November sunshine & how my daughter got her name

I’ve been feeling a bit depressed lately, finding it hard to get out of bed on these drab winter mornings. I’ve sufferred from winter depression for years, though not as badly as poor Cat who finds it almost totally disabling. Once the clocks go back at the end of October it’s really hard to get going.

Today, though, it’s a beautiul bright November day with the sun shining on the last of the yellow leaves and the promise of the outside Christmas tree with it’s branches waving in the wind. I really hope I can keep that tree a bit longer as I do love it so. At Christmas we put lights on it, though it’s so big now we can’t really do it justice.

On Tuesday I forced myself to go into the garden and plant some tulips, though it was so cold I didn’t plant them all. I must get them in soon or it will be too late. I don’t really enjoy gardening in the winter but I make myself because it’s good for me to get outside and I enjoy the fruits of my labours in spring. There are still some purple chrysanthemums in bloom on the patio table and the forsythia has some little yellow blooms, which it shouldn’t have as it’s a spring flowering shrub, but it’s been doing that for a dozen years or more.

Exciting news of the coming royal wedding on Tuesday. So we will have a queen Catherine one day. Perhaps then my daughter will grow to like her Christian name, though I fear it will put her off even more! She always says why did we give her such a posh name, but I never saw it that way. I liked it because I was reading lots of historical novels at the time and it was a popular name in Elizabethan times. Also my favourite novel was Wuthering Heights. I’ve often wondered since if it was a good idea to name my daughter after such a wild and strong willed character as these are qualities she has too!

In a way she made the final decision herself. We had a shortlist of names. She was due on April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday, and if she came on that day she would have been Juliet or maybe Miranda but she didn’t arrive until the 29th which is St Catherine’s day, so that clinched it.

Chris, my eldest son is really fed up because he accidently bumped into his bosses car after a long hard day at work last week. It is only a couple of dents but his boss is insisting on claiming through my son’s insurance which means he will lose his no claims bonus. He has worked out it may cost him £1,000 in extra payments! I’m going to look into whether he can insist on not claiming on the insurance but just paying the bill himself. I would have thought so.