Christmas is a brutal time for women. All the shopping - for food and presents, the wrapping, the sending of cards, the visiting of relatives, the cooking - mostly falls on our shoulders. I escape relatively lightly in that I don't have a big family, and the main effort for me is preparing lunch on six for Boxing Day, which is of course the easiest day.
Here I am wearing something I would never have bought a year or two ago: a fur trimmed parka coat. Yes, I used to be very sniffy about coats that were padded, quilted or insulated. Those, I felt, were best consigned to hill and mountain walks. Instead, I always bought cashmere coats like this lilac number.
Tanzanite is the better known of the three December birthstones, but today we're going to explore the zircon, one of the oldest gemstones which is often confused with "cubic zirconia."
