Wednesday, November 30

We spent most of the day giving Leena Sippola a send-off that she would have felt proud of. People gave speeches and read poems, and remembered the many different aspects of her life, and we said goodbye to some people we may never see again: sometimes in words, sometimes in nods, and sometimes in a kind of sad internal silence.

In the evening we do things at home. I decide on one last rearrangement of my advent calendar and finally arrive at the pattern that I think the manufacturers should have settled on. None of the colours predominate, not even the bright yellow. All of the boxes form symmetrical patterns and create a logical grid.

I had a previous attempt that almost worked. It involved the darker colours forming a cross but the yellow boxes stood out too much. It almost, but not quite, worked.

In my view, this pattern just works; particularly because you don’t notice the pattern at all until you look carefully.

Tomorrow December starts and I shall begin dismantling it, so tonight I make a record that you can compare to the first attempt that I made on Tuesday, November 22.