I went to church by accident and then we gathered Mistletoe.

Sunday was deeply embarrassing - for some unknown reason I agreed to meet Robyn at her church in the evening for their carol concert.

I have no idea why I did it - I'm not at all religious and after having religion pushed down my throat from an early age I don't want any more.

But it meant a lot to Robyn and her vicar had supported her last Monday.....so it seemed polite to go.

It was charming - the church was lit only by candles and was beautiful. The music was good. I got to talking to a nice lady who knew Robyn. Everyone was very friendly.

Unfortunately I got there far too early and there was more than enough time for it to dawn on me how foolish I'd been. Robyn arrived just as the service was about to start.

I was there for a very short prayer and the first line of 'Oh little town of Bethlehem' when I realised I'd made a terrible mistake and had to get out.

Somehow I was able to blunder my way out without actually barging past little old ladies and escaped alone into the night with a sigh of relief.

Phew!

I was reminded of the line in 'Withnail and I' and amended it to my situation;

"I've come to church by accident".

Monday morning was a bit miserable - I wasn't feeling well and we'd planned to go to Stonehenge for the midwinter solstice on Tuesday morning like we went there for the summer one.

The forecast was for heavy rain and we didn't feel like going so it was a bit sad.

So we went out to celebrate the shortest day of the year by gathering Mistletoe.

Unfortunately, I hadn't felt like struggling around trying to locate the kind of tools that would have been useful - I improvised; (these are all Robyn G. May's photo's)

Not too successfully;

In the end we were lucky - I didn't have to go back home to get my tools, we found some that other people had left behind;

There were berries and it was the right size.

This picture shows the Mistletoe high up in the trees;

That's more like it;

The day had already been ruined because I needed to go to the Doctor and couldn't get an appointment until the afternoon - so we couldn't get anything else done.

But spending time on the Solstice gathering Mistletoe, it doesn't get much better than that.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

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