Howdy partners. Whilst you watch tears at the Australian Open, debate the Triple J Hottest 100 list and multiply your risk of melanoma in 40 degree swelter, London has turned into a miserly sub 5 degree hell. It is now officially COLD. The Christmas frost encountered was cute, but developed a false sense of security in how cold the place actually gets. Too often a mistake made by us visitors, floating on the eternal memories of summertime, which now seemingly took place a lifetime ago. Inspiration can only be sourced from the fact that we are mere weeks away from returning to you all. I’m so excited to see everyone that I have ceased all communications with family and friends because I can’t contain my emotion. Mum and Dad - do you mind picking me up from the airport? Thanks a million.
Following is a hazy recollection of the past months events:
D stands for December, drunk & disorderly, dialysis and Desmond Tutu
The Spring Christmas party was a precursor to a host of December events that generally involved drinking, making a fool of myself and passing out on the couch watching cricket whilst leaving a pot of pasta on the stove to burn overnight. This behaviour a) hurt, b) did nothing for my intra-household relations and c) still has repercussions. Prior to Christmas, our London gang decided that an early Christmas party at a Chelsea pub was neccesary given that most people were celebrating actual Christmas in completely different countries. Suprise suprise, the night got messier and messier by the pint until eventually we ended up at a house party in Clapham Old Town inside a basement with a roof 5 foot high, dancing to the DJ’s endless rendition of Born Slippy. “Lager lager lager lager shouting, Lager lager lager lager shouting, Mega mega white thing mega mega white thing”.
Next we trotted up to Scotland to spend Christmas with Fifi’s family. Kids and Christmas are a great mix (teach them to become consumption obsessed at an early age, I say), on arrival to Lanark we literally had to fight our way through the abundance of presents stacked up around the house. I was a bad boy this year, so all the presents were given to Katy Ruth (2 years old) and Emily Joy (0 years old technically). It was gorgeous watching the little tykes break open the presents, with a little help from their Mum’s. That is, until they opened one of Santa’s nightmarish gifts created to send parents into a state of despair, a singing teletubby. The benefit of which being that I now know the Teletubbies theme song off by heart, but the down side being.. oh wait that was the down side. Our host, Joy, spoilt us as is her custom with an amazing lunch that was so good that we decided to repeat the dosage for lunch the next day. Take the feeling you have after 1 big Christmas lunch and multiply it by 2. Christmas night, when not a creature was stirring, we partook in the annual Jardine family Christmas party. The Scots tried to sabotage me, feeding me some cheap local wine derivative, but despite adversity I conquered all challengers on the Pool table to maintain my unbroken run of Christmas sporting titles. However some may say that last years win in the ‘first person to cook a plum pudding’ contest was a dubious choice as a sporting activity especially given that I was just pushing the open button on the microwave door to take out the plum pudding i had put in there 5 minutes earlier.
Taking advantage of the kindness of my workplace to give me days off between Christmas and New Years, I set off on a venture, cutting a lone path, destination Berlin. My bastard mates abandoned me days before leaving “to be with family” or because they were “broke”. Selfish. Don’t worry they are not literate enought to have reached this part of the text. Contrary to my belief prior to reaching Berlin, my German is crap. I knew how to say hello, but when people thought I was German and began to converse natively, I just repeated hello again and far from making clear to them that I was a foreigner, probably just freaked them out a bit. Berlin was a lovely place, I would like to go back in the Summer, snow blanketed everything. I stayed in a brilliant apartment in West Berlin (Charlottenburg) and did lots of sightseeing and walking. The Jewish museum was a highlight for its architecture alone and its exhibitons were pretty powerful too. Checkpoint Charlie had some great Berlin Wall escapee stories. The Tiergarten (gardens) seemed to go on forever. I did so much and had so much left to do and to cap off a great holiday, spent 5 hours at Berlin airport waiting for a weather affected flight back to London.
NYE and January’s events shortly.
