Timewarp apartment

An apartment left untouched since before the fall of the Berlin Wall has been discovered in Leipzig. The East German flat contained Soviet-made furniture and various foodstuffs from the old socialist state. A calendar on the wall showed August 1988.

This really intrigued me - i find all things Soviet/DDR fascinating in general.

Telegraph article
CNN article

Tony Hart

I just opened up the Guardian's website and saw that television presenter and artist Tony Hart has died at the age of 83. His programme Hart Beat was one of my favourites when I was little and I spent countless hours copying the things he drew, painted and made on the show, as well as sending my efforts in to be displayed in 'The Gallery' (despite the fact that as a toddler, I was apparently terrified of Morph). I know he retired a few years ago due to poor health, but I think he'll be missed.

Guardian

BBC

Almost Twelfth Night

Best things about Christmas:

- Carols and the Christmas morning Eucharist from my local cathedral on television as we unwrapped our presents. Church at Christmas is one of my favourite things ever. When I was at school, my school was one of Cambridge University's partner schools and every year we used to get seats at the rehearsal for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College Chapel. That's the famous service which happens on Christmas Eve afternoon, where demand for tickets is ridiculously high. Due to my status as a music geek i went to watch the rehearsal three times and it was so beautiful and atmospheric. Carols at Christmas always take me back to that time.

- Cooking our Christmas lunch ourselves: stress-free, relaxed and delicious.

- All that 'family time'. Even though I moan about it afterwards and am always ready for time to myself again, spending time with relatives, eating, drinking and catching up is always lovely.

- Getting back to 'normal' after the limbo period between Christmas and New Year. I went back to work today after not working a full week for several weeks now and bizarrely it feels good to be getting back into a routine. Even if it does mean packing away the decorations tomorrow. Getting back to normal also means not neglecting blogging (hopefully).

I'm currently reading this:

Luke bought it for me last Christmas and I ended up neglecting it as I bought so many other books last year. I finally decided to get stuck in, however, as Jessica Mitford is definitely one of my heroines (worth a post of her own, I think) and her correspondence makes such wonderful reading. I'm currently working through the early 1950s.