Happy Christmas ...

... to all of you lovely people who are kind enough to follow, read and comment on my little blog. Though I don't always manage to find the time to reply to your comments I hugely appreciate and am encouraged by each one. The unexpected gift of blogging has been the making of wonderful and interesting new friends in far-flung parts of the world, and I am so grateful for your friendship and generosity.

I hope that Santa has zoomed in to each of your lives this Christmas and brought you cheer ...

A very merry Christmas to you all!

A London Christmas

Leaving Christmas shopping to the eleventh hour is not an entirely bad idea when your hunting ground is London decked out for the season. 
Although the Siberian freeze has receded and been replaced by floods, so that we are now dreaming only of a wet Christmas, London is still majestic and enchanting at this time of year.

Regent Street, celebrating the twelve days of Christmas, was where I began, with a side trip to Liberty's ... 

showing us better than anyone how to do Christmas with flowers and greenery ...

Heading onwards via Bond Street towards Piccadilly ... What recession? declared Bond Street's jewellers and the Ritz (bottom left), though closing-down sales on Piccadilly told a different story ...

Immortal ghosts these two, heedless of the rain, FDR must have said something funny to make the curmudgeonly Winston crack a smile ...

Who would dare challenge these two burly uniformed gents watching over the entrance to the Burlington Arcade?

... where Santa was moonlighting with a little shoe-shine business.

One could take respite from the rain and shopping here in the Royal Academy, where it's business as usual ...

but I was pressing on to pick up treats for the Christmas table at Fortnum's ... whose windows this year are Dick Whittington-themed

and from here on to Hatchards for book gifts ... their windows impossible to resist.

After a pit-stop at Richoux's for tea and scones, it was properly dark outside, the Piccadilly Arcade glowing in lantern light

and to counter the scones I took a long walk northwards again via Berkeley Square, where I imagined a nightingale sang above a giant silvery Christmas tree ...

and the windows of grand homes made me want to press my nose longingly against the glass ...

and magic lanterns danced in trees ...

until I was almost full circle back in Oxford Street, where never mind the rain, there were sparkling umbrellas floating in the air in front of Selfridges' purply-illuminated grand pillars ...

... and where, after braving the store's hectic crowds and queues (though always polite and patient - how I love that about the English!), my final reward was to plop myself down, surrounded by bags, for a glass of bubbly, Christmas shopping done.

Sweet sixteen

She turned sixteen today and it felt to her like she'd waited forever for this milestone to come around. 

Once upon a time these had been her shoes ...

Today there were retro Doc Martens and lethally-spiked lace-up boots with dizzying heels to pull on just as soon as she'd blown out her candles.

There was chocolate cake for breakfast - why not when it's your birthday - and later on a trip to Kings Cross-St Pancras station to pick up her sister ...

... barely finished with exams and arriving just in time to celebrate with dinner out.

Happy birthday, Bella!

May your shoes take you to beautiful and exciting places and your year be shiny and bright. 

xxxxxxx

Gifted

Edinburgh's reputation as a major centre of culture is well known. It is UNESCO's first City of Literature, home to the world's largest book festival and performing arts festival, with more listed buildings than anywhere in Britain. 

Left, statue of the poet Robert Fergusson – said to have been an important influence on Rabbie Burns - outside Canongate Kirk. (If he looks awfully young, it's because the poor thing died at just 24). Right, The People's Story Museum on Canongate.

As a historical centre of the Enlightenment, it was nicknamed 'Athens of the North'. Did you know that five of Britain's seven ancient universities are in Scotland?

The library of New College, Edinburgh University's school of Divinity, where John Knox pontificates in the quadrangle

Here at the Scottish Poetry Library is an exhibition illustrating the story of an amazing tribute by one artist to all those who keep these cultural institutions alive …

In the course of 2011, a series of intricate and beautiful paper sculptures were discovered in various Edinburgh museums and libraries, left there as gifts by an anonymous artist ….

The first, found one day in March on the desk of the Scottish Poetry Library, is the poetree (above). Like the others it is made out of the pages of a book and dedicated to the "support of libraries, books, words, ideas".

The poetree was mounted on a book and accompanied by a gilded paper egg with a poem lining, and a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive, the library's Twitter account.

Three months later the National Library of Scotland found themselves gifted with a similar sculpture, a gramaphone and a coffin (not shown below), sculpted from a copy of Ian Rankin's Exit Music ...

More sculptures gradually appeared ... this teacup (below) was found on a signing table at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  It includes a teabag filled with cut out letters,  The cup on the top has a swirl of words which read ” Nothing beats a nice cup of tea (or coffee) and a really good BOOK”, and on a ‘tray’ next to an intricate cupcake “except maybe a cake as well”.

And so they continued ... this delicate dragon nesting on paper leaves was found on a window-sill in the Scottish Storytelling Centre ...

... and this, dedicated to UNESCO Edinburgh City of Literature, titled "LOST (albeit in a good book)", sculpted from a copy of James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Staff at the Writer's Museum discovered this street scene under a silvery moon, crafted in the opened-out spine of a copy of Ian Rankin's Hide and Seek

and one of my favourites - a pair of paper gloves made in the texture of a bee ...

... accompanied by a cap made of a wing of tiny feathers ...

As the mystery deepened with each of the ten sculptures that gradually appeared, so has curiosity about the identity of the artist. All that is known to date is that she is a woman. With the announcement of this exhibition of her sculptures in the Scottish Poetry Library, she contributed via an anonymous email address her thoughts and motives, explaining that at the heart of the project is 

"a woman, who had been a girl, whose life would have been less rich had she been unable to wander freely into libraries, art galleries and museums. A woman who, now all grown, still wants access to these places and yes, wants them for her children ..."

You can read more about the mystery sculptures here and find the book Gifted here.

All photos my own.