An alternative Christmas ❄️🍷

My 5 year old daughter has decorated my Buddha Rupa beautifully alongside our Christmas tree 🎄 She still believes in Father Christmas which is magical 🎅🏼

I am an “armchair” Buddhist perhaps as I love mulled wine at this time of year and Roast Duck (instead of the traditional English Turkey) alongside Nut Roast for Christmas dinner.

Boris Johnson, our PM, has just ruined many Christmas plans by moving most of the South East of England including London into tier 4 and limiting gatherings indoors to Christmas Day. We live in Cambridgeshire in tier 2, bordering tier 4 areas and didn’t plan to invite anyone over for Christmas, but we wonder if it is ok to travel on a train through London to Brighton in the South of England, which is also a tier 2 area 💭

An idyllic problem to have perhaps but my elderly father is in hospital after a brain operation and unable to have visitors, whilst I have been working hard to cover for a long-term sick colleague and will finally have a chance of going off-line on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 👩🏻‍💻

Cue playing Santa on Christmas Eve, watching my children open their presents on Christmas morning, overeating whilst pulling Christmas crackers and doing industrial amounts of washing up afterwards 🥳

So a trip to Brighton by the sea, with its freezing cold shingle beach, and cosmopolitan city, is a chance for an escape from routine and the same four walls that I have been enclosed within most of the year ❄️

And because my favourite Rupa looks so timeless in black and white, here is an alternative view 🧘🏻