And the day after that...

And so I’m lying in bed, with my alarm set for 06:00 and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. Christmas is over.

That said, though, the holiday has been long enough that I feel I’ve had time off and still had time to get stuff done. I’ve done a lot of work on my website. What had been a basic framework with lots of dead-end links for the last year, is now a reasonably complete guide to me. In fact that’s what I’ve spent most of today doing – adding new bits and pieces to it, mostly new photo galleries, now created in pure HTML rather than some Microsoft proprietary way (as on the old site) which couldn’t be read by half of my friends!

Today was almost entirely spent on the sofa with my laptop – we were both feeling a bit the worse for wear after last night.

We’d invited a few friends over yesterday. It was a pretty informal affair that started after lunch and carried on through the evening. Ping arrived early afternoon and filled us in on his Christmas. We had started teaching him the basics of poker when Dan L (Brett’s former flatmate) arrived so we quit the poker, opened a bottle of wine and caught up with him.

Nick B & John G arrived early evening bringing more wine and shortly thereafter Dan left us to make his dinner date. So the five of us carried on. At some point I put some food on the table – partly Christmas leftovers and partly party nibbles – and we happily ate and drank through until midnight. There was also time for a (somewhat heated!) discussion between Brett and John about Chorus issues, as well as a game of Scrabble and some mulled wine.

The pile of washing up this morning was quite remarkable for such a small gathering, but I think we provided good hospitality.