Horrible sensor smudges on the picture.
Perhaps Father Christmas will bring me a new camera on Saturday! When the boys were little they called him "Farmer Kismas" which was very apt, seeing as we lived in the very rural Eastern Cape in South Africa.
It is a strange thing that we do to little children, telling them to believe in this big burly bearded man dressed in red who drives a sleigh pulled by reindeer across the sky, and delivers presents to children who have been good, on the birthday of Jesus!
And how they all find out that there is no Santa, or Father Christmas, is always a bit sad, the loss of that belief in magic, the beginning of reasoning to work things out, like how could a fat man possibly shimmy down the narrow chimneys of our homes, and what about homes with no chimneys? Little Madeleine's dad told her that as they had no chimney he didn't think Santa would be able to come to their house, "That's it, Madeleine, no presents!" and instead of bursting into indignant tears, this little two and a half year old just smiled and said, "Oh Daddy!" like, "Honestly, do you think I'm going to fall for that?". Wonderful perceptive child! Such a well-developed sense of humour in one so tiny!
Matthew was nine and still believed, the innocent he was, until I was making supper one cold December night while the boys were doing their homework in the next room, at the dining room table. I was listening to the radio, and a rather sad woman came on who had lost her job and didn't know how she was going to buy any presents for her three little children. Matthew, who had come in to ask me something, looked up at me with those big blue eyes of his and said, "But what about Father Christmas, Mom?" and he looked into my eyes, which were full of tears, and realisation dawned in him, and betrayal registered in his eyes, as he said, "There isn't any Father Christmas, is there?" and I said, "No, there isn't, I'm so sorry, Matt." He was devastated. His first big reality check - the world is not such a wonderful place.
A cold run today, lovely, fairly easy, I ran through pain in my right hip, sent my thoughts elsewhere, to my Hymn to the Whale, and when I thought of the pain again it had magically gone, the hip oiled and not creaking anymore!
Running so fast around Refrigerator Corner and the Corner Before, that I noticed myself leaning like a motorcyclist leans on a corner!
Running past grasses bleached to a fine Naples yellow by the frost, and the once thick stands of Goldenrod diminished to slender stalks, like everything else, thinned out by the cold, almost transparent, until one day you run along and you notice they are no longer there at all, everything flattened, battered by the cold and the snow.
Running 5.27 km, down Babbling Brook hill and up it again, several leaps over the fallen tree, up Heartbreak Hill, ducking under the other half-fallen tree, and along the other side of the meadow, up-a-little, down-a-little, and all at a rate of 7.12 minutes per km.
And then it began to snow! The first snow is always beautiful, painting the trees white, covering everything in a magical sparkling new coat. Just for a few days it is like this, and then you begin to be tired of all the time spent shovelling, the high adrenalin alert your body succumbs to each time you attempt the ridiculously steep driveway after snowfall, the ugliness of dirty snow on the roadsides.
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