close to, weather, association

Poinsettia.

There is something a little sad about the blandness of the weather at a time when one recalls fields used to be rock hard with frost and every tree, hedge and bare shrub white with hoar. Today I read this forecast:
"Christmas day will be mostly dry but with a lot of cloud around and just a few bright spells, mainly in the northeast. It will be chilly on Boxing day and mostly cloudy". Dull, but reassuring perhaps.

At first I am a little surprised by Google's "sponsored links" ) which appear next to my email window. They are, it turns out, advertisements; and advertisers pay for them only when you click them. What is clever about them is that, albeit inefficiently, they pick up the the subjects of emails. A series of conversations about spelling the other day produces the following headings: Plain English Lexicon", "Reading Pen for Dyslexia" and, surprisingly, "Speak Finnish Fluently."