Wednesday, December 1

For our recent anniversary we bought each other advent calendars because you can get too adult in those kinds of situations. Today I start mine.

In the last few years advent calendars have grown from cardboard packages stuffed with chocolate to cardboard packages stuffed with any number of things as everyone has leapt into the kidult space. Last year I noticed that I could even get Bonne Maman advent calendars filled with 24 sample-sized pots of jam.

I got Irma a Body Shop calendar which she both loves and hates. She got me a Nordqvist tea calendar, called Moomin Valley Tea Adventure which I like. You can tell that Nordqvist intend it for adults because all the artwork uses black and white with no colour whatsoever.

Sophisticated or what!

Irma has ambivalent feelings about hers because each day’s Body Shop product comes in a box containing a printed instruction. Today she had orders to “Message five people in your phonebook and tell them they are awesome”.

I, on the other hand, just have jolly messages which require no action except, perhaps, a tiny squeal of delight. Today, when I remove my box of tea from its hole I learned that “You must go on a long journey before you really find out how wonderful home is”.

This comes from one of the Moomin books and thus feels a part of the whole adventure.