Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 17 December 2023

HAPPY NEW WEEK and HAPPY SOLSTICE!!!

The Winter Solstice occurs at:

3:27 a.m. on December 22, Friday, in the U.K.

9:27 p.m. on December 21, Thursday, in Iowa

7:27 p.m. on December 21, Thursday, in California

AND

The Summer Solstice occurs at 1:57 p.m. on December 22, Friday, in Adelaide, Australia. I didn't forget you, AQ!

I hope everyone has a good week.

I'm looking forward to the return of the sun and the longer days!

The light triumphs over the darkness. I hope that's true of our world.

  • Pat - I have read and also heard on the radio that the price of car insurance is going ridiculous. Something to do with the increased cost of repairs (if you believe that) My quote was twice as much in the summer so, I suppose I got off quite lightly. Good luck.
  • Me again. Brillant close up views of 9 waxwings in B&M car park!!!!! I parked my car under the tree they were in! Lots of twitchers, photographers and bemused shoppers!!!! Waxwings taking no notice and eating rowan berries!!!!!
  • Pat -- The price of car insurance has definitely gone up massively. They quote various reasons, but I'm not sure they can justify it really. We recently had to renew and after arguing with our company, and getting other quotes which were even higher(!) my OH got about £20 off and had to pay up.in the end. Grr.

    Rusty-- Well done on tracking down the waxwings! How exciting.

    Annette - Glad you got some rain for the plants, but sorry about the floods. Enjoy your family time.

    We've been doing boring cleaning and preparation. Then we welcomed some neighbours over for sherry and shortbread. Lots of chat about the possible new neighbours in the vacant house in the road. After the visitors left, I had a bit of a snooze! I've got to wrap a lot of presents for the grandchildren now as I've been busy buying but not done anything about that part yet.
  • Dibnlib - I'm not fond of the self service tills except when you only have a couple of items and want to be quick. I notice that there are so many problems with them, they have to employ one member of staff to assist everyone, which kind of defeats the point as she might as well have manned a till and got the queue down.

    Our neighbours mentioned the rat problem locally, which doesn't seem to have gone away, although we haven't seen any lately ourselves.