I had coffee with some friends the other day and collected a box of odds and ends belonging to me that has been cluttering up their house for the last several years. I had rather forgotten it but on being reminded remembered that it held such treasures as a PC keyboard with Arabic characters that I bought in Egypt when I was convinced that nothing much stood between me and mastery of the Arabic language. How wrong I was. It's beautiful, intriguing, fascinating; but I shall always be its slave rather than its master.

One treasure that I had never seen before was a set of six CDs being the second half of a twelve volume set of the songs of Robert Burns that I subscribed to a decade or so ago. The second half pitched up while I was abroad. I've been listening to them with great pleasure over the past couple of days. It was a splendid initiative of Linn records.

I decided at the beginning of the 21st century that physical Christmas cards were old hat and that henceforth I should send only ecards. I've not lived up 100% to this forward thinking decision but I try and have just finished creating this year's card. For those of my readers not in my email address book here it is: