our farolitos

... stretching down our front path.  To be sure, they are an electric version, held in place by little blocks of (probably frozen) water - and not at all the precarious contraptions involving tea lights and sandwich bags and cat litter that I erected for a couple of years, on Christmas Eve, on the front steps back in Wimbledon - an importation of New Mexico of which I was inordinately proud, fiddly though it was.  It was also a sad token of how much my mother aged from one year to two years subsequent (it poured with rain the middle year).  The first time I lit up, she was charmed and enchanted.  Two years later, she was terrified that I was going to set the street, the house - anything - on fire, and kept asking me were they out? was I sure that they were out? at the end of the evening.  Maybe electricity has its benefits ... though I have no idea if one can obtain these for the UK voltage system ...