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So dad left yesterday afternoon. Around half fourish, to give him time to return the hire car and catch his flight. We went out for lunch at Ricardo’s to mark the end of his trip. Good food, nice surroundings, slow slooow service. Town was pretty packed. Long queues into the car parks and hundreds of people waddling around with ’sale’ bags in their hands.

Spent the rest of the afternoon putting the flat back into one piece, then flopped around in front of Its a Wonderful Life. Never seen it before, but heard good things about it. Kind of gives you a warm feeling inside by the time you get to the end. Good story for Christmas.

Today was a busy day. Started out calm enough. Leisurely breakfast, then a bit of food shopping at Sainsbury’s. Skipped lunch, though, and headed out to mum’s around twoish so I could follow their car to Sal’s new flat. Just down the road from where she used to live, so familiar area, but different road and just far enough away to guarantee I’d get lost, as usual.

Nice flat, shame about the graffiti-ridden stairwell. A big pool of bleach at the bottom stinking out the whole place. Apparently there to stop the local kids hanging around on the stairs all day. No wonder Oscar is afraid of going out.

Most of Dan’s immediate family was there, including a rather noisy and naughty one-and-a-bit year old who insisted on throwing things around (toy car at me, cuttlery holder onto my toes, books at the walls, plate full of food into a handbag etc). As usual, dad had bought a feast’s-worth of cheese to take home and prove to his French friends that not all cheese is runny and slimy, and as usual he’d left it in my fridge, as he does every year. So, I added it to the food Sal had bought, but I think I was the only one who ate it.

Lots of polite conversation, then we split into two teams and broke out the Taboo as the crowd slowly dispersed. We left about half seven, after a final cup of coffee, then headed home briefly to pick up presents before heading on to dinner with Trevor and Jon, Graham and Roger, and their friends Andy and Rob.

Jon did a fantastic dinner, and had sensibly catered for overstretched stomachs by opting for a buffet rather than a sit-down meal. The meat eaters were comfortably outnumbered by the vegetarians, so loads of herbivore options, and more desserts than I could even contemplate.

We spent the night flopping around on the furniture or floor, chatting about Christmas and holidays , playing with the cats and trying to answer questions on an infuriatingly difficult guess-the-lyrics game Trevor had got off the Internet. (”New York, London, Paris, Munich” = M, Pop Musik etc). Managed about a fifth of it on my own before passing it on. By the end of the night we’d got about 100 of the 200 blanks filled in.

To bed about two or half past, which is rapidly turning into December’s regular bedtime.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 28th, 2002 at 10:03 am 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.