Well, December has been a lot.
The month started with the usual yoga, pilates and massage sessions ahead of a weekend away visiting family in Devon. We’d decided to stop en-route in a new-to-us part of the country overnight, which as it turned out didn’t actually result in any less driving, but never mind.
A few days before we were due to set off we learnt that the hotel we were staying in had had to close which meant we wouldn’t be staying there after all. We’d booked through Mr & Mrs Smith and they were brilliant helping us find alternative accommodation. We were fairly relaxed about the location as long as it was in the general vicinity of the original hotel; they provided three alternatives and we chose Number One Bruton in Somerset, which turned out to be a brilliant choice.
It’s a great little town, and it felt like we got the VIP treatment unbeknown to us arriving on their ‘Christmas evening’ when the town was packed, the shops were open late and Santa abseiled into the festivities, like you do. The hotel and its restaurant Briar was fabulous too, and I’m sure we’ll be back again - it was that good.
We also spotted a sofa we liked in one of the windows and went in to find out more and try it out. As the sofa was in the window, we also climbed into the window to test it out - and added to the live theatre no doubt in Bruton that night! MOH originally pointed it out he says as a joke, but when we looked we realised it was actually rather nice and will go well in our lounge, and be the basis of changing the decor in there. I think he’s partly regretting it already!
A perk of being a hotel guest was entry into the gardens of The Newt in Somerset and no surprises but the gardens were amazing, even in early December. I’ve so much more to share from there, in fact I was part way through writing a post about overnighting in Bruton when life took over, so look out for that soon. Everything at The Newt was done on a grand scale and with no scrimping, I mean this was the Christmas decoration as you entered the main barn, see what I mean?
Travelling on to Devon later that day was ‘interesting’ - I’ve never seen so much water on the roads, and nor have I driven through so much standing water (well standing is a misnomer it was teeming off the surrounding fields with nowhere else to go). We arrived at family safely though, even if we were a tad bemused and bewildered by our onward journey.
While in Devon we visited one of our all time favourite National Trust properties joining in the celebrations to mark 100 years of Coleton Fishacre. As well as the house and gardens, there was the added learn to Charleston sessions, and my personal favourite - the Speakeasy, serving real (but understandably tiny) cocktails.
Preparing for Christmas
It really did feel like a Christmas started that weekend. Back home it was time to collect the wreath for our back door and with so much going on this year I ordered a wreath from the florist whose workshop I would have attended if time allowed. Isn’t it gorgeous?
I think the bad weather must have followed us home though, and the wreath spent its first week or so in the heat pump trellis enclosure sheltering from the winds, and to save me retrieving it from around the garden. But thankfully since it’s been on the back door the weather has behaved a bit more, and we get to admire it every time we go in and out.
I’ve even relented and for the first time ever we’ve had some outside Christmas lights. Well they were the twinkly garden lights we had strung across our old garden which have been in the garage since we moved. I had the creative idea to use them to decorate the green garden obelisk which is also having its first outing from the garage!
When they’re lit at night they look just like a tree might do - in the daylight they look a bit odd, but it is what it is. I also managed to snap a weird reflective picture, which I sort of quite like but I’m not sure why!
The lights have been such a success that we think next year we might get a real tree and have that outside on the patio instead, and instead of having a tree in the house. I think secretly MOH is still hoping for those inflatable kind of decorations, but deep down he knows that’s not going to happen.
I went along to two Sewing Group Christmas evenings on successive nights and both were successful. At the first one of the ladies shared the recipe for her fantabulous Baileys trifle I’d admired and tried to recreate last year, as well as bringing a trifle along for us all to taste - taking her bowl home empty too. At the second we all made a folded Scandinavian Star which, while pretty once it was done, was a bit of a head scratcher!
I’ll probably make some more at some point, but there was no time this month as I’d already decided, fairly last minute, to embroider some Christmas cards - unusually being relatively realistic with the number I could complete, and therefore only block printing a sensible amount.
Embroidering sheep in Christmas Jumpers - on some of those sample fabrics from Harrogate - became my December task, and I’m really not that sad about it. They were all different, and they all turned out fab.
Not all plain sailing though
Which given the amount of water we’d driven through in Devon feels entirely inappropriate, but as a turn of phrase it’s a good summary. The utility company from our previous house (yes, the one we moved from in the summer of 2023) decided that this month was a good time to send us a final bill. In fact it was the third final bill we’d received from them - the first we were expecting and paid as you would; the second was a surprise and due to an error on their systems so they waived the majority of it. So a third final bill felt a tad unnecessary, especially as it covered a period of some 16 months when we weren’t the legal owners of the house - and it took them over a year to present it.
Calling them to discuss it didn’t solve anything, in fact the line went mysteriously dead when I asked them to explain why ‘back billing’ wasn’t relevant. It wasn’t an insignificant amount either, and was clearly not right and paying it wasn’t right either. In the end we got some great advice from our local Citizens Advice Bureau and raised a complaint with our previous supplier. I filed that on Christmas Eve and by the final Monday of the month it was all resolved, the bill cancelled and our previous account closed as they said they would do back in July 2023.
And the reason given for cancelling the bill? Back billing, which I’d asked about in that first phone call - it’s all so unnecessary, and has caused unwanted stress and paperwork. I’m sure we aren’t the only ones either, and I’m also sure that saying that unless it was resolved satisfactorily we would raise it with the energy ombudsmen didn’t influence things at all. But anyway it is sorted, which is a big relief.
And then our dishwasher and our heating decided to join in with both of them having a hiccup or two. The dishwasher stopped mid cycle and said ‘no more’ and so we need to call out an engineer. In the meantime it’s washing up for us - which reminds me daily of why we’ve had dishwashers for the last twenty plus years!
The heating decided to join the fun and have a blip on Christmas Day, thankfully we weren’t hosting Christmas this year as no dishwasher and temperamental heating would have made it ‘fun’. We do have an engineer booked to look at the heating for early next week as that’s our priority to be fixed as you’d expect. It is working kind of and we do have hot water, it’s just the system isn’t very happy and isn’t right and I have more photos than I ever thought possible of the messages and status of the main thermostat. But at least it is no longer alerting us every 46 minutes (yes, I timed it) which meant that neither of us got a whole load of sleep on Monday, so that’s something!
Shaken not stirred
There was more gallivanting before Christmas too with a night out and subsequent shopping day in London. For the past few years we’ve been out for a pre-Christmas steak at the Hawksmoor in Air Street, and it’s one of those things that has fast become a favourite thing to do. This year we stayed over near Kings Cross and headed back towards Regent Street the next morning to secure our traditional mince pies from Fortnum & Mason and check out their Christmas department, and their windows. London was busy though and we were glad to get back home, but not before we tried the new Martini Bar in the Hawksmoor’s newest venture in the St Pancras hotel.
That too was very nice, and somehow I think we’ll be back there before next Christmas as it’s a very civilised way to wait for a train!
If you want to read my ramblings from previous monthly updates then please check out my ‘This is’ series.