The Holiday Report - part #1

[mrph]

Part the first...

So, what was the last bit of actual diary blurb, then? Oh, yes. Somewhen back before Christmas, at the office party. In the office. But we'll say no more about that (*twitch*). This is what happened next.

I got away from the party, gathered my stuff in a less-than-sober manner and headed up to Manchester with Marie and Chris (and their very enthusiastic dog...) to see the Chameleons. We stayed with Kev, who's a deeply nice bloke, and all was good. Well, almost. We emerged from the gig (a couple of hundred people in the audience, including a small handful of goths) cheerful and perky... only to find that some feckwit had put a brick through Kev's car window, seemingly just out of boredom (they'd done one of the other cars, too - nothing stolen, just damage).

So the journey back to Kev's place then involved a detour to the nearest police station, which may or may not have been manned. The phone in reception could have linked to a call centre in Argyle, for all we knew. And no human beings were sighted. But Kev got his incident number to quote for the insurance, which is the important bit...

We eventually made it back to Cov late on Saturday afternoon, and I immediately fell asleep. Which meant that I didn't get to Southampton until Sunday.

And then it was Christmas with the family. For the first time in about five years. Much less traumatic than expected, on the whole.

In an effort to make life easier for mum, Elaine and I did the Christmas dinner this year - duck roasted with bacon, peas and baby onions, accompanied by roast potatoes (with garlic and caraway seed), sprouts & chestnuts, and carrot+parsnip mash. As a meal, it was a success... but as a de-stressing move, it didn't work quite so well. It seems that Mum's quite capable of worrying about the Christmas lunch even when she's not cooking it... oh well, maybe next year.

Oh, and I did the infamous Curried Banana soup for Boxing Day, too. This time it was as per the recipe, for once - chicken stock and lime, with ripe bananas. I think I actually prefer the other version (veg stock, lemon, fresh bananas), although everyone else seemed quite happy with this latest version...

Apart from the cooking, it was all very quiet and placid. I spent some time shooting luckless marines on Alien Vs. Predator 2 (I now hate synthetics, EMP grenades and smart guns with motion trackers, btw), read a bit, and generally took it easy. No rows, no real stress, all very happy and fluffy.

Things received this Christmas include -

Diamanda Galas - "Vena Cava" CD
The Bluffer's Guide To Seduction (...!)
Greg Egan's "Quarantine" novel
The Art of Uzbek Cooking
Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table (so mhw will finally get his copy back... :)
A talking Dalek (blame cat_and_loki for that one...:)

And then I came back to Coventry, in time for NYE...