Early

An early start this morning as we had to do a favour for a friend of ours. Kay, who sometimes joins us on our ramblings around Shipley Park, needed a ride into Arnold (a suburb of North Nottingham) and had to be picked up at 8.30am, a time we are normally only aware of through the mists of our first coffee of the morning while still in bed. Tackling the roads into the Nottingham area at that time of the morning is, as you can imagine, more akin to hell on earth, especially when the route takes you past some of the - shall we say - less salubrious parts of the North of Nottingham.
All this did, however, give us ample excuse (as if excuse were needed) to call in at Heanor Tesco on the way home for our monthly cooked breakfast treat and a little shopping.
Back home and settled in the warm again, the weather still damp and cold outside, it's time for a little more Christmas cheer. This time we have a beautiful, traditional carol. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is very old, probably dating back to the 15th Century. certainly it was exceedingly old and well known when it was first published in Britain in the early 19th Century.
It was clearly known to all as it appears in Dickens' A Christmas Carol:

"...at the first sound of — "God bless you merry, gentlemen! May nothing you dismay!"— Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost."

Here sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge (the best in the world), to an arrangement by David Willcocks. Enjoy.