Winkle

Busy-ness, illness and away-from-home-nesss means that I have missed nocturne and bibliotaph, both of which I could have expounded upon at length. No more excuses, today's WOTD is very pertinent.
I think it was from Trevor at work that I first heard the term 'winkles' to refer to young children. It is only a small step from 'little wilkie' (my mother coined that expression to refer to the unborn Jacob) to little winkle/s and soon I was affectionately referring to Evie & Max as 'The Little Winkles' - maybe not to their faces, but certainly in other conversations. 
Today is a special day in many parts of the world as children excitedly venture to open door #1 on their advent calendar. What they find behind the door varies hugely from a simple, charming Christmas image, via the ubiquitous chocolate nibble, to gifts of varying magnificence depending on the indulgent nature and bank balance of the giver. Last year I exhausted all my artistic skills for the next decade in constructing a pyramid of 25 toilet roll inners, each one containing a pair of tiny gifts for Max & Evie. I covered the front in Xmas paper, wrote the numbers randomly thereon, stuck on some stars and hey-presto! 1 advent calendar! It didn't matter that the toilet-rolls could be see from the back, as it would be against a wall.

I gingerly carried it to the car, and got Neil to place it carefully on my lap while he drove us the 5 minute journey to hand over the calendar. Suddenly (I can't remember why) Neil had to brake rather abruptly, and all the little presents came flying out from the unprotected back of my pyramid!!. I had to try to remember where they had been, and carefully poke them back into their respective hidey-holes. 
My little winkles were none the wiser, and had a lot of fun poking a hole through the paper each day to discover the little gifts waiting for them.
This year it was left to Neil who, quite unprompted, bought chocolate-filled advent calendars for each of them, and delivered them personally this morning!