Well, the contents of half of my loft is no longer in the loft. I can report that I am still able to squeeze my way from bedroom to bathroom when needed. I am a little concerned about where the other half might go but that is a problem for next week. I am also just about still standing after hefting boxes. The tree, with new lights, is decorated. The old lights cost £12.99 from Woolworths in the late 1970s – that is more than we paid for the new ones! Local radio had a phone-in about old Christmas tree decorations yesterday. The ones that were cited were mere babies compared to some of mine.

A round up of historical novelists wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Jean Plaidy. Jean Plaidy’s novels formed a backdrop to my late teens as I read my way from her Norman saga to the Victorians, by way of the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts and Georgians. I do still have my near complete collection of Plaidy books; they take up several feet of precious bookshelf. They are amongst the very few books that I still have that I will probably not re-read but I somehow can’t bring myself to part with them. Although I read each one several times when I was younger, I feel I have somehow outgrown them. Tales of the royals don’t hold my interest in they way that those focusing on more lowly characters do. Having said that, I do have to credit Jean Plaidy with giving me a far better grounding in British historical chronology than I could have acquired any other way. They are still in print, with jazzier covers than the ones I have and have now lost out to a certain extent to those by Phillipa Gregory but they still hold a special place in my heart.

In a P.S. to my 2nd December entry. Liz Shakespeare’s forthcoming book about Edward Capern is to be accompanied by a CD of his poems, set to music by Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll. This is the CD that also has spoken poems on it, narrated by a fisherman of my acquaintance. A seasonal musical track is already available online.