Posted in Fiction

I’ve learnt that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. ~Maya Angelou

Posted on by TravellinPenguin

I hope everyone is coping as Christmas approaches. Personally we don’t celebrate it anymore. Yes, we do a couple of Christmas activities with friends but no cards or decorations or gifts. I feel now, at an advanced age, it is more catching up with a few friends who elude us during busy times of the year. It is also a time to sit back, have some quiet times and relax from other activities. That includes a pile of unread books. Of course if one has children in their life, it is much different, but with only dogs and cats it is easy to have quieter times.

I also feel the loneliness of times gone by, childhood memories when our loved ones were living. I think of all those people whose families have gone and it isn’t the happy, gleeful time for those left, that the media portrays.

Enough of my holiday thoughts.

This week has been a fairly smooth and productive week. I have begun the book group’s February read by Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy. I am doing a read/listen version of it. I am enjoying the narration by Jacqui Katona, an Indigenous woman from Western Australia. She is better known as as a woman who along with Yvonne Margarula, another Aboriginal woman, who stopped a damaging uranium mine at Jabiluka, land traditionally owned by the Mirrar people and at the heart of Australia’s largest national park.

She has a perfect voice for this amazing book. I will admit it can be a difficult book to follow at times. There is so much in the 700+ pages. I love the writing and the characters are really interesting but I admit there are many parts of the story I can’t get my head around. The story is complex but I think once our book group really dives into it I will understand much more of it. So I persevere and find the read/listen method really helps.

The blurb-

Last night I went to St David’s cathedral with a couple of friends and listened to Christmas Carols. I’m not a huge fan of carols I have listened to for 7 decades but there were some I was not familiar with that I enjoyed. The orchestra was lovely. There were a few soloists including a young boy who was brilliant and I can never go past a good pipe organ with the acoustics of a cathedral. It was a pleasant evening.

Earlier in the week I was contacted by some photography friends who invited me to join them for an early morning shoot at the dog beach. We spent two hours with dogs and their owners getting action shots. We then posted them on google photos so the owners could access them. It was a beautiful summer morning and the dogs were bursting with energy. I will share a few photos below. A few of you may have seen them already on Instagram. I will be posting more as I edit them out of camera.

Ralph and Daphne, siblings.
When a photo is blurry, turn it into a silhouette.
The story begins: the Stalking begins…
I see you….
Taking off from the stalker
The Zoomie begins
Full circle. Such good times. Happy dogs.

That is the week that was….so to speak. I hope all of you enjoy the holidays, no matter how you celebrate and here’s looking ahead to 2025!

Hope you get some new books.

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Author:

I live a retired life in Tasmania, Australia. I love books, travel, animals, photography, motor biking and good friends. I indulge in all these activities with the little Travellin' Penguin who has now shared five continents with me. We love book shops, photography walks and time with friends as all our family is in USA and Canada. I enjoy visitors to my blog so hope you'll stop by.

17 thoughts on “I’ve learnt that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. ~Maya Angelou”

  1. It is 9:43 am L.A. time on Christmas Day and the only decorating I did this year was me in Christmas pajamas. Ha ha!

    I’m hoping to enjoy a quiet day with my coffee, kitty, books, Netflix, blogs, and TikTok.

    I love all your dog photos. Their faces and bodies are so expressive.

    Happy Holidays!

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Thank you for this nice, reflective post on Christmas. I think many of us simplify the celebration these days. Although I must admit it is my favourite holiday. I hope you will enjoy a quiet Christmas with your husband and dogs. Sounds like you will have a nice, relaxing time. You also are lucky with pleasant weather. All the best.

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  5. I think the point about Christmas is celebrating it in a way that suits you. We have usually been surrounded by family, but we’ve had Christmases outside Australia where we have celebrated with one other couple. It was enjoyable because it was something we chose for the situation we were in. I think for most of us who have comfortable lives, whether we enjoy occasions like this or not is a lot about choice. You can choose to enjoy the situation you find yourself in, or you can choose to be sad or miserable. (For people who have little control over their lives, or who have experienced trauma, etc, it’s a different matter, and I hate that Christmas can be really tough for them.)

    I hope you enjoy your holiday season. I love Christmas and the happy family times we have, but I also love the first couple of weeks in January when everything is quiet. All the commitments have closed and time is pretty much my own. Bliss.

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  6. A good blog post, Pam. Especially loved the photos of the dogs. 🐕🐶

    Yahoo Mail: Search, organise, conquer

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  7. Those dogs look ecstatic!

    I have a very unhappy little Silkie at the moment. We had carpets and a sofa steam cleaned yesterday, and the technician came in the late afternoon so things were still very damp at bedtime. Amber sleeps in her crate* in the bedroom but the carpet was too wet so the crate had to be put in the entrance hall. She was so indignant about this, I wish I could have photographed her face.

    *Her crate is like a soft-sided rectangular kennel with zip up sides, and has soft and comfy bedding. It’s not like those metal ones that you see, which are probably ok for bigger dogs with lots of furry padding. But not for a dog with aristocratic pretensions…

    PS We have a quiet Christmas too. We go out for lunch with our friends who are also orphans, but it’s really just like the other times we go out dining with them. I catch up with The Offspring on Boxing Day but he’s very laid back about Christmas too. Not like when he was a little kid and the excitement levels were off the scale!

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          1. Mine will even give a snooty sniff to a bowl of fresh water before she condescends to drink it.

            I mean, she’s never ever been given anything else to drink, so what does she think it could be?

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