If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Where are the days going? Sunday already. Yesterday was a lazy day spent blowing noses and eating anything that might be filled with vitamins. Was feeling far better by mid-afternoon, so headed off to Helen’s with dad and Paul for her Christmas drop-in-drop-out.

Arrived to the sound of wailing children. There were only two of them, it turned out, but it sounded like five, at least. In fairness they were very well behaved, and easily amused by a bouncing snowman that sang. Its repertoire extended to one song.

It’s fair to say that by the end of the night we knew the words pretty well.

Anyhow, we sat and chatted for two, perhaps three hours, nibbling at the huge table of food Helen had laid out, unwrapping the odd present here and there, and listening to the relaxing music filtering through from the next room. The kids went home, eventually, and all was peaceful. It was a perfect buffer-zone in the middle of the Christmas rush.

I knew a grand total of about five people there, but it didn’t really matter.

Not long after the kids had gone, though, it was time for us to move on. I loaded dad and Paul into the car and headed across town for dinner with Trevor, Jon, Graham and Roger. It had originally been planned as a sit-down until I remembered dad would still be here and Jon had had quickly rearranged things as a buffet that we ate half in the new conservatory and half on the new wipe-clean lounge laminate in the company of the cats. They barely seem to have noticed the disappearance of their carpet.

Usually we’d swap presents and that would be the last bit of Christmas but as things turned out we talked on until almost two this morning and dad was looking at his watch, no doubt thinking about his flight this afternoon. We made our excuses and left, leaving the presents behind to be opened another day, stringing out Christmas yet further.

Today was a late start, then. I am getting frighteningly efficient at switching off the alarm without even realising it - something that’s going to have to stop before going back to work - so the first I knew of the day was keys in the lock as dad headed out to get a paper. It still took another two hours to properly get up, though, which left just enough time to head out for a last meal together on the way to the station.

Checking the times of the trains, though, the crappy online timetables were forecasting seven-hour journies to get into London because the line was closed for repairs. That kind of moved everything forward. We ate tapas in town then scooted across half of Essex to find a station with some trains, resulting in me arriving for Mark’s annual games afternoon five minutes early. That wouldn’t normally be a problem, except for the fact I’d said I would be an hour late so Mark was out and Ja was asleep.

Hmmm…

Anyway, I don’t think it was any coincidence by the time they’d come back / come round and Vince, Mark 2, Nick and Peter had joined us to play Mark’s games, Mark was the winner. Sneaky practicing must surely have taken place, although I was fairly pleased to get away with claiming to have zebras in the house for a point in some game or other, on account of the fact I’ve got a picture of some.

In all, a fairly surreal afternoon, but I’m glad things are over now and look like getting back to normal. It’s been a fun Christmas, but I’m getting itchy on the creative front and want to get back to making things, not just doing things. I want to spend some time working on the book again, which has been hopelessly neglected since starting the new job. It remains stalled at 94,000 words with a lot of writing still to do.

I had vowed to not even think about editing any of it until the whole of the first draft was written, but now I’m thinking that might be the best way to get back into the flow of things. Only trouble is I might then get so hung up in the perfecting I give up on the creating.

…or perhaps I won’t like anything I’ve written so far at all.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2003 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.