he's here

 Look who I found, sitting in his heavily decorated Santa cave.

Seriously? Doesn't he have some last minute preparations to see to? Surely it is too early? There is still six weeks. The street decorations haven't even been put up yet.

And, more importantly the Santa Claus Parade isn't for another week. Doesn't that mean he hasn't officially arrived in town?

Here he is hard at work, waving to some toddler, who seemed more attracted by the glittery balls than the man himself.

As for me, I was more interested in this cool tree that changed colours and patterns.

There was a conveniently located coffee place just behind where I was sitting, so I had myself a beverage and set my camera on burst.... there was, at one point, some dancing snowmen, but the lights didn't seem to have a consistent pattern - some were repeated more than others and I never did see the snowmen again to get a picture of them.

Of course, people, like this girl and her friends, had to have their photos taken by the tree (though as you can see, it was not very busy on a Monday night) and I was asked if I could take one of the three of them together. Of course, I could. I was given this flat thing that wasn't a camera, but some kind of fancy phone and told to just press the centre button. It took several tries and a couple more lessons before I got the hang of it. If you so much as brushed the button, or pressed it on an angle, strange things started happening - the image would zoom and swerve and sometimes disappear altogether. I did not like this device, but still I wished to play with it some more. However, once we established that a decent photo was taken she took her phone back and off they went, completely ignoring Santa.

When I got home, I found a postcard waiting for me in my mailbox. 

It was from an American, who wrote that she was looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving. She loved that holiday because "that is the day we put up our Christmas tree"

That must be the ultimate in holiday combining.