This post will be something of a duplication for those of you who subscribe to my mailing list: it contains a link subscribers received on Saturday. I feel some sympathy for mailing list refuseniks. Emails from retailers and authors can get tiresome, especially if they’re always trying to flog you something. In this instance, I wasn’t and I’m not.

Some readers have asked me about the Welsh carol Dr Dan and his friends sing at the end of Book 3. It’s popularly known as Faban bach, or by its first line, Ar gyfer heddiw’r bore which means, roughly, ‘on this very morning’.  It’s a favourite plygain carol, plygain being a Welsh Protestant version of Midnight Mass. Plygain has died out a bit in recent years, though it’s now having something of a revival, and when it does happen it tends to be at a more convenient hour, to fit in with the final supermarket run and getting excited children to bed. But the rules remain the same. Anyone can get up and sing. There are no auditions but no repeats either, so if someone else gets in first with your carol, you’d better have an alternative up the sleeve of your anorak.

I managed to find this clip of Bryn Terfel and friends singing Dr Dan’s carol. I hope you enjoy it.

I wish you a very happy Christmas and a healthy New Year.