Christmas Eve

Happy Christmas! Ours got off to a good start yesterday. Most of the day was spent cooking. I made little mince tarts in mini muffin trays. Then I made a pavlova. I had the egg whites in the freezer to use up but the cake was not a success - it burnt on the bottom because my oven is too hot and too small. It either cooks too quickly top or bottom. I performed surgery on it and removed the bottom and we had the good bits in big pieces, topped with cream and strawberries, kiwifruit and banana and it tasted OK.

About 8.30 D and I went up to Franklin Rd to look at the lights. Most of the houses there are all lit up and it is a lovely atmosphere. By the time we got back it was present opening time. A grand affair this year in the sitting room with the Christmas tree lit up and the soft lamplight. Always a bit moving and melancholy. Hope there are many more of them, I thought.

D gave me the usual diary which I love (Nancy Tichbourne flower paintings, and other things I knew about but forgotten he had bought, E showered us with gifts - me, a book, a large cake of grapefruit and fig bath soap, a new special water bottle for the gym, a red leather label for my suitcase. I gave her a chocolate fondue set I had bought in Smith and Caugheys sale and wished I hadnt. Thankfully she was thrilled with it, also a beach towell which she also liked, a diary, and other bits and pieces, all chosen to please which they did.

E had her poloroid camera there and took some vintage style little square photos, D took a couple of ordidnary ones. I didnt have my finery on, so didn't want more.

It is now 9am and time for a nice breakfast of the things we like - in my case, musli and toast with my homemade strawberry jam, and a cup of fresh milky coffee. We will have our meal of the day - ham, salad and potato salad, when Pamela and Markus, and Eli, as her friends call her, come round.
So here's wishing you a very happy day with you and yours too.

Christmas

Happy Christmas from Ponsonby and Downtown Auckland.

Art by Eli

E gave me these paintings she did for my birthday. The first is one of her favourite author, Carson McCullers, the second is of her cat Casimira. Casimira is a gentle cat, a bit timid because she was ill-treated by her owners when only a kitten. She has become less so since E got her a playmate in the form of a cute tabby kitten, Scout. One of them has a penchant for bringing birds, dead or alive into the house.

Sing a New Song

Have been active on the music front with our choir giving three performances over the last couple of weeks. It has been fun going out in to the community singing to people with similar disabilities to our own. The first was to a group for professionals who have had strokes. When we were thanked the organizer of the group said he had been moved to see the big improvement in people in our choir group who had had strokes and whose language had been affected. Now after some months in the choir they not only talk better but sing beautifully too.

The next was to a group of stroke people with aphasia (loss of language). They enjoyed our carol singing and we enjoyed singing to and with them, as they joined in with familiar tunes and some carols.

Have been spurred on by the Young@Heart Chorus whom I went to hear with other members of our choir this week at the Civic . They are a group of older people in their 70s and 80s from North Hampton, Massachussetts, who sing pop and rock music mainly from the 1970s and 80s. They were excellent and had 5 New Zealand people to swell their numbers. They sang a medley of NZ songs too which were among the tunes I recognized - 10 guitars, Poi e, How Bizarre, and something from Flight of the Conchords repertoire.

Then on Saturday we had our own concert in a lovely old church, St Lukes on Remuera Rd, singing all lthe songs we sang during the year and some carols. There were about 60 or 70 people there - friends and relatives, and parishioners of the church. All this has been a new experience for me and quite exciting.