Two days ago (Wednesday) I was in the Sainsbury’s at Straiton in Edinburgh. I happened to notice that the shop assistants’ name badges had poppies engraved on them.

It was October 10^th! Over a month till Remembrance Day.

(Okay; same time interval as last year.)

Last night a woman in the Question Time audience was sporting a largish cloth poppy. First TV sighting of the year. At least I can be sure she wasn’t corralled into wearing it.

After we left Bicester we made our way to the hotel we’d booked in Buckingham.

The town has a swan for its symbol. In golden form it appears as a finial (it looks too big and heavy to be a weathervane) on the roof of the Town Hall.

The town centre is pleasant with a mediæval castle-type building which was also once the town jail.

The Sainsbury’s Local (On the road in) has a look of Deco about it. There are good horizontals in the brickwork and stepping on the roofline.

The shop has been blended in well with the flat-roofed thirties house to its left.

There is a lovely Art Deco frieze on the wall of The Buckingham School, a Sports College. Note the swan logo. I assume the BCC stands for Buckingham County Council.

A couple of supermarkets – Morrisons and, I think, Sainsbury’s – I visited between Christmas and the New Year had signs up saying, “Happy Hogmanay.”

Happy Hogmanay?

No-one ever says that.*

My local Tesco made a better fist of it. Their sign – above the alcholic drinks isle, natch – said, “Celebrate Hogmanay,” which is more like it. But even then drink isn’t usually taken till after the bells, by which time Hogmanay is past.

So, now it’s here.

Happy New Year.

* Edited to add: except, oddly, Catriona Shearer and Craig Hill on Scotland’s Hogmanay Live last night.