Christmas Festivities

This whole 'life in full' thing has come unstuck somewhat - sorry! Let's recap the last month...

Well, December started with a delivery at our student flat cum prison compound - the Tesco man cometh. In preparation for the festive season me and my flatmate Claire invested in one or two (well twelve) bottles of wine - in theory an outrageous plan, but in practice one of the best decisions I've ever made! Since then partying has been fun, inexpensive and maximised dancing time by reducing queueing for drinks!

Completely unrelated to this acquisition, the 7th of December saw Bev missing her first class - OMG!!! To be fair, I think I did pretty well to manage to make it so far through the semester. The tactical skive came about after a day's long slog in the Grad Centre writing an essay. Then God gave me a sign that it wasn't meant to be by opening the heavens shortly before 5pm (when my class was due to start) and spitting out golfball-sized hailstones! It would have been far too treacherous for me to make the 100 yard walk along the road! What's more, by this point I had a pint in my hand and good, banterous company around me. Three hours later we were still sitting there, drunkenly partaking in a pub quiz and ordering Dominos Pizza - happy days!

*For those of you reading this knowing full well what I got up to in the week I'm about to skip, please let it slide this once!*

On the last Wednesday of term myself and Claire embarked on a mammoth undertaking - Christmas dinner for twelve! It took weeks of preparation, lots of shopping aisle deliberations, and a very sexy pink holdall (ask Claire!) When the evening finally came around, our very bland living room miraculously transformed into a festive haven of crackers, presnts and mistletoe. True to what usually happens when us lot get together, the evening descended into debauchery and lots of raisin weekend-esque party games - no prizes for guessing who conjured those up!

So finally I decided to head home for Christmas. Of course it's nice to idealise what Christmas at home is going to be like, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that reality rarely lives up to such visions! Indeed my time in the homeland started with the small matter of moving house, a situation in which I was never going to see my parents' best side! Oh the stressing! 'Where am I going to put this highly important ornament?' 'Where did I pack the Christmas decorations?' etc etc. In our case, added to such remarks were things like 'Bob, this door's got a mark on it', ' Bob what does this switch do?' due to the fact that our new flat was actually BRAND new.

In my 10 days 'at home' I did manage to catch up with lots of friends however, which was a bonus. At Christmas time my favourite catching-up activity is definitely Christmas Eve. This year a whole group of us headed for drinks at the Cramond Brig. It's fun because not only can you catch up with mates from school that you haven't seen for a while, but you also get to person-spot people from years above and below you at school and speculate about what they're doing with their lives etc. After the pub the tradition is to head to Cramond Kirk for some carols and the watchnight service. For me, there are two highlights here: Minister Russell's annual terrible joke (this year was no exception!) and singing the Twelve Days of Christmas with added standing-up/sitting-down coordination. Aside from those two things the service is fairly run-of-the-mill. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it though!

Finally, we've made it to the present-opening bit. Well, this year I got the Cold Feet DVD box set. Having had to leave my videos at home due to the absence of a video player in Cardiff, many of you will realise that this present has filled a significant void in my life! I also got a lovely silver necklace from my brother, which came as a pleasant surprise, and some vouchers from my Granny. Christmas day for us was a quiet family affair, mainly spent sat in front of the TV. Personally, the Vicar of Dibley was the day's highlight - I can't wait for the New Year episode!!!

So now I'm back in Cardiff having flown south last night. It's like I've never left! Tomorrow Libby arrives and Hogmanay celebrations will get underway. I'll try and find time to report back on how that goes!!! Hope you all had a jolly fesitve time and hope to catch up with you soon.