I also saw that Fortnum and Mason's has turned the whole shop into an  

advent calendar. It happens to have 24 convenient windows (there's another row which is not visible in the picture). I have an idea that they might do this every year but usually I'm too focused on their  famous Christmas window displays to notice. This year the Christmas windows were uncharacteristically dull, actually...

... so here is a Fortnum's window from times past. All the windows on the ground floor usually share a common theme,  and this window, from 2015,  was the Royal Coat of Arms, with the Lion and the Unicorn.  I hope they'll be back on form next year! 

And here are some of our Christmas lights, which I thought looked rather cosy, together with our faithful gas fires which date from the early 1950s and were in the house when we arrived.  I always loved the look of these fires; they have some sort of finish that glistens with "interference colours"  and are a nice old fashioned shape. Their brand name is "Gas Miser"  because although they are so powerful that you can feel as if you are in Borneo instead of London, they're also adjustable down to a barely visible flame that keeps the chill off the room for long periods and costs hardly anything. Ideal for old places with large high rooms and rather bad insulation, and everyone likes to gather round them too. They don't "go" with the original Victorian mantelpieces but you can't have everything!

Enjoy the rest of the Christmas Season, and Happy 2020!