Christmas is in the air

It's running up to Christmas. On the radio, you hear Christmas songs and when you go into town, all the shop windows are dressed with fir trees and glistening balls.

This is also the time of year when the days are the shortest. We call them the 'darkest days'. The light appears only around 9 am and by 4 pm it's getting dark once more. This reminds me - when I was writing The Gold Crucifix, there is a scene where the action takes place on a winter afternoon. I wrote somewhere the sun went down around 4.10 pm. One of my proofreaders (he was former CIA) actually went to look up the facts - and indeed, he found out that on that exact day in the 17th century, the sun went down on 4.13 pm. He wondered how I'd known that? Did I also make inquiries? Poor guy couldn't just imagine it is always like that, whether you're in the 21st or 17th century!

I quite like this time of year. It's the festive season and I also feel festive. My sister has her birthday on December 24th (friends often told my mother she should have waited one more day) and so I need to think every year of an original surprise for her. What makes this even more complicated is that most of the time we're not at home around that date. Last year we were in Mexico, now we'll be in Egypt.

Right now it's dry outside, but it has rained already in the morning and more rain is expected later today. The last months we've had lots of rain - and still they claim the water reserves are still too low, after two extremely dry summers.