In a festive nutshell

1 January 2007

Christmas Eve Eve

* The start of the 7 Days Project on Flickr. The suitably vain projectees were: me, Lauren-Who-Doesn’t-Comment, her sister Nina, my brother John and Fiona-whom-we-know-through-work. Lauren’s-Old-Man-Dave also signed up to the group, but didn’t contribute, giving some nancy excuse about how he has trouble signing in to Flickr.

* In the evening I went to Suzy’s, bestowed upon her gifts of varying sizes and edibility and also gave her the gift of seeing me knocking back the white wine and getting tipsy. Nick cooked a casserole for us and I think I barely scolded him at all. He should evidently keep me sozzled if he wants a quiet life.

Christmas Eve

* Lots of cooking and baking.

* Lauren and Dave visited in the evening and stayed for a while. I fed them the last two slices of my chocolate orange cake after picking the little bits of mould off it. Then when Lauren found a bit I’d missed, I picked it off, telling her it was just fat. What? Penicillin’s good for you.

Christmas Day

* Santa Claus done brought me a sack full of all my regular moisturiser, cleanser and whatnot, as well as the latest Marie Claire, some notelets and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. It’s all still in my stocking on my bedroom floor, which is not me being ungrateful, it’s me being lazy and forgetful. Which is much better.

* All my brothers – all 2 of them – came down to Kent from Norfolk and Surrey with their girlfriends and, lo, we had merriment and mirth and lots of food and presents and it was good. I had a Speedlight flash for the camera from Mum and Dad and now have to work out how to use it – or at least, how to use it and get the result I was expecting.

* The oven decided to stop working for a while. Fixing it involved the men putting their heads into the oven, squirting things with other things and pushing bits. Crisis averted.

Boxing Day

* A day off, kind of. Food preparation for the next day. Feeling quite knackered.

27th Dec

* Mum’s side of the family came down for the day. More presents, yay! I had barely seen Granpop, Aunty Ann and Uncle Terry at the summer party because of various hostess duties and I hadn’t seen Russ since May, so it was nice to all be in the same room again.

28th Dec

* Optician appointment. Eyes are fine as usual, my contact lenses are just spiffing, thank you very much. Having barely bothered with testing my eyes, my optician and I then sat for ages talking about what Hubert will be doing next year. She asked me what my New Year’s Resolutions are. I realised that I have no idea. She started giving me various ideas and I fought the urge to stick my fingers in my ears and shout “la la la, can’t hear you!”.

* Dad’s friends Ken and Enid came over for the day and I set myself up with Meg in the sitting room so I could get on with writing various letters, but at the same time be part of the socialising and gossiping.

29th Dec

* Finally a day of doing nothing, no cooking, no entertaining. Suzy rang in the morning, waking the sleeping household. I woke up to discover that the vague tickle I’d had in my throat over Christmas was, yes, a proper cold. Damn it.

* Last day of the 7 Days Project. I discovered that Lauren was given a D70 for Christmas. Was totally not jealous until I discovered that her EXIF data is better than mine. Damn it, I want to know how many times my shutter has been released too.

30th Dec

* I’ve no idea what happened today. The wind blew a lot and it rained. We didn’t have any tumbleweeds, but the power did take to dipping dramatically enough that I had to keep resetting the router. For this house being without internet access is like Jesus being without sandals. Unimaginable.

* Suzy came over for a while and looked ready to commit some kind of crime when I told her about Lauren’s D70.

New Year’s Eve

* A lot of nose-blowing

* I went to Suzy’s mid-afternoon and sat/lay around with my head gradually becoming more and more pressurised. I serviced her iMac (my old, old iMac), which included a very technical and complicated manoeuvre of taping the damn power lead in so it wouldn’t keep falling out. Suzy made a hotpot for the four of us (me, Suzy, Nick and Nick’s friend Beckett) (Suzy, you’ll be delighted to know that it took me as long as usual to remember Beckett’s name. Can’t we just rechristen him Merrick and have done with it?). I helped with the food by crumbling stock cubes and grating cheese with hands that were probably covered in my cold germs. After dinner we braved the cold outside to look at the moon through Suzy’s new telescope.

* The four of us saw in the new year together and then I went home. Eventually I went to bed and took ages to get comfortable enough to sleep. Dribbling on your pillow when you’ve got a cold is fine, but there comes a point when you can’t find a dry place to sleep.

New Year’s Day

So far so good (apart from nearly choking to death on snot this morning).

First person kissed: Nick
First drink drunk: Champagne
First text received from: Lauren

This morning I look like (puffy) death and am very glad that the 7 Days Project is over – nobody deserves to be confronted with this face on their Flickr account right now. I’m trying to avoid helping Mum tidy up the Christmas decorations, but she’s just come into the office and cornered me. Damn it.