the three programmes that I might otherwise.

I think that this was our man at his best as he placed artworks within a cultural legacy. It's the sort of thing that he's been doing very well on TV now for the best part of a decade with A History of British Art, The Secret of Drawing, The Art of Eternity and The Art of Spain. He deserves a very good three and a half stars.