Yummy Tin Drummy

I had my office Christmas meal yesterday at the Tin Drum in Kemp Town. I know some of the people I work with didn't enjoy their food quite as much as me, but I thought all the things I had were really good and quite posh, so I took photos of them for you:

This was my starter, which was a squash, rosemary and parmesan tart with a pomegranate dressing. It was very nice.

This was my main course of pheasant with a port and damson jus on a mustard pommery mash. I've never had pheasant before, and I really liked half of it (the confit leg bit which tasted like crispy duck) but wasn't quite so keen on the breast bit which was a bit tough. I've never been a breast man though. The sauce (sorry,'jus') was yummy and all fruity.

This was my gorgeous dessert: hot chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream. It was really nice, all gooey, and very very rich. Like a little block of pure calories really. I couldn't finish it, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

And then I had tea with a cute little mince pie with a star shape on it.

And the best part is I didn't pay for ANYTHING! Hahahahaha! Work pays for our Christmas meal here, which I've always thought is great, and it means everybody goes rather than some people saying they can't afford it or just can't be bothered. Even the wine was thrown in!

I'm not hungover at all today, which is quite good I suppose. Some of us went for drinks after the meal, but as we'd started drinking at 1pm we disbanded by 9, so I was still home in plenty of time to sober up before bed. I hadn't realised that there would be no senior staff at all in the office this morning, so I could have got away with being hungover if necessary, but I'm not going to try to get hungover just for the sake of it.

And now it's only a couple of weeks left until Christmas, yay! We've still got our Office Christmas Party to come (actually in the office this time, rather than out of it. I don't know why we have two events here), so that will be my next thing to look forward to next week. I'm feeling very festive now and just want to finish work for Christmas and go home - I can't be bothered to spend nine more days sat in this wheely chair doing not very much.

Twinkling lights and celebrities

Last Friday we had the first annual Switching On Of The Christmas Lights on my road. Even though it may very well end up being the last one too, I still found it terribly exciting, not least because of the multitude of A List celebrities it attracted!

I should point out that I do not live on a main road, or in a town centre, so the very fact that we had Christmas lights of our own was slightly unexpected. Some of the shop keepers just got together and organised it, and one of them bought the Christmas lights from an entire town, or so we were told. I was therefore expecting a blaze of fluorescence up and down the street that could be seen from space, and was slightly disappointed that it ended up just being a few things on lamp posts.

Anyway, when it was initially advertised, we were told that Emma Chawner, a failed X Factor entrant and local lass, had been lined up for the grand switching on ceremony. In case you don't know who she is, behold:

She didn't get very far on the X Factor, even when she came back to sing a duet with her sister the next year.

Unfortunately, some of the road's shop keepers felt she would lower the tone somewhat and make it into a less believable event. They obviously weren't concerned with the hilarity aspect, or that Christmas is quite camp anyway and you don't get camper than a fat cavegirl in a home-made dress.

So they ditched Emma Chawner, and I was disappointed.

Instead though, we were upgraded to:

Annabel Giles, who performed no real function at the event other than lending it a BBC-level of classiness,

and

Michelle Collins! Yes, Cindy Beale turned on our Christmas lights! She was very gracious, and seemed to know a couple of people from our road. One of them was kind enough to collar her and ask if Chris could have her photo taken with her, and it was very weird to hear Cindy Beale's voice go "Yes of course. Chris! Chris!" and call him over.

I can see why she was more classy than the dumpy girl, but she was less hilarious. I was also very suspicious that there was no actual wiring involved in her 'switching on' the lights, she just did a count down, then sort of moved her arm. A couple of the lamp post lights came on, and then a man in a fluorescent jacket ambled down the road switching each one on one by one. But you can't have everything, we had LIGHTS and it was fab.

Oo yes, and I almost forgot, we had Santa!

So hurrah for living on the campest road in the campest part of Brighton.

Here's me looking Christmassy:

And then the next day, as if all that weren't enough, I saw Gok Wan in a jewellery shop in the lanes. It was an all-out celebrity overload. Oddly, he was wearing the same outfit he always wears on television, leading me to think he only actually owns one set of clothes. Presumably he stands naked in the kitchen while he washes them in the sink.

Anyway, I'm feeling all Christmassy now and can look forward to seeing twinkling lights every time I walk up my road from now until, erm, Christmas. Ho ho ho!

Oh January, thou art the crappiest month

Well it's 7 January now and I've been back at work since Monday. The rest of my Christmas break was fine really, after the fairly dire Boxing Day. After a further roast dinner at Chris' house at the weekend, we came back down to Brighton in time for our friend's 30th birthday celebrations on Monday and New Year's Eve on Wednesday. Both of them were fun evenings which involved some bar hopping, dancing, the occasional tipple of alcohol, and being pushed by large lesbian ladies who insist on dancing in the widest fucking circumference possible. But woe betide you if you dare push them back, oh no, because then you're persecuting them in some misogynistic masculine way and they have a right go at you. Anyway.

Work has been fine since I've been back, although to my extreme annoyance I managed to catch yet another virus at the weekend so had to come to work with a sore throat and stuffed up sinuses. I'm nearly better now. It has been rather dull though, and the weather is really starting to get to me. It's FREEZING, and it's been far colder for far longer than I ever remember it being before. The heating at home is struggling to cope so I end up feeling just cold enough to be annoyed most of the time, and it's too cold to want to go out and do anything. We tried to go for a walk on the seafront the other day and had to retreat after 15 minutes when we started to lose the feeling in our lips. It even looks deceptively sunny out there sometimes, just to tempt you into going outside so the arctic wind can lay waste to any remnants of Christmas cheer you might have had.

I know they always peddle out news articles in the new year about January being the most depressing month, but it really is the most depressing month. We keep saying we should try to organise some nice things to do so we've got stuff to look forward to, but then not figuring out what. Maybe we should go for a weekend trip somewhere? Oh I don't know.

On a slightly more interesting note, we've decided we might buy a flat this year. It's quite exciting, we've never bought before because I've always said no no we have to wait until we've got more money and prices come down. And now prices have come down and we do have some money. I'm also a bit scared though because I hate committing to things and I worry about ending up with something crappy by accident, like a flat with damp or bad neighbours or a poltergeist that eats your socks. Chris will keep me in hand though, he doesn't usually put up with any of my nonsense. So yay, perhaps in six months we'll have a flat of our own with an actual guest bedroom and more than one heater!

Oh Christmas tree

Christmas has been a mixed bag so far. Mum has got flu, so is feeling even worse than usual, and I'm terrified I'm going to catch it off her and be ill for New Year. I had to make a considerable effort to ignore it and still give her a hug etc while she coughed in my face. I felt a bit like Princess Di hugging those lepers on TV.

Christmas Day was nice as I spent it up at Chris' and we had a nice lunch, and then we saw some friends in the evening. Mum did say in quite an accusatory tone what a boring day they'd had without me, but I thought that had been the point, so she didn't have to make any effort! So fuck it, I'm not taking responsibility for whether they have a nice Christmas, not when she TOLD me not to come home.

Then today was my annual hell of lunch with my horrible grandad. He was fairly well behaved for a change, but Mum came this year and shouldn't have because she felt ill straight away and the food took too long and then was wrong and then I had to wolf mine and drive her home before anyone else had even finished eating. So now I'm sat on my own while she rests. Still, at least it got me out of the lunch quicker, so it's not all bad, and hurrah for mobile Facebook and blogging.

Work Christmas do

In the end there wasn’t really any drama to report from yesterday’s Christmas do. Nobody was sick, nobody was asked to leave or told they were making a scene, and Abby didn’t even do the skit she’s been preparing for the last 8 months.

We had a nice meal though. I had tikka halloumi kebab for my starter, and then my main was potato rosti topped with spinach topped with a poached egg topped with melted cheese, which was yummy. And the dessert was doughnut straws with chocolate dipping sauce and vodka sozzled cheeries, mmmm. Plus we got a good half bottle of wine each, and it was all free! Well not free, but I’m not paying, and that amounts to the same thing.

I also had a new and enjoyable experience at the restaurant (no I didn’t put my hand in anyone’s bra), I fed a baby for the first time:

It’s only the second or third time I’ve even held a baby, so I was a bit unsure what to do when it came to combining holding AND feeding. I was assured though that if I just shoved the correct end of the bottle into his mouth and tipped it up a bit, he’d know what to do. Luckily for me he seemed more experienced than I was at it. I actually really liked it, and he was very good and wasn’t sick on me. And then he sat on my lap for quite a while and occasionally tried to hurl himself off sideways through general wriggling.

While I don’t think that I’m anywhere near wanting a baby properly yet, I did enjoy having one for half an hour, and it made me think that maybe I will want one at some point. For now though I think I’m happy with occasional cuddles and feeding of other people’s babies, with the option of giving them back if they start to make unusual noises or turn green or anything. I think I’d make a good uncle for a start, and then maybe a dad in five years or so, or whenever I’m ready to give up on all the selfish aspects of my lifestyle in favour of a small pink blob wrapped in a blanket.

Anyway, after our meal a few of us went for a couple of drinks at the pub down the road, and then people slowly trickled off until there were just four of us left. Then by 9.30 we’d had enough too, so we mooched off home WITHOUT being asked to leave, so clearly an improvement on last year.

I was in work at 8.15 this morning, feeling fine (good old vodka, always my friend), and now I’m just dossing around waiting for our email and internet to start working properly again. It sort of works, but the internet takes 5 minutes to load any pages, and everything is just very slow and intermittent. So I am plumbing new depths of unproductivity today!

Christmas Christmas Christmas

I have my work Christmas lunch tomorrow, I'm quite looking forward to it. Last year it got quite messy, and I'm hoping this one will be equally entertaining.

It's a little dangerous I think to have the Christmas lunch on a Wednesday when lots of us have got to come in and have meetings and things on Thursday, but it also makes it quite amusing because you get to see what state everyone is in. We're quite lucky here that the university pays for the lunch too, and we get the afternoon off to go to it. In my previous jobs although you might get the afternoon off you always had to pay for it yourself.

I'm hoping also that the meal might get me a bit more in the Christmas mood, I'm not really feeling it yet. This is despite having put up a Christmas tree last week and having done almost all my Christmas shopping.

Last year we had a nice meal out, and then about half of us went to the pub for a couple of drinks afterwards. Having started drinking with cocktails at 1pm though, it was inevitable that we would peak quite early, and by 8 o'clock I was flagging. This ended up being entirely fortuitous though, because about 20 minutes after I went home the rest of our group got thrown out for being 'drunk and aggressive'. So hurrah, I was spared the ignominy of being ejected from a pub by someone half my age when it was still only early evening.

I shall record on here any highlights of our excursion, including any instances of arrest, incontinence or emesis. We're such a highclass bunch...

Christmas, hair, and internet telepathy

I'm starting really to look forward to Christmas this year now, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Christmas would appear to be in full swing already in all the shops and on the TV, so I feel like I may as well start to get into it. I flicked onto 4Music the other day and they were already playing Christmas hits on loop, and it's not even the end of November! I think I'm going to get quite tired of hearing Mistletoe and Wine and that stupid Slade song they play ad infinitum every year by the time we actually get to Christmas.

My second reason is that I'll be doing something a bit different this year, and spending Christmas day with Chris for the first time. For the last few years I've stayed over at his Mum's house on Christmas Eve, had presents with him and his family first thing in the morning, and then gone back to my own parents' for the rest of the day. That was fine, I quite like it because I've always spent Christmas day with them, but Mum doesn't really like Christmas that much and gets very worn out with it quite quickly. Last year we ended up sitting with the lights off (because of her eyes) and no music on (because of the noise), and I felt like sticking a fork in my neck just to make sure I hadn't suffered brain death without noticing.

This year Mum has already announced she doesn't want to do Christmas, or at least she wants to do a very reduced version. There will be no decorations, no tree, we will not be having a roast turkey dinner, and we will be getting one present each only up to the value of £20. She's hoping this will mean she'll still be feeling well enough by Boxing Day to do lunch with my horrible grandad, as she missed it last year and doesn't want to miss another. I'm always very supportive, and said yes of course that's fine with me.

Then Chris and I discussed what we want to do over Christmas, particularly as this is our first year as a married couple, and decided maybe it would be nice to spend it together at his Mum's house. I was a bit unsure how Mum would react to that, so had to gear myself up to asking if that would be OK with her. Chris did his usual thing of placing me firmly between the two of them, by saying "don't ask her if it's OK, tell her it's what you want to do", so once again I had to do my balancing act of trying to keep both of them happy. In the end though, it went surprisingly smoothly, as when I spoke to Mum about it she said "oh well I was going to ask you if you wanted to do that anyway, I know you must get bored here, and as we're not doing Christmas properly anyway...". So I was really surprised! But pleased, and now Chris and I can have a nice day together and I'll see Mum and Dad on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day instead. Hooray!

This post is quite long already, so I won't dwell too much on the other (hopefully intriguing) parts of the subject line. The first is the fact that I have new hair. I'm still not quite sure about it, I've had quite a few nice comments, but sometimes I think it looks a bit odd. Chris cut it for me (he did very well actually), based on a picture I found on the internet and some 'how to cut hair' videos I watched on Expert Village. This is what I was going for:


And this is what it now looks like:


My eyes are doing that weird thing where one is bigger than the other in the picture, don't look at that bit. I think it looks a bit better in real life than it does in the picture too. It's not too far off, I think considering it was cut at home it's come out quite well. And it means I get to have spikey hair while still disguising my huge forehead a bit. It's a shame my hair isn't really long enough in some places yet. God I do have the most humongous forehead actually, it's about three times the size of his. I should install solar panels on it.

Anyway, also I have become rather addicted to Twittervision UK. It's a combination of Twitter and Google Maps, and it lets you watch what people are twittering all over the UK. I find it really compulsive to watch, it's just little snatches of conversations and people's idle musings, and it feels a bit like you're reading their thoughts. It's quite voyeuristic. There's a worldwide version too, but I found that less interesting because it kept jumping to tweets in Japanese and Portuguese that I couldn't read. So anyway, between Facebook, writing this post, and Twittervision, I have to say my productivity really has taken a tumble this morning. I suppose I better take a look at my emails...

Reverse management

This afternoon I've got to go back to my old job in order to train the replacement for my old manager on how to do their job. How stupid is that? I shouldn't be training them to do their job even if I still worked there, let alone six weeks after I left! It's just typical of their chronic ineptitude though, I'm surprised the office hasn't burnt down since I left. Oh well, I get an afternoon out of the office I suppose and I doubt I'll finish in time to come back to work here.

I am well looking forward to Christmas now. This week is a Christmas party overload. I've got a Christmas lunch tomorrow followed probably by pub, and then clubbing in the evening (I'll come back to this bit), then a Christmas dinner on Thursday with my old job, then a Christmas office party on Friday, then a Christmas dinner with friends on Friday night. I'm going to be such a fat bastard, I'll have to start running to work or something.

Oo yes, and Wednesday night should be very exciting as we are planning to go and see Futureproof perform! Sure, they are a slung-together boyband who only came about 7th on X-Factor, but we like tacky crap and baby they are it. And the beauty of boybands is that you get to judge them and pick the one you think is most attractive as your favourite while dismissing the rest for bad teeth/bad hair/lopsided squashed face.