Dear Readers, books have always saved me. As a young person, I once disappeared into a book so completely that the whole class of children that I was in got up and went to the next class, while I sat there, eventually surrounded by children from another class. I remember looking up, dazed, and wondering what had happened, while the teacher had great fun, calling me ‘deaf’ as if it were an insult. The world of the book had been so captivating, so completely all-encompassing, that it was more real than the world of a ten year-old.

And when I broke my leg, and the pain-killers only worked for two hours, I would spend the four hours until I could take my next dose immersed in whatever book I could find that would work. And it was surprising what would work!

So here are my favourites from 2024, and do share anything that’s hit the mark for you. I’ve tried to choose only the books that have really piqued my interest and kept me turning the pages long after I should have been sleeping.

First up in fiction is James, Percival Everett’s re-telling of the Huckleberry Finn story from the point of the black slave, (Jim in Mark Twain’s book, James here – the choice of name is telling). It kept me up until 4 a.m. and there is so much here – humour, imagination, brutality and wish-fulfilment. Having read all of the Booker shortlist this year, this is my winner, and it will remain with me long after the other books. Highly highly recommended.

Then there’s another thought-provoking book, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann. On the face of it, this is a book about a love affair between an ageing professor and a much younger woman, but it’s set against the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the upheaval of the period with its gains and losses makes for a profound backdrop. Again, highly recommended.

On the non-fiction front, I found Polly Atkin’s ‘Some of Us Just Fall – On Nature and Not Getting Better‘ a thought-provoking read. I started it when I was recovering from my broken leg, but clearly Atkin has much greater challenges, and I found myself re-thinking  many of the ideas that I’d had about the healing powers of ‘nature’, and the limits of health care. A fascinating read.

And I absolutely loved ‘The Balkans by Bicycle’, by W.Papel Hamsher, republished by his son Mark, and available here. I have reviewed it before here, and suffice it to say that I read it once when really struggling with the pain in my leg, and then read it again when I felt better and was more able to take it in. The section on Hamsher’s stay on Mount Athos was particularly interesting, and I found myself wondering whether it was still a male-only domain ( I imagine so). Hopefully there are rather less bedbugs and other bitey creatures these days.

And finally, for an absolute page-turner and real insight into a particular kind of mind, I highly, highly recommend ‘The Art Thief’ by Michael Finkel, the tale of a solo thief with a love of art and a whole range of interesting personality quirks, who managed to steal nearly $2bn worth of art across seven countries. I’m not usually one for true crime, being a squeamish kind of person with a vivid imagination already packed full of horrors, but there’s no violence here, just a strange kind of self-confidence. And I had to sit down and read it cover to cover. It’s the kind of book that will have you sailing past your bus stop, so beware.

Anyhow, I feel as if this year has been the year that I’ve really re-discovered reading for pleasure. How about you? Let me know what your favourite reads have been. A good book is a never-ending joy, for sure.

Dear Readers, very early on in my wildlife gardening ‘journey’, I discovered that you don’t get much of a say in what wildlife turns up. The instant a seed-feeder was up, there was a squirrel to enjoy it, and very acrobatic they were too. The pond proved to be as attractive as a waterhole in the Serengeti.

And the squirrels could always be relied upon to tell me if there was a cat in the garden – at the first sight of a whisker, they’d turn into demon glove puppets, growling and shaking with fury.

Of course, if I could go back to 1876 (when grey squirrels were first released into Regent’s Park) I would advise against such a thing, as there’s no doubt that grey squirrels can be a nuisance in a whole variety of ways. But in my urban back garden, they bring a welcome touch of anarchy, and I never know what they’ll get up to next. During lockdown, for example, I got the chance to watch a pair of juvenile squirrels, who had been born in the drey in the whitebeam tree, and who were just starting to explore and cause havoc.

And squirrels are completely unperturbed by the weather. Wind doesn’t bother them…

and snow doesn’t deter them either.

And so, the squirrels in the garden always cheer me up, rapscallions that they are. They are tough, determined, and rather more intelligent than people give them credit for. They remind me of Victorian street urchins, always looking for an opportunity to exploit some unexpected resource. And for that, they will always have a welcome in my garden, though I might try yet again to make a squirrel-proof feeder work, after they took the lid off of the last one and hid it somewhere. I have a feeling I know who will ‘win’, though….

Street Tree on Fortis Green 27th December

Dear Readers, even on a cold, misty day there’s always a street tree to cheer one up, and this one is a corker. About a year ago I watched as this tree was sawed off to a stump.

“Well, ” I thought. “That’s the end of that”.

However, the tree obviously had other ideas -look at it sprouting away, bless it! I suspect that some council arboriculturalist will be tasked with ‘sorting it out’, but in the meantime it is fighting back with all of its resources. Let’s see what happens next.

The same tree in April this year

We are very lucky with our street trees here in East Finchley. In the summer, the enormous London Plane trees along the High Road help to keep us cool.

Along Lincoln Road, there are lots of lime trees (linden not citrus 🙂 ) – it interests me that they have been planted on this road, but not any of the others. I suppose that fashions change, in street trees as in everything else.

Lincoln Road used to have a gibbet (a cage for hanging up the bodies of executed criminals) at one end. I think a lime tree is much nicer.

A Very Shaggy Lime (Linden) tree on Lincoln Road

Though even these trees are not immune from a bit of brutal pollarding. I’m glad to say that these, too, are recovering.

Lincoln Road lime tree pollarded in 2023

However, Barnet have recently started offering a scheme whereby you can ‘sponsor’ a street tree, and in general a whole new array of species have been appearing. At the bottom of our street we have Crape Myrtle, for example…

Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)

…some hibiscus trees…

Hibiscus syraicus

and some Amelanchior (Shadbush). The tree below has an interesting history. One of the benefits of writing this blog is that it sometimes records things that I’ve forgotten. This tree was planted in a tree pit in 2019 after, I note. ‘the original tree was removed due to a fungal infection”.

Shadbush (Amelanchior)

The tree started to lean over at a peculiar angle, and in 2023 the whole tree blew over, with what looks to me like convincing evidence of another fungal infection at the root.

Now the tree pit has been filled in and replaced by an EV charger. At least there’s no chance of another tree meeting the same fate.

But there are two times of year when the street trees in the County Roads here in East Finchley really come into their own.  One is in spring, when the crab apples and cherries are full of blossom.

A cherry tree on Bedford Road

Cherry Blossom at the junction of Durham Road and Creighton Avenue

Spring blossom on the County Roads

The other highlight is autumn, when the leaves start to turn. It might not be New England, but it always cheers me up.

Autumn colour on Huntingdon Road

A newly-planted Ginkgo on Bedford Road

Huntingdon Road again. Not that I’m biased 🙂

A berry-laden rowan tree

The leaves turning on my favourite cherry tree

It’s very easy to go about one’s business without paying attention to street trees, and yet I’ve discovered that if I just stop and look at them properly, I can learn so much – the relatively simple things, such as what species/cultivar they are (not always as simple as you’d think, but in London at least you can have a look at the London Tree Map which might give you a clue), but also the more intuitive things. How does the blossom smell? Is the tree full of bees? Is there a big fat wood pigeon in it, eating the crab apples? Does the tree look in shining health, or a bit sad and in need of comfort? Like so many things in  nature, street trees have a lot to offer, if we’re prepared to put in a little time to get to know them.

A smoke bush tree (Cotinus coggryia) growing very close to my house, and unnoticed by me until a few months ago.

Stop Press! A number of birch tree saplings have very recently been planted along Fortis Green (just round the corner from me in East Finchley). These are Betula ermanii ‘Holland’, otherwise known as ‘Erman’s Birch’. 

When they’re all grown up, they should look like the one below. Birch trees generally are hosts for lots of invertebrates, fungi etc, so it will be interesting to see if any native species use these trees, which are originally from East Asia. Paul Wood, in ‘London’s Street Trees’, says this is one of the first of the birches to ‘turn’ in autumn, with its leaves turning golden as early as October. I shall have to pencil in a re-visit.

Traditional Christmas Pudding, set alight with brandy (Photo by By Ed g2s – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97164181)

Dear Readers, is there anything that says ‘winter’ more than a traditional steamed pudding? Although I am very fond of Christmas Pudding, it always seems a bit too much after all the rich food of the first part of the menu, so we generally have it on Boxing Day. But it seems that different regions in the UK have different steamed puddings, so here are a few that I love, or which sound intriguing.

First up, Clootie Dumpling – we always had this with custard after Christmas dinner when I worked in Dundee. It’s a much lighter version of the traditional Christmas pudding, and is cooked wrapped in a cloth (the ‘Clootie’) rather than in a bowl. In fact, this is making me think that this pudding is probably boiled rather than steamed, but you get the idea. Although it doesn’t look very inspiring, I can vouch for its deliciousness and its rib-sticking qualities, just the thing for a freezing day in the north of Scotland.

Clootie dumpling (Photo By Matt Riggott from Reykjavik, Iceland – Clootie dumplingUploaded by Diádoco, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11205179)

My Mum used to knock up a wonderful steamed jam pudding – I always thought of this as a real London recipe, but apparently it’s also known as Northamptonshire pudding, though there the jam must be raspberry. And very nice it looks too!

Northamptonshire Pudding (from https://www.littlesugarsnaps.com/steamed-jam-sponge-pudding/)

Then there’s Newcastle Pudding, which features glacé cherries…

Newcastle Pudding from https://dragonsandfairydust.co.uk/regional-recipes-newcastle-pudding/

Snowdon Pudding comes from Wales, and features a honey and lemon sauce…

Snowdon Pudding from Snowdon Pudding – The Hedgecombers

and then there’s Sussex Pond Pudding, which has a whole lemon inside – this combines with the sugar and butter filling to make a caramelised lemon sauce. Yum!

Sussex Pond Pudding ( By Ad084257 at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25328953)

And finally, there’s that butt of many a pudding-related joke, Spotted Dick. Apparently it was renamed ‘Spotted Richard’ in the House of Commons canteen, to head off any buffoonery, though I think they’d need to do more than rename a few desserts to stop the rise and rise of the double entendre.

Spotted Dick (Photo by By Ad084257 at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25328953)

So, apologies if this has made anyone start salivating at the thought of a proper steamed pudding, complete with fat, sugar and excess calories. They are such an old-fashioned thing, which could be a relatively economical way of using up jam/marmalade/syrup/eggs etc etc. And I haven’t even mentioned the savoury steamed puddings, such as steak and kidney pudding, which were such a feature when I was growing up. Does anyone else have pudding memories, or regional pudding recipes? Do share!

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ in Temple Fortune, North London

Dear Readers, there are not many scented flowers that bloom in winter time, and so those that do are all the more precious, both to humans who could do with something to lift their mood, and any bumblebees who pop out from hibernation in order to get some nectar to fuel them through the rest of the winter. Here are a few of my favourites.

First up is Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ – the scent from this shrub can be discerned from metres away, and the flowers start off as deep-pink buds, before fading through all shades of pink to white.

Then there’s Winter Honeysuckle, another bumblebee favourite. The fresh lemony scent of this plant is fragrant enough to be discerned even on a frosty day.

Winter-flowering Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) with bumblebee

And then there’s this inconspicuous plant, known as Christmas Box.  I’ve wandered past it, sniffing the air and trying to work out where the scent was coming from. There’s a whole hedge of it in one of the County Roads, and for a few weeks every December it really cheers me up.

Christmas Box (Sarcococca hookerii)

And how about some Daphne? This is another deliciously-scented garden plant, one to pop into a pot as close to a door as you can, so that you can get a whiff every time you step outdoors. It is a very poisonous plant, though the berries are the most dangerous part – beware if you have small children who might be tempted to try them (though apparently they taste disgusting, so hopefully this would put most people off).

Daphne odora

For many people, the real queen of winter-flowering scented plants is Witch Hazel. The combination of scent and those strange stringy flowers is a real winner, but this is a very slow-growing plant, hence its prohibitive cost. Still, it is a real beauty, especially on a frosty morning when the twigs are painted with ice. The plant is wind-pollinated, so there’s no real pollinator value, but it is still a cracker.

Witch Hazel (Hamamelis mollis)

And finally, there’s Mahonia. I didn’t think of this as a scented plant, but if you pass a large shrub there’s a delicious honeyed fragrance. Plus, Mahonia is relatively cheap in all its varieties, tolerates low temperatures and is a tremendous favourite with bumblebees, whilst I’ve seen Great and Blue Tits pecking at the flowers for nectar, and a variety of birds eating the berries. I would say that it’s always worth having a Mahonia in the garden, particularly if you live in the south of England where bumblebees are often coming out of hibernation earlier, and even keeping their colonies going right through the winter.

Mahonia aquifolium

So, Readers, do you have a favourite winter-flowering plant?

And just a reminder to UK readers of the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt, which runs from 29th December to 1st January inclusive. A great excuse to get out for a walk after all the feasting, and if you happened to pass a country pub en route, well, so much the better.

Dear Readers, on the nights when the pond is frozen and every surface is touched with frost, there’s something so evocative about the sound of a fox calling at dead of night. At this time of the year, it’s most likely to be a male fox trying to find their partner. Many people have noted that this call tends to be made mostly in the winter, and particularly on cold nights, though maybe the latter is because the sound carries more clearly when ‘earth is hard as iron’

Have a listen to this recording from Wildlife Online.

And here’s a short video from naturalist and artist Richard E. Fuller. He thinks that the bark is territorial, which is another reasonable interpretation of the call. You can certainly hear the fox bark, and another fox answer. Incidentally Fuller is a remarkable artist, and has created a wildlife garden that has been visited by everything from Tawny Owls and Kestrels to Stoats. His website is well worth a look!

I remember being unable to sleep one night, and looking out of the window onto the garden, which was flooded with moonlight. A fox stepped out of the hedge, paused and looked around as if waiting for someone. As I watched, another fox stepped out and stood next to him. They touched noses and then off they want, dissolving into the undergrowth. What a privilege it is to see these animals!

And I remember once staying with my Aunt Rosemary near Creemore in Ontario, and hearing a wholly unfamiliar sound…they sounded eerie to me, but to my Aunt’s elderly dog they must have been terrifying, because she burst into the bedroom in some distress. Coyotes are bigger than foxes but smaller than wolves, but will definitely take on a cat, or a smallish dog, so she was definitely right to be nervous.

Coyote, Photo by Chris Smith from https://www.flickr.com/photos/cjsmithphotography/5509164921

There is something about being warm and cosy and hearing the sounds of the night that is very comforting at this time of year. And very shortly, as dawn breaks, we’ll be able to hear the sound of the robin singing (at least here in East Finchley). At the moment, male and female robins, who both sing, will be defending individual territories, but in just a few short weeks the barriers between them will break down and they will start to think about making a nest. And so the year turns, regardless of human concerns.

Dear Readers, Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah! I make no apologies for sharing this video again, I just hope you can all see it.

It’s been an ‘interesting’ year both personally and globally, and so for the Twelve Days of Christmas I’m going to share some of my personal ‘small pleasures’ – things that, as Marie Kondo the decluttering wizard suggests ‘Spark Joy’. I’m hoping that when you get a second you’ll chip in with what makes you happy, and calm, and uplifted, even in difficult times. For me, it’s generally about nature (with the occasional detour into art or literature or food 🙂 ) but we’re all different! Let’s see what we can come up with. 

So, for the First Day of Christmas, here are some jumping spiders. You’re welcome. It makes me happy just to think that such creatures exist in the world. 

Dear Readers, this is my favourite Christmas video. I think even the mildly arachnophobic might like it (after all, peacock spiders are about as far from those hairy-legged critters who live in the shed as I am from a marmoset).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYFQQB9vqPw

And I really hope that you might be able to see this short video, which reminds me of my dating days, long ago….

https://www.facebook.com/reel/832441202279430

Peacock spiders are from the jumping spider family – remember this little chap? This is a fencepost jumping spider (Marpissa muscosa) who was living under the stairs on some deckchairs. He isn’t as colourful as the peacock spiders (who all live in Australia by the way, and are only the size of a grain of rice) but he is pretty cute all the same.

And if you are after some proper biological background on the peacock spiders, there’s a clip from a BBC documentary below. Beware, it features dancing, sex and violence, so it all depends what you enjoy at the festive season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkzwG2lLPc

And so, have a wonderful day, whatever you’re up to. And thank  you for being there this year. I appreciate you all very much.

Dear Readers, there have been some truly spectacular stories in New Scientist this year, and so here are some of favourites.

As you might expect from someone who usually has dozens of frogs in their pond in the spring, there were lots of tales about amphibians, including one with the best headline of 2024 – ‘Frogs have attempted sex with other species for millions of years‘. And this year also saw the discovery of the oldest tadpole fossil in the world.

And let’s not miss out reptiles – I was intrigued by accounts of crocodiles who seem to be triggered in a variety of ways by baby humans/bonobos crying. Spoiler alert – it’s not always about food!

And being Bug Woman, I am always interested in the smaller things of life and their vicissitudes, so this article about how insects managed to survive in a rainstorm was fascinating. Plus, it appears that insects play, and not just the highly-intelligent  bumblebees either, but little chaps like fruit flies, who appear to enjoy riding on a roundabout. There is so much we don’t know about the creatures that we share the planet with, including what they hell they are.

And  while we’re on the subject of intelligent  invertebrates, we can’t miss out the cephalopods, such as the octopi who not only hunt  with fish, but wallop any freeloading fish who don’t help out.

Then, there was a tale of some macaque monkeys living on an island in Thailand, who  came up with a whole new way of feeding themselves when tourists disappeared during the Covid pandemic.

And as I’ve been to the Azores to look for sperm whales this year, I was especially delighted to read that they might have the closest equivalent to human language of any animal yet investigated.

Although New Scientist provides a host of new information, it does occasionally seem to be stating the blooming obvious, as in this experiment where it was proved that dogs understand nouns. Not too much of a shock to dog owners, I’m sure, but then ‘knowing’ something intuitively and proving it scientifically are two different things.

And finally, something that will gladden the hearts of coffee fiends everywhere – coffee is actually good for you! Now they just have to prove the same for chocolate.

George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) by Balthasar Denner

Dear Readers, the carol concert that I attended last night at St Michael’s Church in Highgate, performed by the Crouch End Festival Chorus, was absolutely wonderful. It was great to ‘sing’ along with the many carols that I’d been complaining about yesterday, mainly because everyone was so into the spirit of the thing that the odd cracked note was well hidden. But the high point for me was the collection of my favourite choruses from Handel’s Messiah. 

What a curious piece this is, in so many ways. To start with, it was originally designed to be performed at Easter, but it has become a mainstay of many Christmas services now. Secondly, the words weren’t written by Handel, but were collected by Charles Jennens, who drew the libretto directly from the Bible, with about 60 percent of the pieces from the Old Testament. Handel knocked the whole piece together in 24 days, though n fact, Jennens wasn’t altogether happy with how the finished Messiah sounded:

“I shall show you a collection I gave Handel, called Messiah, which I value highly. He has made a fine entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might and ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition; but he retained his overture obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah.”

In a book about the Messiah that I’m currently getting stuck into (Every Valley, by Charles King), Jennens is described as a man plagued with physical and mental ill-health, and who was considered ‘melancholic and extravagant’ by his neighbours in Gopsall, Leicestershire, where he built a truly splendid Palladian villa.

When the Messiah was originally performed, it involved a smallish choir performing by candlelight, but by the time the Victorians came along it had grown into something involving the biggest choir that could be put together, along with as many orchestral special effects as could be mustered. Such extravagance could be overwhelming – there are reports of people weeping and ladies fainting, though I’m inclined to blame the corsets for the latter. Nonetheless, there is still something so uplifting and hopeful about Messiah that my favourite choruses nearly always bring a tear to my eye. And surprisingly the Hallelujah Chorus, though spectacular, is not in my top three choruses. But here they are, in no particular order.

For, Unto Us a Child Is Born

And the Glory of the Lord

Glory to God

Many of the arias would have been sung by castrati, who were superstars in their own right in the 18th Century – you get something of the idea of how they would have sounded from countertenors such as Christopher Lowrey, here singing the aria ‘He Was Despised‘. At the opening performance in Dublin in 1741, this aria was sung by contralto Susannah Cibber, who made such an impression on the audience that a clergyman, Reverend Delaney, leapt to his feet and shouted “Woman, for this may all thy sins be forgiven!” (the sins including allegedly being in a menage à trois with her husband’s lodger).

And for those who might miss it, here is the Hallelujah Chorus in all its glory…

It’s strange that although Messiah is such a complex and difficult piece, it has so many belters that even those of us who are vocally challenged (ahem) find ourselves longing to have a go at it. I know that in previous years there have been performances of ‘the people’s Messiah’, where ordinary folk go along and rehearse and perform Messiah in the course of a single day. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more joyful. Shout if you’ve ever been involved in such a thing!

Dear Readers, some people have splendid singing voices, and some do not, and I fear that I come into the latter category. However, Christmas is (or should be) a time for forgiveness, and so today I shall be celebrating the Winter Solstice by bellowing my head off at the Carol Concert in St Michael’s Church, Highgate. My friend S will be singing in the choir, and hopefully they will be loud enough to cover up any bum notes on my part.

The carols that I love most, though, are the very old ones. There’s the Coventry Carol, probably the most melancholy of all the carols as it tells of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. I’m usually weeping too much to sing along with this one, which is hardly festive, but if you’re up for it you can listen here. It originated in the 16th century, and was originally performed during the Coventry Mystery Plays.

The Coventry Carol – full lyrics

Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay?”

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

Interestingly, according to that font of all knowledge ‘Classics FM’, the song would have been heard in a different way in Medieval times – we associate the minor key with sadness and the major key with joy, but it may have been the other way round then. Which leads me to another question – how innate is our interpretation of music, and how much of it is cultural? I find it difficult to imagine anybody listening to The Coventry Carol without feeling a trace of sadness, plus the massacre of children was presumably never something to be delighted about.

Onwards! Howsabout the Wexford Carol? This seems to me beautiful but celebratory. Have a listen here.

And then there are the jolly carols. How about ‘In Dulci Jubilo‘, made famous by Mike Oldfield of Tubular Bells fame, but actually another Medieval carol, originally sung in a mixture of German and Latin – the term for something written in a mixture of languages is ‘macaronic’. Who knew?

And I love ‘Past Three O’Clock‘, originally based on the calls of the London watchmen who would announce the hours as they did their rounds. I suppose this one pleases me because, as far as I know, it’s the only London carol (though let me know if you can think of any!)

I wonder if I’m alone in not much liking a lot of the ‘big hitters’ of a carol concert? I’m not a great fan of ‘Once in Royal David’s City‘, which always seems to me like a bit of a dirge. ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem‘ and ‘Silent Night‘ don’t do it for me either, although the latter is undeniably beautiful – maybe it’s just too familiar? I love the challenge of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing‘ as it gets higher and higher until audible only by any passing bats who are unfortunate enough not to be hibernating. ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful ‘ is a bit of a belter for sure’, and ‘The Holly and The Ivy’ is a good ‘un though it somewhat depends on which tune we’re singing along to (this one or this one). I rather like the jauntiness of the second one, but see what you think.   ‘Good King Wenceslas‘ is a great story, though the poor page fainting in the snow, heated only by his master’s footsteps, sounds like a bit of servant abuse to me. Anyway, enough! I shall report back on this afternoon’s event – I have it on  good authority that there is at least one very interesting piece that I’m not familiar with, and that at least is part of the fun.

And let me know  what you like to listen to at this time of year – not just carols, but winter music of all kinds. The year is turning, but there’s a way to go yet!