Just before Christmas I went to a partial family gathering / my mum’s birthday party near Dumfries: [these are phone-camera pics so not of amazing quality...] [After the pictures, by the way, there is some more writing.]

The pond. It’s heart-shaped because it was made as a Valentine’s present, so the story goes…

My mum experimenting with her new phone. And some lens flare. But that’s my fault.

Frozen puddles.

Beside the Solway Firth was an Unexpected Pram.

A very hairy hedge. There’s lots of lichen around this area – presumably an indication of the air not being very polluted.

This photo was taken at 11am. Note the Gloom.

These are some round bits of concrete at the edge of the sea at Mersehead Sands, which are possibly old bits of pipe. They get photographed rather too often by members of my family.

Some more 11am gloom.

A particularly good bit of gloom, I thought.

A barn being all Dramatic. In the Gloom.

The reason for the trip was primarily my mum’s birthday, and visiting uncle/aunt/cousins and generally Being In Scotland, which is one of my favourite activities. It was also, for me, in place of Having To Do Christmas. We spent said Nice Family Time with meals, walks and merriment in Scotland, without having all the prescriptive parts of Christmas, which irritate me. Aside from not being religious (which apparently isn’t a valid excuse for not celebrating Christmas) I don’t like having to eat specific things and drink fizzy wine far too early in the morning because it’s “traditional”, and particularly don’t enjoy the TV being on, the awful Christmas music that always finds a way in somehow, and the bizarre late mealtimes. However, I appreciate that some people do like all of these things. So rather than go along and complain and be grumpy and scroogelike, or attempt to convince everyone concerned that we should rebelliously not have turkey, but Thai curry, and should not turn the television on all day but instead spend the days listening to, say, the entire output of Rammstein, I opted out. I didn’t do Going To Visit Family For Christmas. I didn’t do anything for Christmas at all. In my house, we had a completely normal day, did some music work, ate nice uncomplicated food, and I was in an incredibly good mood throughout. My mum phoned me from another uncle’s house after she’d been for a Nice Walk, had a sherry and was about to help peel the sprouts. I could hear Christmas music in the background. She seemed to be having a perfectly nice time without me, but sounded a little baffled: ‘You mean you aren’t doing anything special today at all?’ But ‘not doing anything special’ felt somehow more like doing something special than actually doing something special would have done. If you see what I mean.

Incidentally, on the way home from the Not-Christmas trip to Dumfries, I had an hour stop-over at Carlisle station and visited a tapas bar there which I have always wanted to go to. Here is the cup of tea that I had there: