Happy New Year (A Little Late)
Monday, January 6th, 2014 10:51 amAs this is my first journal post of 2014, I guess I should wish you all a Happy New Year, so: HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I don’t propose to do one of those ‘who commented’ posts this year. It was fun when there were a lot of us here, but I’ve been posting less (though I have no intention of stopping completely) and many of my LJ friends have either gone dormant or deleted their accounts entirely.
Today is my first day back in the office – this may be relevant to my opening paragraph. Having spent the last fortnight away from work, I just couldn’t be bothered to update the journal, though I did toy (briefly) with the idea of a Christmas ghost story. I tested the waters for that elsewhere with a repost of something I wrote years ago. Not a twitch from anyone, so I took that as a sign and did other things instead.
Of course, the week leading up to Christmas saw me go down with a cold. I even stayed in bed on what should have been my penultimate working day of the year, unfortunately timed to be the day after the office Christmas bash. Luckily enough people had seen the grey spectre that was Yours Truly to know that I wasn’t swinging the lead. I crawled in on the Friday because there was one single thing that absolutely had to be done before Christmas. Any hopes of getting out early were dashed because of the Director’s schedule, but at least we managed to sort out what needed to be sorted.
That evening was a small party organised by the quondam![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pax_draconis for his hubby, averylaterabbit’s birthday in what must have been the most expensive place I’ve visited for many a year (a standard bottle of Magner’s cider for me and a small tonic water for Furtle came in at the princely sum of £7.75). Eventually the crowd decamped to the Liberty Bounds near Tower Hill, but we went home well before the end. It was too busy to chat with the principals and I was still feeling ropy.
On the Saturday, Furtle shipped off to Harwich for her Grandma’s birthday. I’m not certain precisely how old she is, a year or so either side of 90, so I elected to stay home rather than spread cold germs top the elderly.
Sunday was our second anniversary, which we celebrated by meetingjfs and Furtle’s sister for drinks in Leytonstone, followed by a carol service in the local church. Frankly I don’t know why I agreed to the carol service, but there you go. While that was a tedious 90 minutes, it was saved by the voice of an incredible woman soloist toward the end of the service. The boredom of the rest of the service was worth it just to hear her sing.
We then decamped to Furtle’s sister’s house for a meal and wine, which was splendid.
The same gang of four (as it were) spent Christmas at Furtle’s parents, before coming back to the Smoke for New Year. We ended up not being as sociable as intended on New Year’s Eve. For various inexplicable reasons the day got away from us with various things and by the time we’d cooked and eaten our roast dinner, it was rather too late to wander out. I think the constant rain had a bearing on that. Everything that day seemed to take forever to accomplish and by the evening we had passed the party mood. So we sat in, watched Lurve Actually (I know) and drank wine. At midnight we stood in the conservatory, listened to the rain hammering down and watched other people’s fireworks (I have no idea how they managed to light them in that deluge).
And that was the end of 2013. I guess I should write a round up of the year at some point. It is traditional after all…
I don’t propose to do one of those ‘who commented’ posts this year. It was fun when there were a lot of us here, but I’ve been posting less (though I have no intention of stopping completely) and many of my LJ friends have either gone dormant or deleted their accounts entirely.
Today is my first day back in the office – this may be relevant to my opening paragraph. Having spent the last fortnight away from work, I just couldn’t be bothered to update the journal, though I did toy (briefly) with the idea of a Christmas ghost story. I tested the waters for that elsewhere with a repost of something I wrote years ago. Not a twitch from anyone, so I took that as a sign and did other things instead.
Of course, the week leading up to Christmas saw me go down with a cold. I even stayed in bed on what should have been my penultimate working day of the year, unfortunately timed to be the day after the office Christmas bash. Luckily enough people had seen the grey spectre that was Yours Truly to know that I wasn’t swinging the lead. I crawled in on the Friday because there was one single thing that absolutely had to be done before Christmas. Any hopes of getting out early were dashed because of the Director’s schedule, but at least we managed to sort out what needed to be sorted.
That evening was a small party organised by the quondam
pax_draconis for his hubby, averylaterabbit’s birthday in what must have been the most expensive place I’ve visited for many a year (a standard bottle of Magner’s cider for me and a small tonic water for Furtle came in at the princely sum of £7.75). Eventually the crowd decamped to the Liberty Bounds near Tower Hill, but we went home well before the end. It was too busy to chat with the principals and I was still feeling ropy.On the Saturday, Furtle shipped off to Harwich for her Grandma’s birthday. I’m not certain precisely how old she is, a year or so either side of 90, so I elected to stay home rather than spread cold germs top the elderly.
Sunday was our second anniversary, which we celebrated by meeting
jfs and Furtle’s sister for drinks in Leytonstone, followed by a carol service in the local church. Frankly I don’t know why I agreed to the carol service, but there you go. While that was a tedious 90 minutes, it was saved by the voice of an incredible woman soloist toward the end of the service. The boredom of the rest of the service was worth it just to hear her sing. We then decamped to Furtle’s sister’s house for a meal and wine, which was splendid.
The same gang of four (as it were) spent Christmas at Furtle’s parents, before coming back to the Smoke for New Year. We ended up not being as sociable as intended on New Year’s Eve. For various inexplicable reasons the day got away from us with various things and by the time we’d cooked and eaten our roast dinner, it was rather too late to wander out. I think the constant rain had a bearing on that. Everything that day seemed to take forever to accomplish and by the evening we had passed the party mood. So we sat in, watched Lurve Actually (I know) and drank wine. At midnight we stood in the conservatory, listened to the rain hammering down and watched other people’s fireworks (I have no idea how they managed to light them in that deluge).
And that was the end of 2013. I guess I should write a round up of the year at some point. It is traditional after all…
