I had meant to put up a seasonal blog before now, however, the home computer developed a problem over the Christmas period… and in short I have had to rebuild the thing. This meant a laborious process of creating a windows operating system on another disk, loading the system from that, attaching the disk (for the system that wasn’t working), backing up our data – music, photo’s, documents etc, which took an age to back up – and then building the new system… going through all the necessary patching, and the re-installing the software and restoring everybody’s data. Well I have just about finished. The computer has had an unplanned spring clean . And it has taken me nearly 3 days on and off.

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas period. The week leading up to Christmas was somewhat manic, as the snow and weather limited travel. Tricia’s car died, so she couldn’t get out. It was only the battery, and I managed to get it replaced on Saturday just gone, but all of a sudden Tricia found herself limited in getting out, and curtailed in doing Christmas shopping. This meant me having to do the food shopping on the way back from work, and at the end of lengthy journeys because of the weather. I did manage to get across to Bracknell on the evening of the 23rd for an old friends 50th party. It was good to see Noele and some old faces. Even then, I left at 11pm, and it took me over 2 hours to get home. Just as well I wasn’t working on the 24th.

On the 24th I went with Tricia over to a place called Haddenam to pick some unsold stock she had leftover from a Xmas fayre – she hadn’t been able to get there through the snow to collect it before. I then collected Nikki from Hatfield on the 24th, and got back in time to take Ellie to the 6pm church service. After we had eaten, and done some final prep the week caught up with me. Tricia and Nikki went to midnight mass… I went to bed.

Ellie was up at 7:30, and made a cup of tea for everybody for 8am. We had our usual family Christmas day… by the time Christmas dinner had been eaten, washed up and put away it was late afternoon… all gone in a flash. On Boxing Day Tricia’s Mum and Dad came over for the day. On the Monday we visited some friends in the village in the evening. On Tuesday, Tricia, Nikki, Robbie and Ellie headed for the sales in milton Keynes. I enjoyed a peaceful, relaxing day. In the evening we all went to see Harry Potter, which I thought was quite good.

On Wednesday we were off to Cold Ash near Thatcham to visit Wendy, Rob, Andrew & Claire.. Nikki carried on to Bath where did she some bobsleigh training. Deb, Carlos, Simon and Matt came over as well, and we had a cracking day. We stayed over and then on Thuesday morning headed for Bracknell to catch up with my Mum and Dad. Travelling back on Friday I picked up a text from work. One of the guys at Watford had been taken to hospital after suffering a minor stroke… at 48, it wasn’t expected. He is home now and resting.

Friday was of course New Years Eve, and we were with some friends (Bob & Carol hosted) in the village to see in the New Year… good fun it was to, lots of laughter. At 1:30 am, I brought Ellie home, and left Tricia and Nikki to it… apparantly they rolled in around 3:30’ish. Robbie had seen in New Year with his mate Alex. Needless to say Saturday, the 1st, was a slow day. Sunday the 2nd Ellie was doing a reading in church in the morning, then there was a return visit to Tricia’s Mum and Dads. Her brother David and his girlfriend Manda were there as well.

And so to today. Back to work tomorrow (grumble). Loads of resolutions to start working on perhaps more of that ina  later blog.

Later on todaywe are at a neighbours for the evening…. the final piece of Xmas socialising. I have to say, I am ‘socialised out’ and I am hoping for a quiet January… but having had a look at the diary there seems two hopes of that… none and nil ! Nikki has just disappeared – she is in Bath tomorrow taking part in some trials, and the BBC will be there filming. So she is hoping to get caught on camera.

Over the period I have enjoyed reading a book I got for Christmas… Andrew Marr’s ‘A History of Modern Britain’… I don’t suppose sitting and reading a book on contemporary history is everybody’s cup of tea, but I have enjoyed it.

I have just consumed the last piece of Christmas cake whilst writing this… and that is it for cake till my birthday. When of course I will be 50. Strewth.