Tiverton is positively heaving today with people Christmas shopping. Josh and I have to go down later to pick up a load of veg from Alistair in the market. I thought I would wait until this afternoon when lots of people might have retired exhausted to gobble up mince pies. We have a big mist surrounding us, really typical Christmas weather, warm and damp. The alpacas look pretty awful, very muddy feet, wet fleece, very anxious to get into the feed trough. Sounds like the rest of us.
Probably ought to do some cooking soon. It is a tradition that the non Christmas pudding eaters get a chocolate mousse engineered by moi and I see that Thomas wants a syrup sponge as well, I think I can do that. I was quite impressed with the unusual mince pies that Jamie Oliver made on the telly the other day so I thought I might have a go at those. My ridiculous musical crackers have arrived, so it is handbells for everyone and we can take it in turns to be the nasty conductor.
I was talking to someone in the south of France yesterday. They were thinking of buying alpacas but realise livestock is not for them but making alpaca jumpers (as they used to be in retail) might be. They seem tio have gone off the idea of buying a mini mill too – very wise, it must be such hard work – and there is plenty of capacity in Europe for spinning etc. He also said it was beautiful weather, blue skies, sunshine, so not fair!