Winter beach litter

More cold weather today but brighter - eventually. We took the girls to the beach and walked until my leg gave up on me. Such a pain - in both senses. Mind you - they loved it. There are dead seagulls washed up among the half ton of flotsam and jetsam that litters the beaches at this time of the year, and Bridey and Molly find all of it worth investigating - usually with their noses! They are all over the place - this is interesting, oh no, that looks fascinating over there, wow, what IS that?

We brought a huge piece of washed up olive trunk back and it's now sitting on the trunk that holds the kindling, balancing up the one on the other side of the front door. It's gnarled and smooth all at the same time: organic and weathered to a tee. It fits perfectly with the essentially naturalistic tenor of the place.

The girls settled down for a quiet afternoon of relaxation but managed only a brief respite before Stumpy, Bruno and the sheep that they guard moved into the field next their run for a few hours mowing of the undergrowth. When they moved out just before dusk it was looking neat and tidy and almost manicured.

As for us, we had a typical rural winter day: Gill cooking up some lentil soup ad a mess of beef tavas while I whiled the afternoon away fixing up parts of a big html file that contains a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of our books. We listened to Radio 4, which is not, thankfully, over Xmassy, as the afternoon cruised past us and the night closed in on this the shortest day of the year.

We've been getting some great feedback over the last couple of days from our online life. Gill's photos garnered much praise and even an award while my Xmas present idea for online friends (an introduction to a new author) has gone down really well - all recipients bar one have shown genuine appreciation of the thought (and it is the thought that counts) and I seem to have found authors for all of them that they were unaware of. Once they get down to reading though we shall see how well I judged things.