Christmas

Thanksgiving serves a second function, as well as giving thanks (or whatever the true meaning of thanksgiving is). It acts as a boundary for Christmas. Before thanksgiving, there's nothing Christmassy. After thanksgiving (and Black Friday) Christmas is allowed to start. So today, I was wandering around the shops, while "Let it snow, let it snow let it snow", and "there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas ... " played.

But it won't snow, and there won't be snow here. We went out for a walk up some hills today. I wore a t-shirt, and shorts. It was hot. It's going to be hot tomorrow too - we almost went swimming today (except the boys said that they wanted to go up some mountains).

We bought ice creams from a bizarre ice cream van. (It might not have been bizarre, it might just have been American). The van looked very ancient, and like it had been in a number of minor collisions in its time. It was completely full of stuff - it had footballs and beachballs hanging from it - there's a picture of it (it's not very good, 'cos it was taken with my phone). It's almost a mystery to see where the driver should sit. The small sticker on the right says "Drum machines have no soul". On the other side of the bonnet, was a sticker that said "Howard Dean for President".

There was a vast array of different kinds of ice cream available. In England, there's no way an ice cream van would have had that many delicacies on offer. And if they had, they would have run out of half of them. But the woman serving was able to put her hand onto whatever the boys chose. Then put it back, when they changed their mind, and repeat the procedure, several times.

I've got off the point a little, what was I saying? Oh yes, shorts, ice cream, Christmas. It just feels a bit wrong.