Never in Green Acres

Another discarded shopping list, this time with a bit of added information.

Zsa Zsa Gabor died today. She was 99 and had been married 8.5 times. She said she was an excellent house keeper. When she got divorced she always kept the house. I’ll always remember her sister, Eva, in Green Acres. She was very funny. I guess it ran in the family.

But worse news greeted me at Starbucks this morning. Grace has left! She was such a ray of sunshine, I’ll miss her smiling face of a Sunday morning. I have no idea why or where she’s gone. And it was just this morning that I decided to give them a Christmas card naming them all including Grace. I feel like such a idiot. Still, if they don’t tell me these things how am I to know?

I spent a lot of the day following orders in the new placement of the Japanese calligraphy pictures. Rather than up the stairs, they are now positioned above the red mahogany cupboard at the front door. They fit in rather well though the placement was quite fiddly and needed to be exact given the plethora of different measurements required. Eventually though they were placed.

There was also a rather large number of pictures to be hung in the library. The placement wasn’t quite as critical though there was still little room for deviation.

I always find it quite difficult to be symmetrical which is a good reason for my not being asked my opinion when hanging pictures on the wall.

Anyway, they were all hung and looking fine by the time Mirinda took the dogs to Hankley and I made the marzipan for the Christmas cake. This is always one of my favourite Chrissy jobs. I’m not being sarcastic. I prefer it to the icing and the baking and the fruit soaking. I don’t prefer it to the eating, I hasten to add.

Then, after a bit of Lord of the Rings (Mirinda is slowly making her way through them all again, an hour at a time) we set off for St Andrew’s church for the traditional Christmas carol service. I’m always a bit torn when it comes to the carol service. I mean, on the one hand I feel an awful hypocrite sitting (amid a lot of standing) there and listening to the Christian idea of what Christmas means but on the other hand I just love a good sing. The singing always wins out. Besides, it makes me feel part of the community.

We had the new vicar, the one who replaced the thief who was our vicar before. He stole something like £50,000 at another church, transferred to St Andrews and was then banged up for a bit of well deserved porridge. I do wonder why god, as he’s so omnipotent, didn’t warn the church authorities.

The new chap (David) eventually took over the parish and is a very jolly chap. And very funny. His address was particularly entertaining.

Having sung our hearts out and quenched any misguided need for sermonising, we headed back home for more earthly concerns in the guise of our puppies.