Apologies

Apology No 1.  I was very late posting yesterday so it is possible that some regular readers will need to read two posts today, yesterday's having been missing when they logged in.  For some reason my ISP would allow me to access only its own site: all other areas of the net were unavailable to me until after lunch.

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Apology No 2.  This apology is addressed principally to Mr or Mrs or Miss or Ms or even Mx Anonymous who has taken it into his or her head to bombard my blog with comments about Hermes handbags or telling me how he or she was recommended by his or her brother to visit my blog and thanking me for the information it contains.  I'm fed up with receiving spam comments like this so to foil Mr (or Mrs or Miss or Ms or even Mx) Anonymous, I have switched word verification back on.

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Apology No 3.  To anyone who wants to submit genuine comments.  I know the WV is a pain in the neck and I hope to disable it in a week or so.  We shall see.

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Apology No 4.  To David Thomas, a writer on the Sunday Telegraph who this last weekend answered some of those tricky Christmas questions.  I intend to plagiarise his work quite shamelessly, but since I have given him the credit I hope I may be excused.

How do Rudolph and the other reindeer fly?

It's a question of needs must.  To reach every girl and boy who deserves presents, Rudolph and the others have to travel at millions of miles an hour.  Unfortunately, the animal-rights people have objected to Father Christmas putting rockets on his reindeer, current health and safety legislation prevents the use of chimneys as domestic entrances, and most people have central heating instead of fires these days anyway, so all the chimneys are blocked up...

And that's why Father Christmas has decided to modernise his operations and subcontract the whole thing to Amazon.

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Early morning frost and mist starting to clear on the field next to our French hideaway when we were there recently.