It was drizzling at 7.42am – when the hens got up (unenthusiastically), Soot the cat was on my bed at that point, and I grabbed some crayons from downstairs and went and sat up there with him and did some colouring of a Christmas card I’d made for my mum. I kept colouring, Soot wedged his head further into his stomach, and was left snoring when I had to go went downstairs to cook at 8.50am; and at the end of the garden in the hen house, Bracken the 12 year old chicken was in the roost hole – and the other 2: Bramble was squidged up to her on the ladder up there, and Holly was pecking. Before serving the porridge, I succeeded in persuading Mum to get the Christmas tree out of the garage today; while I was drying up saucepans – a really big ParcelForce parcel arrived, Soot had voluntarily come downstairs, and then the tree and decorations were extracted from the garage.

I assembled the tree, Soot sniffed and peered at everything, and then I wedged Henry the singing hippo (a Christmas soft toy – as he wears a Santa hat and sings Christmas Is All Around)…

…into the tree, decorated it, wrapped tinsel round the stair bannister and dangled a few random baubles off picture frames. I tidied myself up and my sore right thumb was given a massage, a book for my uncle arrived, and Soot was having his spa treatment (what him being brushed has become known as) when I left home at 12.22pm.

2 dogs were being walked down Church Lane, 2 boys carrying skateboards were further down, a lot of traffic was around, and outside Old Benns Barn on one avenue – a board with ‘Respect The NHS’ on it was tied to a tree; on the GPs surgery street – there was a massive crane (a lot of it was visible over the roofs of the buildings), and the high street was blocked to cars and packed with people. I saw a ‘gourmet ceramic cheese baker’ for £11.29 – labelled as a ‘really useful gift’ in Robert Dyas, queues outside McDonald’s (and weird smells wafting out), 50% off sales in almost every shop, an accordion player on the corner of Warwick Street, a table outside Hotel Chocolat with 3 women behind it holding papers that said ‘socialist appeal’ on them, a shop called Magical Story with nothing but Christmas decorations in it, a ‘free Christmas bookstall’on a kiosk outside what used to be the Carphone Warehouse (and the kiosk said ‘Emmanuel Church – sharing the good news of Jesus’ on it), the usual very enthusiastic woman selling Big Issues was outside H&M, there was a sign for an ECIG Wizard Vape Shop – with over 200 e-liquids available, and a big Santa’s postbox. There was a very hairy man selling Big Issues on the corner of Regent Street, odd smells wafting out of a tent that said Mr. Spuds on it, the shop called Planet Bong had a pink poster up that said ‘Full Spectrum Natural CBD – manage stress, aches and pains, preventative’ (and I saw a small box of Pagan Tarot cards), a baby in a pram was wailing, there was another vape shop (called Privilege Capes), and in the Cats Protection shop at 2pm, where I volunteer– were cat nap radiator hammocks, donut beds, grooming arches, and a lot of people.

A volunteer I knew was in the room at the back of the shop, and I mentioned the stuff I’d seen – which made him laugh, and I asked if he knew what CBD was – and was told it was cannabis oil (Wikipedia’s definition is: ‘Cannabidiol (CBD) is a phytocannabinoid discovered in 1940. It is one of 113 identified cannabinoids in cannabis plants and accounts for up to 40% of the plant’s extract. As of 2019, clinical research on CBD included studies related to anxiety, cognition, movement disorders, and pain, but there is insufficient high-quality evidence that cannabidiol is effective for these conditions’), and the woman whose name I couldn’t remember was eating a sandwich at the back of the shop, and we had a chat about how commercial Christmas has got, I mentioned that I’d once volunteered with Crisis At Christmas, and said how packed all the charity shops I’d passed were, and he said they’d stopped taking donations this week (due to how much they’d got to sort). I mentioned Mum not wanting to put the tree up and how I’d persuaded her to do it; at 1.20pm – £211 was what they’d made today (and I noticed some bright yellow mens socks), and T turned the steamer on, we talked about Christmas decorations, he mentioned his step and half siblings, the woman whose name I couldn’t remember was looking through a box – with plates and bowls and 3 leather gloves in it, and I saw a bag containing a ‘Sole Soothers Foot Spa’ and a 50 CD Elvis Presley collection, a 2 player game called ‘Splatter Face Battle’, and a pair of silk lined leather gloves (and half a pink Henry hoover elsewhere in the room). I did some steaming of clothes, a peculiar statue in 1 box was of 3 men playing cards at a table had 1 man with a card between his toes who was passing it under the table to the man at the opposite end, then more clothes needed steaming, T asked if I could help yank some big blue plastic boxes apart (and we couldn’t do it) – and us both saying ‘oh shit’ a few times caused me to mention the F-ing jar created at home. There were some tiny gold earrings in a slightly mucky box that said 14 carat gold on it, a size 26 skirt that was about 3ft in diameter, and some soft toy carrots; I finished steaming, noticed a small mincer (of a brand called Spong), shuttlecocks, a hosepipe head, 2 sets of teacup cake moulds, and 2.27kg weightlifting weights; T polishing a horse statue made me remark on how Mum names everything, then he said he does – and showed me the sellotape holder which was called Elaine, and he was putting the horses reins and riding equipment back on it when I left at 3.23pm (and me reading out several sentences of my notes really made him giggle). On my way back, there were enormous numbers of people in PoundLand, and rubber ducks, weird ‘squidgey’ snowman heads were on the shelves in there…

…and boys were playing tennis and basketball on the court at the top of the main street; and I made it home just before 4pm.