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Merry Christmas 2017!

Yea!!!! We managed to have a fab Christmas day!!! At last, after years of trying to be conventional and stick to the Christmas Day rules, our plans of a chilled out morning, motorbikes on Salisbury Plain followed by ham, eggs and chips for tea worked a treat - we all had a lovely day. The day didn't start as well as planned - we woke to find the boiler had blown out and wouldn't relight. Typical - keep it serviced and maintained and it goes offline on Christmas Day - what are the chances of that happening?!? We managed to get hold of our normal boiler man only to find he was away until the 30th - eek! It wasn't exactly cold but even so, we didn't want to huddle in one room with no hot water. Luckily he recommended someone in the village who was happy to come out. 45 minutes later, £104 and 3 bottles of wine lighter we were all fixed and back on track. We all agreed it was by far the best way to do Christmas - finally a recipe for us all!

The rest of my Christmas break has been equally lovely. I've walked miles, slept well, eaten and drunk but not too excess at any point, seen friends and generally relaxed - a perfect holiday. In fact, if I could only ever have one type of holiday again this is what I would choose. I will be going back to work feeling very much rested and restored. Lets hope it lasts more than 5 minutes!

The first part of our break was our trip to London to see Rick Astley. Despite Glenn's fears, it was as I expected - absolutely brilliant. We had a ball, from the route march around London beforehand, to the pre-club meal where we met a lovely couple from just up the road (small world!), to the event itself. We finally made it back to the hotel about 3am having taken the scenic route home (Glenn's navigation not mine) and fell into bed. The journey home was less painful than I thought it would be - G&Ts are the way forward it seems!

On the Friday before Christmas we had our annual Christmas get together and once again it was fab to see friends and neighbours. This year we bought multiple cases of prosecco given the last 2 years we have had to send out to neighbours for replenishments. This year however, preempted from the night in London, we also stocked up on a number of different gins as an alternative. Typically everyone arrived brandishing prosecco only to drink gin all evening - typical! So we still have a garage full of prosecco, as well as many half empty bottles of gin. Lucky for us the boiler man didn't mind being sent off with a few!

So just a few more days before its back to work. We have Simon and Sharron here for NYE before our annual windy walk and lunch at Sandbanks. I'm pretty positive about back to work., I finished on a high with lots of new work so I'm set up quite well for the next 6 months. That and I have a number of things - trips with Glenn and the kids all to look forward - 2018 feels like it will be a good year.


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