New Year Plans, Gender Roles and Shoddy Service.

Xmas is done and dusted and I am now looking forward to the New Year.  I always like the feeling of starting afresh, making plans and looking forward to new challenges.  I can't wait to take the decorations down, but will resist until after New Years Day or my family will protest .   I won't be bothering to make New Years resolutions as they usually barely last the month.  Instead I will be working on my 60 by 60 list that I set myself last year.  I would like to move house this year but I have been saying that for a few years, something always happens to prevent this.  Who know, maybe this is the year.

We had our two little grandchildren to stay for a few days which was huge fun, they are funny little people.  Our two year old granddaughter loves Frozen so she was singing 'Let it Go' over and over in her own unique way and insisting on wearing her 'Princess' dress.  As an old feminist it does feel like we haven't achieved anything when little girls are still encouraged to be pretty princesses, but I seem to be a lone voice in the gender role debate.

My xmas present to myself arrived after xmas, it was a book 'Women's Work the First 20,000 Years - Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times'  which I had seen recommended on another Blog.  I ordered it from a used book site which described the condition as 'very good'.  Well if this is very good, I'll eat my hat.  It was grubby and had coffee stains over it.  Lucky it wasn't a present for someone else.  After an email from me they did refund my money but they shouldn't have sent it in the first place.  I have a 'thing' about looking after my books, it really upsets me to see books abused.

The weather has been frosty here so the last few nights we have lit the open fire.  I love sitting in front of it listening to it crackling away, the sound takes me right back to childhood.  As the only heating in the house, we would all be huddled around it in the evening, I was always told off for sitting too close.   The frost looks beautiful in the garden, though I do feel sorry for the birds, they are eating me out of house and home at the moment poor little things.

We will be going to St. Ives this evening for New Years Eve where everyone will be filling the streets in their fancy dress costumes, it is one of the biggest parties around!  Our samba band will be entertaining the crowds, I'm really looking forward to it.  Do you have any plans for tonight?

Happy New Year everyone,

Chickpea xx