Wow, I haven't blogged for ages. I suppose I've been busy, but still, it's been a very long time. There are so many things I could blog about that I'm not sure where to start. I could just summarise. The biggest things to talk about would be Christmas festivities.

The Christmas fun started on the Sunday before Christmas when Rob and I went to his parents' for dinner. We do that sometimes anyway, so it wasn't all that 'Christmas Festivity' like, but it counts. Probably. After that we went round to the church leader's house for, hmm, afternoon tea? Lots of church people descended on their house to eat buffet type food and chat.

On Monday Rob drove me back to my ancestral home in Southend. Family friends Diane and John (my Dad's sister is married to John's brother, so it's a vague family relationship) came round to see us. Then my Mum's mum and my Dad's parents came round for dinner. It was the easiest way of seeing them all without it being too scary. :)

Tuesday morning we all went into town because my brother John wanted to buy a Variax guitar. They're very clever things, those guitars. It doesn't work with normal pickups on the body of the guitar, but it measures string vibrations and synthesises loads of different guitar sounds - 12 string acoustics, Stratocasters, even the banjo! So we bought that and a little later on we drove back to Leicester. We brought John with us.

Wednesday was, of course, Christmas Eve. In the morning I received an exciting package of CD's, stickers, badges, even a vinyl single from Prolifica records. It's a competition to do with advertising the band 'The Servant', you see. The free stuff is totally brilliant, especially since I was having trouble buying the single in the shops. Now I have it and it cost nothing! Hooray!

John and I went to Safeway to buy last minute Christmas goodies (lots of reduced things what with them being closed for a couple of days). Ali joined us and helped choose things... it came to a lot of money but John was a very good boy and paid for it all. Then in the afternoon Rob, John and I set off to the library where Ali works. We were allowed in the back room and were given hot drinks and biscuits. It was strangely exciting being in a forbidden to the public library room!

In the evening Mark turned up, completing our Christmas line-up of myself, John, Rob, Ali and, er, Mark. Mark brought his Amiga with him, and we tried to make games work. I'd brought one of mine up as well. And we had two PC's in the living room too. To be honest we spent a lot of our Christmas playing games. I played Dungeon Siege until 3.30am. Then I fell asleep on the settee next to Rob, who'd been dozing off for a while. I gave up in the end though and crept upstairs to fall asleep on the fold out bed underneath Ali's cabin bed. :)

On Christmas morning we all got up and opened a present. Then John, Rob, Ali and myself headed off to church. A short while later we returned to find Mark had washed up things and made himself useful. All of us joined in to get the Christmas dinner ready, and while that was cooking we unwrapped our huge sacks of presents. Hooray!

Of course, what you really what to know is what loot I was given for Christmas. Well, maybe I'll leave you in suspense a bit longer. In the afternoon we played computer games a lot more - we did a fair bit of Speedball 2 and argued about which joysticks were the nicest - the Python or the Bug, although I always ended up using the Joyball. Maybe because John wouldn't use it. :)

Everyone slept over again that night, and Boxing Day saw us trying to tidy up a bit in preparation for my parents' arrival. They came bearing more gifts, and Dad brought up my other A1200 (we wondered if it'd work better). I made casseroles for dinner, with dumplings, and we all spent a lot of quality time together. It was a lot of fun. The other kids (the 21-28 year old kids) had a swordfight with the plastic swords Ali'd bought, which did get fairly violent. Then Mum, Dad and John had to leave. The rest of us played Absolute Balderdash for a while. Then the others went away, leaving Ali and myself in peace.

Hmm, what else... that's pretty much it. We've gradually been getting rid of all the presents people left here by mistake, although my brother left some stuff... dunno when I'll see him again. I suppose that what with it being nearly 2004 I'll have to start thinking about marriage related things, and that'll mean talking to my parents about stuff, preferably in person. Hmm... scary.

I was going to list all my presents, but this has taken a while to write and is quite long. I don't know if I should write more stuff now or leave the present list for a bit. Here are a few of the bigger things I was given:

* Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon (PC game)
* Red Dwarf Series 3 (DVD)
* Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill (DVD)
* Indiana Jones Trilogy (DVD)
* Jools Holland and Friends Volume 3 (CD)
* Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Shoot from the Hip (CD)

So, yes, Christmas was very, very fun. There were none of the grumpy family things that usually happen, mainly because we got to choose exactly who we spent the time with! It was probably the best Christmas ever. :)

I have been mostly.... PLAYING: broken sword 3; dungeon siege / LISTENING: orchestra (the servant)