Christmas is coming

Good day today. Actually, yesterday. I've discovered online Scrabble and we're now into the small hours of Sunday December 2nd - Habibibaba's 20th birthday!

I'm doing a very enjoyable course, with sessions from 10 til 1 on Saturdays. Afterwards, I met Habibi and we went on an expotition to buy some warm clothes. Now we both have fleecy pyjamas, warm hats and scarves, and I've got beautiful blue suede gloves too.

We arranged to meet in Plaza Mayor, and found crowds of people, some very good living statues, and a Christmas market. Habibi took photos, which I hope are good enough to post. I wasn't taking my gloves off for anything!

Here, you don't just buy a little nativity scene for your home. Of course, you can do that, but the alternative is to build your own, and I can imagine that many families assemble their nativity scenes over several years, as we've added to our tree decorations, cherishing the assocations with our growing son and our friends.

In Plaza Mayor today, you could buy stables, cork bark, moss, 'rock' paper and gravel; also windmills, middle-eastern style houses, carpentry workshops, bakeries, cloth shops - even a Roman villa - potentially the whole of Bethlehem and Judaea!

Then, in additon to the Holy Family, shepherds and kings of the traditional nativity scene, there was every figure imaginable, from a Roman governor and soldiers to put in the villa, to potters, washerwomen, fishermen and blacksmiths - some of them battery-operated, and hammering, scrubbing and casting for all they were worth so that every display twitched constantly. You could also buy tiny loaves, fruit, poultry, metal pans and clay pots. Such fun!

We definitely haven't got room for a Christmas tree this year, but we're going to make some shelf space and go back to Plaza Mayor next week. And I'll use my lovely new birthday camera too.