The Advent of ..... Advent

Today he was at work again so I stayed in bed until 0830, woohoo. However we elected to do absolutely nothing until I had eaten a fish-finger sandwich for lunch, some kind of payback for having voted against fish fingers on Park Thursday, un-veto-ing my voting veto, er.
So lunch was when he got back and there was already a Plan. Cosham is an unremarkable conurbation of little or no value, apart from all the stuff that happens there. For example, the giant council fireworks show, LittleMax's new house, some parks that I went to last week, Irving Brewery, lots of dog poo, several charity shops and the little newsagent that does Match Attax! cards for 50p a go. I have always enjoyed the Victorian iron footbridge over the main south coast railway where you can hear the descending traffic barriers go "Reee-nar Reee-nar" when a train is about to cross the level crossing. OK, so I don't derive the equivalent measure of pleasure as I did when I was 3 (in this incarnation) but it's still fun, a double-trainer is a no-brainer.
So we parked up by the bowls club and walked on through. I bought something in every shop, a book about deserts, a book about world war 2 and 2 packets of bath fizzers. He got a picture frame (Monet, but the frame fits "Britannia Rules" by Christopher Dee which depicts the victorious troop ship 'Canberra' returning from the Falkland war, shame it was the port of Southampton, this one is an unopened inheritance from my great-grandfather the Colonel, whose dress uniform I wear at fancy dress events) and then I bought my football cards.
There is a small park central, just south of the railway so he cajoled me into nipping in for 3 minutes' arm exercise and I ended up playing with some random 5 year-old for 20 minutes. He left me to it and I gurned, capered, spoke in tongues, pretended to throw the tennis ball in the wrong direction, and generally made the unknown kid wet himself laughing at my display of hilarity.
Either I have this talent hard-wired into my soul, or I have had a good teacher, don't know which.
Jof had taken the chance of a well-deserved sofa session with TV: Girl, uninterrupted. I don't let her do that very often.
Then she said you know what it is tomorrow, don't you, let's get the Xmas decorations down out of the loft and see what we've got. This is quite a good point as we have not yet passed an Xmas in this house. So I faced my fears and climbed the ladder into the loft (don't ask) and we set about decorating the house. The stock of tinsel etc does not seem to go as far as once it did. Perhaps we ditched a lot, perhaps the house is bigger. How about both. Anyway, it looks mildly OK, could do better. I have a tree in my room and I did the really big one in the dining room, we had to move the cacti and Eden Project coffee tree into other rooms. I have reserved a crawlspace behind the Xmas tree for Santa.
Saturday Night is Bath Fizzer Night: a slight accent of tediousness was added when Grandad phoned at 930 pm to say that Grandma had died. Umph.