not quite this year's christmas card

...but nearly. For a lucky few, coming to a letter box near you, soon, a Christmas card - an image shot this time last year, also in the V & A, also of this light-sculpture/chandelier - but with a more sepulchral background - this is much airier. I took the picture a year ago about the day after I'd printed up and sent off my cards - and wished that I'd used it instead. This year, a day too late, I wish I'd been able to use this image... Annually, the quest for What The Christmas Card Should Be is a tricky one - I'm always chary of doing it too early, thinking that an even more appropriate image might come along - and I feel happy with that decision all through October and the first part of November. Then there's Thanksgiving, which I notionally save for the treat of working on it. But that doesn't happen, and suddenly it's mid-December, and I have armfuls of grading, and complicated travel arrangements, and an MLA paper to write... At least I managed to buy a book totally, utterly essential to writing that paper, today...