CAROLS and FAIRY CAKES

Yesterday is probably going to be the only way and day I celebrate the feast of Christmas this year, unless we have another miracle .... a thaw !

So, to be able to sit in the Choir, singing for the parish church Carol Service, surrounded by Victorian wall mosaic in pink and gold, candle light and children's voices, was a blessing I was very aware of.

Waitrose couldn't deliver Christmas (as in that episode in "The Good Life"), and tomorrow's girly Christmas lunch impossibly impassable. Bump away with her Beloved on the 25th, and my nearest family claimable for Christmas are a day away in Yorkshire.

We have ten inches of wonderful whiteness and that's a lot for the middle bit of the south west (and I remember '63 in Derbyshire when I was only ten and the white stuff was higher than my wellies), so the countryside has ground to a halt. Also, since moving I have been declassified to a 'C' road, rather than the snow-ploughed and gritted Emergency Services route between major routes, that I was before.

Which is a blessing in disguise, as my Tramper was the only vehicle on the white road today, so I could photograph the white hill.

The Fairy Cake ? I left the Carol Service before sociable Tea and Cakes, courtesy of the presiding Priest, but was offered a plate of fairy cakes as I passed through the door to the snow ... which was wonderful, because as any concert-in-a-church-goer will know ... often there is a plate to Collect Money from you as you leave ... and being very-low-income-because-dis, it grates. So, I was blessed to be able to collect a fairy cake on my way out and, managing the hat, scarf, gloves, stick, handbag, the only place to put it was balanced on top of the handbag, and off I trotted. (Yes, trotted, as thanks to loads of drugs and better health, I can walk short distances, hence being able to sit in the Choir. Even when everyone else stood.)

So, balancing my Fairy Cake, I walked down the church path ...

... thinking about it later, did I brush off a possible introduction? I am so used to being guarded and shrugging-off flirtatious comments from men using the excuse of my visible disability to patronise (which annoys their wives, further isolating me from social interaction) that I had a quick response back ... but the well-balanced fairy cake could have been placed there by the Christmas Wishes Fairy to grant him an opportunity to talk to that reasonably attractive (yes, give me time and a plan and I can manage that) single 50-something lady who is also that mad-bat that trundles through the village byways on a scooter, dragged along by a beagle.

Did I ?