Lovely Lidl

Ugh. I am SO sick of the RAIN. It has done NOTHING but rain every evening and now all my weekend too. When I'm AT WORK, the weather has been glorious, sunny and bright. As soon as I'm out and I want to go to town, do some gardening, go to the shop, put some clothes out to dry... It's soddin' raining.

I can't finish my giftwrapping as we're out of ribbons, and I don't fancy trying to fight my way down the Queensway to get there with this dark, wind and rain... Even the lack of toilet roll hasn't persuaded me to go shopping, not even the appalling cheap paper the lads consider suitable.

I did however manage to get to Lidl, having forgot how cool it is, but reminded by the startling price of Stollen in Tesco. £9 for a kilo loaf. Lidl do the same size for £1.99. Result: £7 savings and a whole lot of yummy.

I daren't buy too many Christmas foodie bits that I need to chill - the freezer is getting slowly more dodgy again... I do have a few not-necessary-to-freeze bits, like Cadbury chocolate fingers, a tin of sweeties, some mince pies, chocolate coated apricot filled gingerbreads and, of course, my Stollen. It's too early to get the Christmas Tree down, but I'm very tempted.

Dragons are too busy being snoozy. They know the weather outside is bad, and are quietly ignoring it. Tsam has been exploring the travel basket, jumping on, in and nosing around it - which will make it easier when we need to use it, as he'll know what it is and what it's for. I did find a cool little bag to go with it for carrying heat equipment, empty hot water bottle, food boxes etc.

Christmas: Magical, just like the Monocerous constellation. (Courtesy of NASA's Hubble Heritage Team)