Will go down in Bridge Road history as one of the 'really rather good' Christmases. Factors that may have contributed to this include:
The girls are just about the perfect age for Christmas - and it's all about children 'innit. Abby found the wait for Santa very traumatic and appeared every hour until 2.30am to advise that she was having trouble sleeping. Fortunately, neither of them arose before 7. Much coffee needed first thing...
Not having to do any prep for anybody else on Christmas day, as a result of my sister doing all the stressful stuff for us and the old man. No-one should underestimate the effort involved in cooking trad Christmas dinner, particularly if you have to show off with three different types of stuffing...
Catering for Boxing Day - and pretty much all of Al's family turning up bearing food. The only other people we let in were people we like, rather than people we felt obliged to. 29 of them, which could have been very messy but turned out really chilled. The Daltons ate all the best sweets in the bowl, which was only to be expected.
Having 16 good friends for curry on New Year's Eve. Loads of food, loads of fizz, who'd have known the perfect accompaniment to the turn of the year was Gaydar radio? The best thing about the whole evening is that I've been able to eat curry every night for the last week.
And I do love the feel of our house at Christmas: Victorian = crap for heatings bills, draughts or anything being vaguely right-angled - but it feels perfect with a Christmas tree in the corner. And it survived about 50 people tramping around over the Christmas break too. Taking all the decorations down yesterday brought a tear to my eye.
A selection of pics down below. If you've got the stomach for the whole lot, you can find them here.
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