Sunday Summary

Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your ears! Or, since we're on a more visual media, lend me your eyes! I promise to give them back.

This week's Sunday Summary is brought to you by the letters O, N and the number 11.

This, essentially, all stands for:

OH
NUTS
Only 11 more days 'til Christmas.

Though, hurrah for me, I have finally started writing cards, whilst also alternating between writing this blog and Photoshopping Playmobil characters into various impossible scenarios. Not so much multi-tasking as sporado-tasking but hey. I'm getting stuff done, is my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm also making rice pudding since the weather dictates such comfort food.

(Footnote: it's wise not to forget that you are trying to stew up rice pudding, let the milk and rice boil to near solidity while you go off and hunt gifs instead. ...Seriously, that stuff is like cement on the bottom of a saucepan. And I forgot to add the bay leaves. Meh. Thank heavens for slow cookers and their ability to make stuff bearable regardless of human oversight.)

The other good news is the gift haul (for other folk) is growing. Still a little way to go but getting there.

{DISCLAIMER: Puppies are strictly metaphorical.
Dogs are for life, not just for Christmas, y'all}

So, without further ado

(ado ado ado ado ado ... to paraphrase ABBA)

... This week, I have mostly been

Reading | Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

...the long-awaited third installment in the diary series, set in Bridget's 50s, when she has two small children (whose dialogue doesn't always feel consistent with children their age, but what do I know as a non-parent...?) and the life of widowhood to contend with, not to mention a new toyboy. It's mildly amusing, but I haven't yet emitted that oft-sought-after snort of hilarity and recognition (although I may have allowed a wry smile at Bridget's attempts to conquer Twitter).

Maybe I'm just not the target audience for this one. Maybe I just preferred Bridget when she was a hapless, childless singleton. Ah well.

I've also stocked up on some disgustingly light reads from the library to see me through the next three weeks in a panicked attempt to hit that 50-books-read-this-year target:

The Watsons | Jane Austen
A Mere Interlude | Thomas Hardy
Les Enfants Terribles | Jean Cocteau
The Third Man and Fallen Idol | Graham Greene
The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Bloody Chamber and other stories | Angela Carter

Rewatching | While You Were Sleeping

...while I am writing Christmas cards.

Lonely and in need of love at Christmas? Work for Chicago's transportation system. You end up engaged twice in one season. And to a man with truly epic eyebrows.

WIN WIN.

Listening | to a lot of Christmas music

Last five Christmas choonz played: (according to my ever so reliable iTunes listings):

O Little Town of Bethlehem | traditional
Proper Crimbo | Bo' Selecta (I make no excuses, it was on a compilation and on shuffle. Honest.)
When a Child is Born | Johnny Mathis
Baby It's Cold Outside | Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews
See Amid the Winter's Snow | traditional, sung by The Choir of Guildford Cathedral -- keeping it local

Visiting | the newly remodelled Foyles on Charing Cross Road

(but only for ten minutes)

{Christmassy Trafalgar Square}

On Wednesday night I met up with former workbud Clare at Trafalgar Square, and we shuffled on down for pizza and wine in Old Compton Street at the quirky La Porchetta Pollo Bar, which offered really, really good pizza Picone (for me, with chicken and pineapple, randomly) and a Quattro Formaggio for Ms McClareyson.

We did so much catching-up and pizza and wine imbibement that by the time we realised what time it actually was, Foyles was only open for another ten minutes. So we did a quick dash in.

{I like big books and I cannot lie}

{I. Can't. Even.}

The shop looks great, really it does -- at least, the children's section looks top-notch. May need to make a little more time in which to revisit and see more than just the ground floor of the store. Maybe.

(Although we wouldn't have objected that loudly to a Waterstone's-style lock-in.)

Ten Pins

Again, suspended this week due to having failed to make nearly enough time for Pinspiration or in fact very much blogwatching lately, which I'm genuinely sad about. Bring on the holibobs and more blog time.

Weekly Weblinks

Literary Linkage

• Sad times: Almost 50 libraries have closed this year
• Bestseller Zoella had help writing book

See also: Ghostwriter defends Zoella: also here

• Hot Key strikes twice on new YA book prize shortlist
• BBC and Booktrust launch teen story competition
• Cressida Cowell launches Christmas Reading Challenge
• McDonald's exceeds book giveaway targets
• Winnie-the-Pooh drawing fetches £314,500 at auction
• This trailer for the animated film of The Little Prince made me well up. Curse you, hormones and the lilting beauty of a French accent...:

Non-literary Linkage

• 2014 was the year of the selfie | maybe we can all -- self included -- start being a little more outward-looking in 2015...
• Father Ted's Mrs Doyle knits jumpers for chickens | oh, she is just too brilliant

And finally...

• Animals in Christmas jumpers (and other attire) | thanks as ever to Evie!

{oh the indignity...}

Keep warm and stick yer Christmas jumpers on, friends.

qb xx

PS Oh! Almost forgot to say: this is a little shout-out to the West ladies, Jill and Jo, part of my St Matthew's church family, who I found out this morning are readers of the quirky brunette. Thank you!