Well, it’s over for another year and I can’t say that I’m in anyway disappointed. OH was sick (and I mean vomittingly so) on Christmas Eve - with my purchase of a minced beef pie being pointed at as to why - until I got it on Boxing Day. Needless to say a lot of time has been spent in bed - and not in a good way (does having children necessarily mean the end of Christmas sex? Discuss..).

William has been ruined. The pile of presents - despite arrangements having been made with most friends who also have children to refrain at Christmas from now on - seemed even larger than last year, with William becoming tired and frustrated with our inability to wrench toys from their boxes (since when did it become mandatory to tie every single toy to the cardboard with wire and then put sticky tape over the top) in under ten seconds quite early in the piece. Grandma and Grumpy had a fine time, nonetheless, which was all that really mattered anyway.

Have done little drinking over the festivities, both due to a lack of inclination (see gastric problems earlier coupled with both the Sunday before Christmas over indulgence (and the self-pitying hangover that followed) and a works do that went on for 10 hours and included much vodka (£18.95 for two vodka and tonics, two pints and Scotch - how do people afford to drink in London?)) and a lack of friends calling in who fancied getting wiped out on the wonderful raspberry vodka my boss bought me back in November. Even the couple of nice bottles of champagne I’ve had as gifts are, as yet, uncorked! Luckily, my sculptor friend from Birmingham is coming to stay tomorrow, so I think I’ll have a banging hangover by Saturday morning! I can always count on her when it comes to over-consuming red wine and we all know that over-consumption of red wine invariably leads to banging hangovers..!!

So, things have been quiet. I have managed to book tickets for myself and floor-layer mate to go to see The Other Smiths on the 18th February. Really looking forward to it, as they are supposed to be excellent (thanks for the recommendation Nate) and a night out with Floor-Layer usually ends up with me on the floor - if not through alcohol, then through laughing. Sometimes a good laugh is as important as a good drink. Sometimes, but not often.

OH and I were also spoiled with gifts. Himself had more socks and undies than usual, but this was made up for when he got The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy DVD from William and Shaun of the Dead from someone I “thought” was a mate. She’s been told she’s now on borrowed time (after the complete Monty Python collection of DVD’s for his birthday, my fuse was already burning low!). I had the usual mixture of smellies and undies, supplemented by the Peel biography and the Alan Bennett biog - which is so big (in hardback) that I’m not sure how I’m ever going to read it in bed (it looks like being a toilet book at the moment! Are girls allowed to admit to that?).

Anyway, onwards and upwards to the New Year. I hope 2006 is spectacularly good for all of you. Until then..

Just as an aside - and so I can remember this hungover, deflated feeling next time I think serious drinking on a Sunday is a good idea..

Sometimes, somebody does something that makes you feel good. It might be noticing you’ve had your hair done. It might be paying you a compliment, or some attention. It might be that they pay your bar tab. Whatever it is, it gives you a bit of a warm glow and you think better of the human race. That’s how I went to bed last night - feeling a warm glow and rather relieved that the human race wasn’t the rancid bunch I’d thought they were.

Today, you send an email without response and feel that perhaps you were right and the human race is rancid after all.

Never doing serious drinking on a Sunday again. Ever. Really. Well, until next time…!!!

Link Storage. Likely to be where I am on the 18th February. Anyone have any views on them?

There was much heavy drinking done yesterday afternoon, leaving me feeling lethargic and certainly not in the mood for work this morning.

Over my first coffee of the day, I happened across Balamory and started listening as Miss Hoolie and PC Plum started discussing her hairy muff and how warm it was. I kid you not. I think I was relieved to see PC Plum pulling a hand muff over his head. After the alcohol yesterday, I don’t think I could have coped with anything else!

.. I am, and I quote, “..the kindest and most caring person [she has] ever met..”.

How he didn’t remember is beyond me - I said I’d never live it down and yet he forgot! Now it’s out in the open, I can start taking the p*ss out of him again. Thank goodness for that!!

I appreciate that this means nothing to 99.99% of you. Apologies!

This should probably not be read by people under 8 years old. However, I don’t actually believe that anyone under eight (or under eighteen for that matter) reads this site, so the first sentence should, in fact, probably read, “the following entry should not be read by people under 8 years old or anyone pretending to be this mental age”..

I can’t actually ever remember believing in Father Christmas. Seriously, at no point in my young life can I remember trying to wait up to meet the man himself or doing what the OH and his brothers did and setting a “Santa Trap” (in their case, take wool, wind around, over, between and under two sets of bunk beds, turn out all lights and wait for Santa to arrive). Perhaps it was being an only child that did it, but I used to go off to bed on Christmas Eve, knowing that my dad would turn up with an old football sock and bag of pressies a few hours later (snatching the whisky and mince pie from my bed-side table as he made his escape). The following morning, I would take my presents to my parents room, from where we used to all decamp to the front room (posh room, only used on high days and holidays) for the annual unwrapping (one present to be opened by each person in turn - with care being taken to place all wrapping paper in the bin-liner provided and a note made of who gave what so that thank you notes could be written). Before the unwrapping could take place and whilst my mum made coffee/teas for us all, I would go around, emptying the contents of the football sock (usually a satsuma and other fruit, nuts and chocolate) back into the appropriate dishes in the living room, from whence my mother had taken them the night before (it was a kind of holiday for the fruit - overnight accommodation in an old football sock, before being returned via an air-borne journey of similar comfort to a no-frills flight).

This, I hasten to add, is not to say that I had bad Christmas experiences. My parents invariably got me the presents I wanted (except when I wanted a ZX-81 and my father insisted we wait until after Christmas as they would be cheaper then - I was in Junior School, I believe, at the time) and I was always showered with gifts from my family. It was just all a bit dull. I never got to play with most of the toys I had given to me. It’s difficult to play “Downfall” or “Connect 4″ when there is only one of you. My father really wasn’t into spending time with me playing games (oh, how life has changed - he was on his hands and knees the other day pretending to be a railway tunnel for William) and my mother was always too busy preparing lunch, washing up after lunch, etc. I was taken, for a few years, to spend time with some cousins on Christmas morning. They were part of a huge family and invariably the bikes they had been given (at one minute past twelve) had been taken to pieces before we got there at 11am. They’d usually stayed up all night and by the time we arrived were in sugar-overload from the amount of chocolate and sweets they had eaten. Invariably, it was all a bit too much and I’d end up sitting in the living room with the adults.

So, is it any wonder, really, that I can’t get very enthusiatic about Christmas? Should it be a surprise that I sigh out loud everytime the OH mentions putting up decorations (btw, they went up - in part - yesterday, as William had a cold and we couldn’t go out anywhere. There are more to come, apparenty. sigh)? Would it be wrong of me to tell William that Santa really doesn’t exist and is merely a capitalist conspiracy, to make us wage slaves spend our frequently small amounts of money on useless gifts, that most people either don’t want or don’t need? Wouldn’t I just be speaking the truth - and isn’t that what the OH and I agreed when William was born - that we’d always be honest with him?

Apparently Santa is sacred ground and I “ruin” (His words, not mine) William’s Christmas experience at pain of death. Mmm, death or a santa grotto? Now there’s a hard choice!!