As I sit here now, looking out of the window… Wrong – I can’t actually see the window  from my desk; I have to get up and walk around to see through the small window in the study.

As I look out at the world, I see the cattle grazing in the fields adjacent to our house, the birds scurrying around the feeder, and nature looking pretty damned good in the early afternoon sunshine. With the temperature in the mid teens Celsius, I imagine that when we walk the hellhounds this afternoon, it will be either in jumper without jacket or jacket without jumper. It will not be cold enough to want both. It’s difficult to believe that just across the water (OK, so it’s 650 Kms away as the crow files, except that they’d never fly that far so perhaps I should say as the, I don’t know, migrating Osprey flies, but you get my drift) people are again suffering from serious floods or the threat of serious floods – and that two days before Christmas. Not nice.

Back in the middle of August, when my weight was 92 Kg (14½ stones), I accepted a challenge on MyFitnessPal labelled  “30 lbs by Christmas!”. That involved a commitment, if only to myself, to drop from my then current weight to 78.5 Kgs. As Christmas has approached, the goal has always seemed attainable, but only just. Yesterday morning I stepped on the scales and it gave me a weight of 78.16 Kg (12 st 4 lbs). The word “sorted” echoed throughout the valley. Last time I was 12 st 4 lbs was, as I recall, in the late 1980s!

Less concerned about limiting their food intake, our resident bird population is intent on filling up before the really cold weather sets in, or we run out of food for them, whichever comes first.

You may be wondering how they manage to carry on so peacefully, given that we have in the house a monster of a dog who likes few things more than chasing, harassing and, if ever he could manage it, killing small birds. Here’s the answer.

Seeing him like this, if one didn’t know better, one would be tempted to believe his lie that he is a little angel. But we know better, don’t we?

Following our last pre-Christmas shop on Friday, and having loaded everything into fridge, freezer and larder, when I looked at the contents of the fridge, the words that came into my head were:

This week, I shall be mostly eating …
YOGHURT

The jars on the top shelf contain home made yoghurt, if you were wondering. Not the one on the right – that’s home made tomato chutney.

The blog will be late next week. In fact, it probably won’t appear until the following Sunday. We are off to Paris on Friday, then to UK on Saturday, where Miranda (eldest daughter) is getting married to John on Sunday. We shall be returning to Paris on Monday and back home probably on Tuesday. I’ll fill you in on all the details when we get back.

Our very best to everyone for Christmas, and we wish you all you wish yourselves for 2013. Above all, we wish for you health, safety (no, not elf’n'safety) and contentment. Happiness is too transient and too dependant on external events. Contentment is more -  a sense that all is OK, that all is well, that all is as it should be.