Many of you feel the same way I'm sure - how did we get from Summer fun in the fields full of crop circles to nearly Christmas!  When November arrived it was a shock, but I still feel like there should be more of November left, instead the letters from school are talking about Christmas plays and new year dates.  The December / January issue of the Spiral is just going to print and Francine's editorial talks about the things we can be trying to do in the New Year to change the way we live, so that the things we do and the decisions we make will have less of an impact on the Earth. 

In our household we are always fighting the ongoing battle with the clever marketing people that convince my children that the dreadful plastic toys they are advertising are indeed 'must-haves' for Christmas and that their Christmas experience would be catastrophic if in fact they woke up on Christmas morning  and did not find them at the foot of their beds!  Fortunately, they are generally quite grounded and are (usually) patient while we explain to them that the toys they think would be great, would inevitably sit their bedrooms unused or broken from their first use and would end up in a landfill site cluttering the beautiful landscape in which they are fortunate enough to live.

Instead we endeavour to give them Christmas experiences, the things they will remember, time out from our usually manic lives to sit together, play games (the silly kind), look at books and to walk outside (probaby in the rain), to get wet and a bit cold and then to come home and to get dry and a bit warm, and finally to take time to be grateful for all that.

So, this festive season, I urge you not to be one of the headless people diving in and out of the shops buying people things for the sake of it (after all you probably have no idea what to get them and that's probably because they don't need anything), instead, slow down and spend time with those people - ask them to tea, make them biscuits, read them a story (old or young) and give them memories to treasure (and perhaps a recyclable crop circle calendar)!