Think back to a baking summer in 2016 when we are having our sunroom built, a remarkable instance of forward thinking occurred. It was decided to install an outdoor electrical socket with built in electronic timer to power the Christmas Lights. It was felt the gadget should be discrete and so it was fitted at the bottom of the fence post. Ever since we have been looking forward to a global pandemic that would prompt the Crich community to light up homes and gardens, so we could fully utilise our discrete, very technically advanced timing system. Then corralled in our homes, we would sit cosily on a winter’s evening and admire the illuminations. What a pleasure they would be to the poor burdened postman labouring up our drive with sackfuls of gifts, to the jolly Amazon delivery man, to the merry Sainsbury’s online shopping driver and to the ruddy complexioned youngsters in socially distanced carol-singing groups not exceeding six bringing cheer to the indigent old folk shivering under a threadbare blanket before a single smouldering coal!
Now our technically advanced timer has enough settings to enable 24 sets of lights to come on at different times, to fuse the grid and to bring down aircraft. Discretely positioned at the bottom of the post, to set the timers necessitates lying face down in a puddle in a raincoat with water dripping off the peak of my cap, wet glasses steaming up and the screen of the device covered in condensation. One hand holds the soggy instructions, one hand holds up the varied focal glasses, one hand holds up the lid of the socket case and one hand presses button after button: modes, programmes, clock, hours, minutes, timer, on/auto/off, repeat, recall, launch, self-destruct. It’s well worth it for a twinkle which now twinks 30 minutes too early and goes off an hour too late. Another session prostrate in a puddle blindly fiddling looms.
We have also delivered Christmas cards and community leaflets all along our road. Most houses are blessed with steps, some with overhanging wet shrubbery, some appear not to have doors, some require bending and some reaching and all the nice modern doors have letterbox flaps as forgiving as the bite of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with draught excluders inside to ensure post is bent and shredded before hitting the mat. Deirdre and I both agreed how helpful it was when houses had external letter boxes at the bottom of their drives or steps. After nearly 19 years of greeting our postman as he treks up our steep drive, round the bend and squeezes between the cars, did it occur to us that our own letter box is actually further from the road than any along The Common.
Today’s text Matthew 7. 3-5 about spotting motes in your brother’s eye when you have a plank in your own!