Ouch.......

As predicted, following my physical exertions yesterday, I can barely move today.  Absolutely everything hurts and I'm forced to move around like Mrs Overall playing a hunchback dwarf.

I may also have been a tad over optimistic about setting the workroom to rights..... it took me nearly 10 minutes just to drag the partly deflated guest airbed and all the bedding out of it and into the sitting room.

Thankfully, I don't have to tackle taking down the Christmas decorations today as I had it drummed into me as a child that it was incredibly bad luck to do so before Twelfth Night, which is tomorrow.

Twelfth Night is defined as "The evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking".
Oxford English Dictionary

  

So, 5th January is when all Christmas decorations should be removed so as not to bring bad luck upon the home. If they are not removed on Twelfth Night they should stay up all year.

So now you know. 

Actually, after the day we had yesterday it was comforting to snuggle up in the glow of all the festive lights festooning the sitting room.  It always seems a shame to take them down at the very moment, early in gloomy January, when they would provide most cheer.

I'm normally a 'glass half full' kind of girl, but even I don't have very high hopes for 2012.  Already this year my DAB radio and electric toothbrush have both given up the ghost and since these things generally happen in 3s I'm nervously awaiting the next electrical demise.

Also, 23 January marks the Chinese New Year which will be the Year of the Dragon..... universally acknowledged to be very 'challenging' for those born in the Year of the Dog, which includes both myself, my daughter and (most notably) Small Dog.

Not that I believe in any of that superstitious nonsense.........

*cough*