Retrospective 2

For New Years Eve, we were invited out to friends who we know through Chelsea Ballet. It was decided to be a 'posh' evening so I duly donned a dj (borrowed from my brother) and Claire and he girls put on a nice frocks. They all looked lovely. It ended up with about 10 of us, all staying the night so no problems with drink vs driving. I discovered a Cosmopolitan which comprised of vodka, triple sec and a hint of cranberry - yum! No-one got really drunk although the kareoke machine did get a bit of a hammering and I finally hit the sheets at about 3.15am. The following morning 'the 4 lads' (yes, I can do impersonations) went down the pub to watch the Chelsea vs Liverpool match as Barry is an avid fan. Yes, they were robbed and ended up losing.
We stayed there longer than anticipated (5 hours) and omitted to eat... As you have probably guessed, not a good combination with Gary and Barry ending up completely trollied. Claire collected us and on arriving back at the house, Barry disappeared into the Sauna swiftly losing conciousness and Gary soon made a swift, if unsteady exit into the back garden to eject excess alcohol via the facial orifice. Unfortunately this coincided with him losing control over his limbs, ending up lying in the mud and the aforementioned. I hauled him up, got him upstairs and left it to his girlfriend to clean him up and then also managed to get Barry out of the Sauna and up to his room to sleep it off. Never a dull moment. It only remained to gather up my brood and head for home ourselves. Roll on 2005.

Retrospective 1

Christmas was a fun time! We headed merrily off to Devon on the 23rd and suprisingy found the roads largely uncongested with just the one rta to impede our progress. Stayed with my parents and my sister also joined the merry throng. It was the first Christmas in their new house so an extra buzz and finally got the girls off to sleep Christmas Eve so Santa could deliver the stockings (at 3am so Santa was not v. Impressed!). The mince pie and carrot were also duly dispatched to add proof positive of said visitation.
Christmas Day was uncoordinated and we generally drifted through opening presents, going to church and eating when all the food was finally cooked. Mum's oven decided that whatever the thermostat indicated would only be an arbitrary figure resulting in a cooked turkey and everything else still raw - still, they do recommend you allow meat to stand before carving...
Went walking on Dartmoor, played Uno extreme, watched Shrek 1 & 2 (girls got 2 on DVD) plus one evening my sister and I escaped to watch my new Bill Bailey DVD on her laptop as didn't feel the parents would enjoy - we did though!
A pleasant afternoon and evenings sodjurn to Plymouth to see my brother and his wife who had been in Wales with her family and then it was time to head home to London.
All in all a good time was had by all.

Lazarus revisited...

Well, I can't claim to have been dead, but from the amount of blogging activity of late, I might as well have been! Apologies for any of you out there that have missed my ramblings, it's amazing how a change of circumstances completely throws established routines out of the window. As a quick update, still no job (bummer).
The builders are still going, no change there then, but good progress is being made. Knocked the back wall out on New Years Eve, for which my back was none too pleased, then hauling a drunk on New Years Day made it even more unhappy. Thank God for Voltarol, Mega Ibuprofen, Co-Proxamol and Valium! Still, its well on the mend and means that I will take a back seat on Saturday when the supporting steel gets installed where the back door used to be and we then lose those design features of accro props.
Don't want to peak too soon, so will post further updates on recent events soon.