Yearly Archives: 2008

The day doesn’t start quite as early as I’d hoped to get up, but the alarm wakes me at 9am and I clamber out of bed and zombie my way to the kettle to brew myself a coffee in my swanky new cafetierre and drum up a cup of tea to rouse K with.

Once we’ve fallen out of bed and into some cleaning clobber we set about the flat. Seeing as we’ve only been in the flat for the odd evening and hardly any other time for the last week or more, things have been piling up, dropped off or unceremoniously dumped in the lounge, hallway, study and even the bathroom for want of a place to put bags down when we’ve come through the door and hit the sofa in “veg” mode. There is a lot to do.

We start by emptying all the Chrimbo packages and bags with gifts and attempting to find homes for everything, playing the DVD commentary on Pick of Destiny while we work. Halfway through the lounge, K reminds me that she wants to cook for the party tonight and requests I make a start on the kitchen so she can set-to on the cooking once she’s cleaned the bathroom.

I knuckle down the the washing up, re-organising and general scrubbing of the kitchen until it’s at least in a fit and clear enough state for K to rustle up her famous sausage rolls and more. Once I’m done I change out of my homewear into something a little more presentable and venture out into the big wide world to grab some last-minute things.

I start over at Mum and Dad’s, picking up a ‘script Dad had collected from teh chemist up the road from them for me. I stop and grab a bite of lunch (I’d forgotten to eat at home), then get way-layed by the sprawling mass of old photographs strewn across the dining room table. The ‘rents are getting their loft insulated (or at least inspected for insulation) and so have had to clear everything out of it.

Aside from the 15 boxes of stuff my bro’s squirreled away (ironically enough) up there, plus 2 or three boxes of my stuff and the same of their keepsakes, they’ve found a veritable treasure-trove of ancient photographs that show, among other things, that I was honestly and truly very cute once-upon-a-time. Knowing they don’t read this, I feel it safe to say I also found a pic of my Aunt’s wedding in which her husband actually had hair. Even Mum didn’t remember him having that much on top when they got married. Mind you, it was only 24 hours after my Nana’s funeral, so I don’t suppose Mum was paying a great deal of attention – it’s amazing the little tid-bits of info you find out going through old stuff.

Tearing myself away from Pa and his table of goodies, I left home with a hammer and some dishes to put dips in (we’re a touch lacking on the catering-supply front) and a bottle of wine for the festivities and made my way back towards home, aiming to stop at a local shop to pick up the bis and pieces.

The spanner is thrown by a text from K saying she needs all sorts of other things she hadn’t thought of when we went shopping twice in the last two days, namely the ingredients for Nigella’s Girdlebuster Pie – a desert so rich in sugary goodness that it’s sure to evaporate from any freezer in the country within minutes of the “ding” of completion on the kitchen timing clock. That said, it’s too cold for my overly-sensitive teeth to bear, so I have no idea if it’s actually tastes nice.

Once I’d collected the bits and pieces from the scrum that was Asda on New Year’s Eve as everyone tried to cram their last minute bits and bobs through the aisles, I headed back home.

Dazz had dropped in to say hey before heading back up North again for his New Year’s party up there and, bless him, ended up right in the middle of a veritable cleaning frenzy as we cleared, cleaned and moved things all over the flat to make it hospitable for the half-dozen or so guests we were expecting.

Once Dazz had gone and K had managed to calm herself down a bit in the bath (cooking brings on the fretful side of K, much like in her mother), I shot out to Maccy D’s for a nutritious evening meal to keep us going – with all the cleaning and cooking and cleaning we’d done, I wasn’t about to start cooking and messing it up even more.

Once we’d scarfed our hard-fought for junk food, K then turned my “no more cleaning” plan on it’s head by pouring half a jug of warm toffee over the pie and, in turn, the chopping board underneath it, then the kitchen surface, then the blender, then down the draws and finally onto the floor. It was a work of comic genius that seemed….well… somewhat less comic at the time.

Once the toffee was cleared and I’d remembered that I’d forgotten to chop up the veg stuff for the dips, I hurriedly set to it as our first guests arrived and the Wii was set up with extra controllers. Mid-way through our first game on Mariokart we were joined by the rest of the party and it all went swimmingly from there.

Most of the night was spent challenging each other and subsequently either screaming with frustration or laughter at Sonic and Mario at the Olympics, an insanely tiring game that essentially involves almost as much physical activity as competing in the Games themselves.

Once we’d all entirely exhausted ourselves, we settled on a more sedate game of Articulate, one of our Christmas presents and spent a good deal of time laughing our socks off at our ineptitude.

Without realising it, Midnight crept up on us and we flicked over to the last 15 minutes of pre-midnight musical fun with all the famous faces and those people you recognise and know you should know but just can’t place their names.

Midnight (and our leap-second for the year) came and went amid much hugs, smiles, good-wishes and clinking of glasses and the guests slowly ebbed away until K and I were left with the last vestiges of the clearing up before calling it a night just before 2am. We’re clearly not as hard-core as we used to be, but I’ll tell you something, I couldn’t have gone on any longer.

I blame the Wii. And Sonic.

We’re up relatively early again just before 9am, getting up and dressed for the trip to Guildford.

We leave the flat around just before 10 and stop briefly for petrol before hitting the back roads round Aylesbury to the strangely empty M25 and make the journey door-to-door in a little under 2 hours, which is pretty much a record.

I give my Godson, Li’l C, a big hug and say hey to the family, grabbing a cuppa and a seat in the lounge to catch up. It’s immediately apparent (it’s hard to miss) that they have just got Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas, which is the Wii game that involves not only strumming along on an electronic (as opposed to electric, ie “real”) guitar but also comes with a second, base guitar, a microphone for vocals and, most excitingly of all, an electronic drum kit. Awesome.

Before the tea is drunk, C has set it all up and we’re jamming away to Livin’ on a Prayer, Beat It and Eye of the Tiger, which just so happen to be the easiest songs of the lot to play, especially for a mal-coordinated muppet like me. I may think I’m Animal when I’m playing, but I’ve no doubt I look more like a fat-faced ferret struggling wildly to free itself from the clutches of a peckish bird of prey.

Once we’d exhausted the ear drums of the rest of the family and I’d proven myself incompetent, we sit and grab some lunch in the conservatory before deciding on a game of Boggle to keep our brains going and avoid the mush-inducing Wii for a little longer.

We’re one game in and my phone rings with a number I don’t quite recognise. I almost ignore it, but then pick it up and am delighted I do as it’s my bro. We catch up and go over his Christmas (rubbish) and current plans (better) and likelihood of further adventures (slim, till R&R), before I fill him in on the goings-on of the fam back in Blighty.

I go back to the game and get my butt kicked by my 11-year-old Godson, at which point we decide to make the most of the fading sunlight and hit the hills for a walk.

Being the master of Geography that I am, I had entirely failed to ever note or notice the fact that Surrey has hills, but wow, are they beautiful. Today they were covered in a Dickensian rolling mist which obscured the distant towns and cities and created a timeless feel of total isolation – not a modern artifact to be found anywhere in sight once you’re beyond the car park.

We watch the sun drop behind the hills then repair to the quaint little village of Shere, which K and I instantly fall in love with and want to start house-hunting in, to a little tea-shop for hot-chocolate and cake.

We warm up enough to feel our feet and jump back in the car, heading home to round 2 of Guitar Hero, during which we each take turns to laugh our heads of at each other and I prove my ultimate smug-git personality by coaching K into managing not to get boo-ed off halfway through a track. I told you Eye of the Tiger was easy.

We eventually call it quits after an hour-and-a-half has slipped by without us realising and we head back up the motorway around 7pm. It’s similarly and amazingly empty as this morning and we’re back in near-record time, save for a brief stop in at Asda for some various bits and pieces, including some dinner for tonight.

K’s keen to pick up a new Wii game or two for the New Year’s Eve party tomorrow, but the games counter is closed so no dice. Instead, being on a sales-spree, we hit the DVD racks and pull out copies of In Bruges and Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny, the latter of which we’ve not yet seen.

We get back to the flat (in darkness again) and I throw the dinner in the mircowave (classy) as K throws the D in the DVD player and we kick back and laugh our still-pretty-chilly socks off.

We the DVD’s done we debate throwing something else on, but decide that since we’ve got a heap of house-cleaning to do before the party tomorrow, we should really be calling it a night pre-midnight tonight, so we turn the TV off and hit the sack.

Although we sleep in this morning, it’s still a wake-up dictated my alarm-clock, which is getting slightly tiresome for a supposed holiday period.

The alarm gets us (well, me) up at 10am and I make K a cup of tea and take my Fosemax tabs – horrible things I may have written about before, which are supposed to deliver calcium-enriching…things… to the body to help prevent loss of bone density and Osteoperosis (and I’ll thank the medics reading not to point out that they’re essentially the same thing) but that require the tablets to be take on an empty stomach with a full glass of water and not to be followed by any other food or drink bar water for the next hour or more. They’re pretty nasty things and my stomach isn’t a huge fan of having a load of water dumped in it unaccompanied first thing in the morning, so I always end up feeling a little squiffy until I can eat something. Mind you, it’s better than not being able to run or do fun stuff for fear of snapping bones all over the shop.

We’re up and out of the house just after 11 to get to my appointment in Newport for 11.20, where I have a hasty blood test to keep an eye on my CMV levels to prevent any recurrance, then we head off into town to hit the sales.

I hate sales shopping with a passion. When I shop I like to look around, take my time and not feel rushed, not to grab whatever I can as I’m bustled passed the racks of goods by the ebbing tide of the sales-masses. Still, K wants to hit them up to spend our Christmas vouchers, so I tag along.

We start by finding parking, which is a mini-epic of it’s own, but eventually end up getting somewhere near M&S, a minor miracle. We decide to start at the furthest place and work back towards the car, so we hit the O2 store to return my busted Blackberry, but it’s rammed and quite clear that customer service is going to be a while, so I give up on it straight away – I’ve been using my old phone for over a month now, so a couple more weeks to fix the new/old one isn’t a big headache.

We make our way round to the Apple store, my mini-Mecca, but without time or the cash to stop and fully appreciate their wares (re: to buy their wares), we hit them up for an iTunes voucher, which they don’t sell in the range we want.

0 for 0 from 2 shops, we hit the soon-to-be-defunct Zavvi to see if we can gather ourselves some bargains in the closing-down sales. It’s like a zoo where they’ve let the monkeys feed the elephants in there and we fight our way around the DVD racks hunting out interesting pieces and debating how much we can afford to splurge.

We come away with a stack of DVDs and a couple of CDs and break out of the madness before it consumes us. I shoot across the Place to Waterstones to see if they’ve got a book I’m after which they do, and reduced by half as well, but when I get to the counter, they tell me it’s not reduced at all so, with the flashing totaliser of the Zavvi spend in my brain and the knowledge of an impending Borders trip, I pass it up and move on.

As K heads for M&S for underwear shopping and voucher-spending, I make a dash to the bank to pay in a cheque, then catch up with her in the Minotaur’s maze that is the Lingerie section of the ‘Sparks. Slightly bored/self-conscious of being surround by women sizing up and purchasing their unmentionables, I opt to head to homewares to see what we can pick up with our Christmas vouchers.

By the time K’s finished up I’ve noted a few options and we settle on a 3-tiered hob-steamer and a blender. Once we’ve paid and got out to the car, it strikes us how upsettingly grown-up we are buying things that are actualy useful with gift vouchers and being genuinely happy and excited about what we’ve got. We resolve to correct it by buying something frivolous at Borders.

We hit up the Big B and grab some cards for impending birthdays and babies, then K hits the sales racks while I go off hunting for the book I missed out on in Waterstones. I come up with nothing, but very nearly bag a whole load more DVDs before thinking better of it and heading back up to the till where I find K with an epic bag full of stuff she’s just grabbed, so I jump in the queue to get my solitary DVD, impressed at my restraint, and manage to pick up the right-sized iTunes voucher at the till point as well.

We shoot over to Deanshanger to collect the couple of bits we left there last week, including K’s complete Calvin and Hobbes set Santa brought her, and Mama D, like the classic Ma that she is, provides us with nourishment in the form of bacon sarnies after which, like the ungrateful offspring we are, we jump straight back in the car and head off again (we did say thank you, though).

We make K’s day by stopping in at TK Max on the way home and she picks me up a cafetierre – a present she had intended to get me for Christmas but then a case of crossed-wires with other family members meant I ended up not getting one. We also grab b’day presents for friends and then head to Tesco over the road to stock up on all the New Year’s Eve party stuff we’ll need for our Wii Party – crisps, dips and softies for those who aren’t bringing a bottle.

We head home, unpack all the bags, then hurriedly change into our going-out gear and head down the road to a friend’s 30th. Being pregnant and newly-installed in their freshly extended house, it’s an open-house affair and we arrive in time to see her family off from their day in the den, but have enough time to catch up with them first, which is cool.

We can’t stay long as we’re then off to a big Chrimbo meal with our friends organised, bizarrely, by the only one of us who no longer lives in MK. It’s great to see the whole gang again though, minus the odd couple of peeps, and we have a good giggle over some tasty Mexican food, even if they don’t know how to make a Caesar salad.

Our friend plus baby is there and K goes into broody mode, taking the baby away so that Mummy can eat her dinner, but loving every minute of it. As everyone is taking the mick and pulling my leg about the impedning pressure for sproglets, I’m forced to admit that I’m actually on the same page as K right now and am loving the number of baby cuddles we’re getting.

I take my turn and we head off to investigate the flashing lights on the Christmas tree (we don’t like standing still), then find an interesting plant that has leaves that are rough and not like normal flower or plant leaves at all, which keeps us interested for a good few minutes while Daddy finishes up his dinner and gets the car seat ready.

With baby out of the picture, we’re forced to interact with our peers once more and continue to have a good giggle. The meal done, almost everyone else is headed across the way to the pub for a drink, but with the knowledge of an early start tomorrow and a long day’s driving, we call it a night and head home.

We get back in and empty out some more of the bags while we grab a cuppa and watch a bit of telly before quitting for the night and hitting the hay, where I desperately try to get into my slow-starting book which I’m praying will improve. After a couple of chapters with no joy, I call it quits for the night and put my head down.

In accordance with the law of New Year’s Eve (albeit a little early), I bring to you the grand announcement of changes to what’s fondly become known as… erm… Oli’s blog. I say “fondly”, but it’s more just because that’s really what makes the most sense.

Obviously, the cosmetics are the most obvious part, but the content is changing, too.

Since the controversy of “the deleted post” – well, not really controversy, but more of a disagreement with certain readers of the blog – I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching about what this blog is all about and where’s it’s been going for the last few months.

I was sincerely toying with dispensing with it all together, before I realised that what this actually started out as was a place for me to keep track of the on-going changes in my life as I waited for – then received – a life-saving double-lung transplant. It was never really intended to be read by as many people as have stuck around from week-to-week and I’ve found myself slowing starting to write these posts for my readers and not for myself, which occurred to me as being totally against the idea of the blog in the first place and doubtless a part of the reason for trying to spice it up a little.

So I offer you all fair warning that from this moment on the blog will, once again, become boring. I will simply be keeping a record for myself of the head-spinning acceleration of changes my life is going through almost constantly now I’m over a year into my new life and am rapidly realising that I need to start doing something productive with myself.

New Year, new start (it was ever thus), so I will return to the good, but dull, old days of simply blogging about my life and goings on in my day-to-day life.

I wake up later than I have for a while at around 10am and realise I need to take my tac, so head downstairs, where I grab a bite and my tabs before running a cup of tea up to the still-snoozing K.

I shower and dress and start packing up as K comes to life, then we head down and wave off Mum and Dad who are heading off as fast as they can, since they’re back to a party this evening.

Before we head off, I slip my friend’s soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated short film, Gone Fishing into the family Blu-Ray player and head upstairs to watch it projected on the big screen in the cinema room. Although I got a real kick out of it on the small screen the 3 other times I’ve seen it, watching the 35mm print-made DVD with full digital sound ramps it up to another level.

I’ve honestly never seen a short film so accomplished in its technical efficiency, story-telling or sheer emotional impact. If you’re at all interested in film, I urge you to go here and pick yourself up a copy. You’ll probably know how much an Oscar campaign can cost to run, even for a short, and every penny made from these DVD sales goes towards the Oscar run which concludes in February at the ceremony itself. Please, please support this amazing, home-grown filmmaker with a true passion, talent and cutting edge in his field. He’s been a great support to me over the last 18 months and I’d love to repay him by giving him a bigger and better war-chest for the final push of his campaign.

The trailer, if you want to know a bit more about the flick, is here, for those of you who are interested. And for those of you who don’t understand a trailer for a short film, let me assure you this is nothing like the whole story – you really have to see the whole thing.

Once we’ve peeped Fishing out, we grab our bags, load the car and head off, making a quick detour through Ipswich to visit my Nana’s grave. I barely knew my Nana, my Mum’s mum, as she died when I was 3, but from the stories I’ve heard tell she was a remarkable woman. In fact, when I was a baby and in obvious (but then-inexplicable) pain, she was the only person who could quieten me down. I like to think that had she stayed around she’d have been proud of me and what I’ve done – and started to do – with my life and I hope that she smiles down on me from her lofty perch.

Once we’d say a hello and Happy Christmas to Nana, we jump back in the car and head back to MK and home to see it in daylight for the first time in nearly a week.

We head to Tesco to pick up a few essentials, then hit the flat and unload the car. We were planning on heading out to catch Australia tonight, but based on the fact that we’re both shattered and the film runs close to 3 hours, we change our call and opt for a night in instead. We throw on Jersey Girl and kick back on the sofa. As soon as the flick’s done, we’re straight off to bed and we both pass out pretty quickly.

We’re up unconscionably early for the morning after the night before at around 9am to grab a bacon sarnie and hot cup of much needed caffeine-delivery before jumping into the cars for a 3-hour trip into London to Twickenham, where my Godfather has a box.

Once there, we are treated to more wine (from a regular bottle, this time – if a 2001 can be called “regular”) and another fine meal before adding as many layers as we were able to carry with us to perch outside in the stadium for Harlequins vs Leicester. As a Northampton Saints fan, I’m duty-bound not to support the Tigers, but since Quins were sporting an old school friend wearing their captains armband, it stopped me having any kind of conflicted of – dare I say it – neutral feelings about the game.

Entertainingly, for a game without huge excitement, my old school buddy gets himself sin-binned 10 minutes from half-time, during which time he sees his side ship 13 points to the visitors. The second half isn’t a whole lot more entertaining, until the last 10 minutes when Quins come back from 26-16 down to draw the game with a last minute try and conversion which is all but the last kick of the game. Stunning come back that had me properly out of my seat.

After a warming glass of brandy and some good steak pies, we all pile back into the cars and head back. Wtih my eyes arguing with my brain about staying awake, I’m glad I opted to stop the extra night in Ipswich so I don’t have to do any driving this evening. As soon as we’re out of London, my body sides with my eyes and sends me to sleep before waking just short of the Dartford crossing, from where I stay awake-but-monosyllabic for the rest of the ride back.

We get back and all grab a thirst-quencher (mostly non-alcoholic) and chill in the living room, introducing my ‘rents to the glory of Outnumbered, after which K hits the hay early and I challenge Dad to a game of his newly-acquired Really Nasty Golf, a board game that’s far more interesting and entertaining that it sounds, I promise, even if you don’t like golf. Mum excuses herself to bed as we play and slowly the house quietens as people head off for kip, before we head up to follow them at the end of the game, around 11pm.

Boxing Day starts slowly with an 8.30 alarm call upon which I find K still sound asleep despite claiming to be getting up at 8am to shower and wash her hair. I nudge her awake and we realise her alarm failed to go off, largely due to a failure of being set.

Devoid of any major urgency for the day, she ambles out of bed and into the shower while I sit in bed and read awhile until she’s done, when I get myself up, washed and dressed and we head down stairs. I grab coffee, K tea, and Mama D cooks us up some French toast and bacon for breakfast to sustain us on the drive to Ipswich to catch up with my folks.

We load the car up with bags of gifts from yesterday and head off, stopping in at the flat on the way past to drop some bits off and pick up the various bits we forgot, like my swimmers, and some extras we need having arranged to stay another night after tonight, rather than shoot back tomorrow night.

We eventually leave MK around 11.30 and arrive in Ipswich after an amazingly quick and unproblematic run between 12.30 and 1. Once there, I unload the car and say my hellos to the fam and to my Godfather and his fam, plus the other guests at the Boxing Day lunch, a work colleague of G and his family. I’m slightly embarrassed by the familiar way his daughters greet me as I have no recollection of meeting them before, but they seem to know me instantly. I’m sure they noticed, but we still ended up all getting on really well.

After a chill and a chat, we hit the dinner table for a cold-meat and salad lunch which we crack through. The wine on the table in five separate decanters is from a single, epically-sized 5-litre bottle of red on the side. I forget to look at what it is, but hate to think where it came from and what it cost.

After lunch we head up to the cinema room to play with the newly-installed Wii Fit on the giant screen – it’s an amazing experience which could only be bettered were I to have any kind of balance whatsoever.

A little later in the afternoon, once the dark has drawn in, we all change into our swimmers and hit the pool. The outdoor pool. Swimming outside in England is strange enough at the best of times, but on Boxing Day in the middle of winter it’s straight-up surreal.

We mess around and throw balls to-and-fro across the pool into the inky, steamy blackness where we hope to find a person to collect and return the ball and then start playing “toss the ball at the girls in the jacuzzi” which is fun for a while until I managed to nearly knock Mum out with a badly-aimed and over-powerful throw. The games cease.

I swim properly for a little bit, but am not feeling my fittest, filled as I am with nearly a week’s worth of gourmet over-indulgence, so settle in for a quick jacuzzi before calling it a night and showering, dressing and grabbing a beer.

Post-swim we all sit around nattering, drinking a little more and enjoying the chlorinated glow of the night’s festivities. The others leave sometime after midnight and we all hastily call it a night to get some rest before tomorrow.

Christmas morning starts early-ish (although later than anyone with small children, I’ll wager) at around 8.30 when I wake to see K staring at me eagerly waiting for me to wake up to start our day. K is somewhat like a small child at Christmas, being very excitable and extremely cute.

We lay in bed and open our “stockings” and the first signs that I’m spending my first Christmas away from my family creep in – our family use hanging stockings (or football socks at a push) whereas K’s family use small bags to fit the stocking presents in, meaning you can fit bigger and – frankly – cooler presents in. No more packs of pencils, chocolate coins and a satsuma (although I did miss the fruit), in come books, DVDs and other enjoyables. But it’s still a bit odd.

We get up and head downstairs, greeting K’s Ma and Pa with the usual Merry Christmases and such before settling into a gorgeous cooked breakfast with the customary bucks fizz. I usually skip the booze, but this morning I join in and it’s not as horrible as I remember it.

The rest of the morning is spent helping sort out the necessary bits and pieces – clearing and laying the table, wrapping the family-custom table presents for everyone and sorting out the last-minute bits and pieces for cooking.

Mid-morning I get a call from Mum and Dad, who are in Ipswich with my Godfather, just before I’m about to phone them. They’ve just heard from
my bro and are happy that he’s managed to make it to a phone (or at least to dig out the Sat phone). He’s had a pretty rubbish Christmas Eve, but is looking forward to the carefully saved Pot Noodles for Christmas dinner.

At the end of the morning, Bro 2.2 arrives with family in two, one of whom is suffering from a heavy cold, which means I’m forced to keep an unfestive distance. We crack our first round of presents with them (another difference from my gang, who would have torn into them all by now) and appreciation is shared all round.

They head off after a while so they can get their eldest onto his Moto-cross bike which Father Christmas (and the Birthday Fairy) brought him before dark.

We continue chilling/working on the room/table while Mama D cooks up a storm in the kitchen. Mid-afternoon Bro 2.1 arrives with family in tow and we sit down to a cracking Christmas feast.

Post-dinner we all repair to the lounge to tear into our gifts and celebrate in style. The kids, by this point, are starting to feel their 5am wake-up and getting sleepy, but they behave impeccably, if somewhat quieter than usual.

Once they’ve all gone and we’ve cleared the detritus, we settle in front of the telly to veg out and try not to fall asleep before a sensible time in the evening. We watch the new Wallace and Gromit and the Xmas Strictly then end up sitting through most of a random out-takes program before finally dragging ourselves up to our Christmas bed around 10.30pm.

It’s always weird seeing what other families do at Christmas and today was a little on the odd side, but at the same time it was lovely to do things a little differently for a change.

Just a day to go till the big 2008th birthday of little baby J, the dude that started it all, in more ways than one. Also the dude that finished it all, which is odd. As well as being the dude that landed in the middle of it all. All things to all people, I guess.

We were up, again, ridiculously early at 8am (it’s funny how your perception of early changes when you aren’t being forced into 6am starts) to get ourselves ready for the shift across to Deanshanger and all of K’s immediate family.

My first job, irritatingly, is to head over to the other side of MK to fetch K’s present, which I’ve been messed about on first by the initial website I ordered from, then by the courier company I’d paid extra to get delivery to me before Christmas as I didn’t want this precise situation to ensue. Still, it’s not rocket science to get sorted and I’m home half-an-hour later in time to wake K with a cuppa and kick her (lovingly) out from under the covers.

We shoot across to K’s GP to get her her second Hep B jab, a necessity brought on by the likelihood of her working in dodgy environments within the NHS (and that’s just the offices), and she also managed to wangle a ‘flu jab that had meant to have been done much, much earlier, but better late than never, I suppose.

I giggled, not very kindly, because I’d had a ‘flu jab earlier in the year and not been able to sleep on the arm that I got the shot in, and now K had managed to get both arms shot in on the same day – tonight was going to be fun!

We scrambled back home to finish off our wrapping and packing – well, I had to finish (read: do) my wrapping, since K is far more organised than I am and had done all of ours and all of hers, but couldn’t really be left with mine to do for her as it’s somewhat prone to spoiling the surprise.

All set for a cracking Chrimbo, we shoot to bro number 2’s (or is that 2.2, or 2.1 – how do you count twins?) place to hang out with the kids and for K to attempt to work them into a pre-Father Chrismas-visit frenzy, which she ends up proving unable to do thanks to their already way over heightened excitement levels as it is.

We chill with them for a while until they have to go out for festive fun in the neighbourhood and head up to her ‘rents place to unpack and chillax for the evening. On the way, we pass them walking down to Bro No 1’s new house that they moved into last weekend (awesome timing on their part, eh?). We tell them to jump in the car and we whizz round to the new place and peep it out.

It has to be said it’s absolutely gorgeous – the first new-build I’ve seen in a long while with large, airy rooms, a warm, homely feel and a garden larger than a postage stamp. It may be that, due to work movements and such, they only end up being there for six months (they’re renting it while they assess their options and settle into new routines), but it’s a great place to be and more handy for the kids’ school, too, but still in the village.

We hang out there for a while, playing board games and – for the first time in donkey’s years – marbles with the kids until we realise we’d be better off out of their hair as the matriarch has to not only prepare for the imminent Santa-arrival, but also cope with all the usualy 3-day-old move unpacking and sorting.

Back at the ‘rents, we show K’s mum a short film a friend of mine made, which has her in tears and makes K feel terrible and me feel worse because K at least had the excuse that she didn’t realise it would upset her mum, whereas I knew full well it’s too sad a movie not to illicit tears from her.

While we crack on with Christmas prep, finishing off bits of wrapping and peeling sprouts, we are invited back down to bro 2.2’s place for a beer, which I opt not to go for so I can drive K around the village and stop the cold going to her legs, which would pretty much ruin the night for her.

After catching the Christmas ep of Gavin and Stacey, the first ever Gav ep that’s made me laugh out loud, we head back up to the ‘rents and grab D to take her with us (or for her to take us) to the midnight service at the village church.

Midnight is a traditional thing for my family to do together on Christmas eve whenever we’re at home and I’d not managed to make it thanks to illness for something approaching three years if my memory serves. That, combined with not having my ‘rents around and thinking of my bro out in the field in some unknown part of the world got me really and truly upset – and in a church full of people I don’t know.

After the service, I’m feeling very reflective and worried about my bro and the situation he’s in – which I have to acknowledge I know almost nothing of, for security and operational reasons. I drop a text to Mum and Dad to tell the I miss them and I go to bed with a heart far too heavy for the festive season.

The Christmas roller coaster continues on it’s ever-hastening track with a visit to Southend to see A&A and Sebby G, the newest addition to my Mum’s side of the family.

Try as I might (even with the might of Google) I can’t figure out what relationship he is to me, though. What I’m almost sure of is that he’s either a second cousin or a first cousin once removed. An initial Google search turned up a definition making him my second cousin, being a child of my first cousin. The mighty (but often incorrect) WIkipedia, however, suggets the child of a first cousin as being my first cousin once removed, by dint of the fact that our shared relation is one-step removed between us (ie, my shared relation with my Cousin is my Grandfather, and Seb’s Great-Grandfather), which makes more sense to me, although frankly, it’s way too early in the morning to be calculating all this.

Anyway, he’s the newest edition to my extended clan and whichever way you look at it, he’s awesomely cute.

We were up at 8 for the drive, which didn’t take us as long as expected, even though it involved the M25 on the last “trucking” day before Christmas. Arriving around 12, we all immediately set about scrapping over first dibs on Seb, but were scuppered by his mother handing him straight over to my mum. Although, frankly, she’d have got him first anyway, she could beat any of us in a fight if she wanted cuddles.

Taking my lead from last night’s Ebn cuddle order, I swept in for seconds after mum, but managed simply to cause the little one to burst into tears, being rescued by K, who shut him up immediately with some random female witch-doctor power that she has.

Lunch was a separate whole bundle of fun, enjoying as we did a Raqlette (which K will no doubt sweep in and spell-check for me when she reads this) which is essentially a really easy way to cater for groups as it involves cooking your own food in a delightfully fun way. There is a grill element covered by a large slab of granite on which you cook strips of meat, veg or whatever else takes your fancy, while underneath you have a mini-frying pan to slip under the grill to melt cheese or fry quails eggs, as is your wont.

The only issues with this style of dining are that you never know when you’ve eaten too much until it’s too late and, from my perspective, it’s almost impossible to keep track of how much you’re eating and thusly how many Creon to take in order to make sure it’s all digested.

Once we’d laughed our way through a cracking meal, we all settled our stomachs by making arses out of our selves on the Wii-Fit, a ridiculously stupid device that uses your body-weight on a board to move the characters in a computer game.

I soon realised it wasn’t my day when I tried out the Yoga challenges and not only couldn’t even manage a single press-up, but end up almost flat on my face from trying to be a tree. Balance is not my forte.

By this time, after his post-lunch nap, Sebastian was being passed around the room again and this time turned the opposite cheek, crying at K and falling asleep again as soon as he came to me. Clearly an indecisive kid, although he certainly knows when he wants to sleep and when he doesn’t. He managed, through the course of the Raqlette, to sleep through two smoke alarms going off directly above his head.

By 7pm we were all pretty shattered and I still had a 2-hour plus drive ahead of me, since I’d been dedicated (or foolishly volunteered to be) sober-one for the day, seeing as we had to use my car anyway following a minor mishap on my mother’s part in Dad’s car.

On the road just after 7, we eventually got back to our humble little homestead about 9 and pretty much directly hit the sack. I love Christmas.