It’s National Hot Chocolate Day in America today. Everyone is encouraged to grab a hot chocolate (cocoa) and hunker down whilst snuggling up with a warm cup of the stuff.

Making a flask of hot chocolate proved a challenge too far, for my rudimentary kitchen skills, so we stuck with coffee and custard cream biscuits.

I brought extra coffee again, so the offer to anyone who might be struggling to get into the Christmas spirit, to maybe pop along and see what we are up to, get a focus on something positive and interesting, and maybe see if it’s for you, is always there.

Next week we might be wearing Christmas hats and Santa beards, so be warned…

Only joking! Health and Safety would have an absolute field day with all that hairiness. I will bring mince pies though.

This week we carried on pushing the width of the path out. We are now sharing the path with a reasonably fast flowing stream. The rain has been pretty relentless and the ground is like a quagmire.

We have Storm Elin and Storm Fergus to thank for this week’s downpour. I’m not sure how far we got because today was more about going sideways and getting the width. A skinny path is no good for anyone and will just force people into the water and the slightly higher ground will never dry out.

In other news, an angry mob of squirrels had one of their hedonistic parties last week. Note to squirrels – the winter solstice is next week, with the full moon the week after. Hedonism is supposed to be on these times of the month. Keep breaking the benches and you will have nowhere to sit in the summer!

Sadly the little pair of benches are beyond repair, which is a great shame because we had a lad make these for his Duke of Edinburgh award a few years ago.. I’ll go skip-diving if I come across a reasonable few planks of wood that someone is throwing away. It’s all fun and games, so no point us lot getting wound-up about it. I might even amaze you all with my new design of bench called The Rustic. Watch this space…

Here is our YouTube bench-to-bench. You can see how desperately muddy it is, where we got to, and what is left to clear before we get to the bench at the end of the video.

As I mentioned earlier, without taking the time to get the width on this bit, then there really is no point. It might all change in the summer when the rain stops, but if previous years are anything to go by, it gets worse in January and February, before it starts to get better.

That’s about it for this week. Seriously, if you are struggling with Christmas, we are here for the next two weeks with light-hearted banter and company, hot coffee and mince pies.

Until next week!