CHRISTMAS SWANSONG

This is my last Christmas image. It's a star- forming region called the Christmas Tree cluster and got its nickname when amateur astronomers observed its triangular outline of stars. It looked like a tree bedecked by dazzling holiday lights but this was viewed through small telescopes. This new infrared image reveals ribbons of gas and dust swirling like snow blowing in frigid winter winds and adorned by a festive collection of brilliant stars. Dozens of newborn stars are just beginning to emerge from their natal cocoons. The image was taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

A big hurrah for Christmas being over for another year. There were a few small glitches. I must remember to look at what I'm doing after the neighbours give me a glass of Moet&Chandon champagne for breakfast. (Divine champagne by the way). That way I won't pick up the Mistasheen in mistake for the hairspray although my hair never moved all day and had a lovely gloss.

I must not distract the cook when she's making gravy by eating the fresh peas. It causes her to drop an entire salt container into the middle of the pan and the splash radius would rival the Chixulub meteor event. While she's laughing at me covered in gravy, the plastic container is melting and sticking to the pan.

It was her fault for considering me and buying fresh peas but $10 worth of fresh peas. I felt as though I should keep a few and have them bronzed. She's already been through one trauma, hearing a recall broadcast for the pudding (expensive too) she'd bought. Some of them had developed mould so all were recalled. She went over it with a magnifying glass and assured us it was clear which we would have believed had she not passed on it herself. Once again for me, she checked that it didn't have suet in it.

And where would we be without a mother drama. All she had to do was walk across the road.
She was not going to South America but she packed her walker with everything she might need.
Halfway across the street, she stops to talk to a neighbour and when I start yelling, she's "well you keep saying not to walk and talk at the same time". There are three cars coming round the corner and I'm calculating how many points they'll get for an old bat on a walker, a screaming daughter and chatty neighbour. But being Christmas they stopped long enough to let us throw said old bat onto the footpath.

We had bought her a DVD player so after lunch and a return expedition across the road, she was happily in bed with a trailer load of junk mail circling DVDs she wants to buy. Sis and I had not had a drink at all, discounting my early morning glass so we passed on it altogether. I didn't even open my chocolates but that won't last. As Scarlet says, "Tomorrow is another day" and I'll be into them later.

Best gift of all, a card from my granddaughter wishing me a Merry Christmas "with all my love & heart & soul". Solid gold.