*ping*
As if by magic, the new year appears! I had a great Christmas and New Years Eve it’s got to be said, not the same as years gone by, but still really good.
Christmas Day was awesome as usual, a morning spent at home with the other half, opening our presents which for me included dinosaur origami and home-made dinosaur shortbread! My dinosaur obsession makes me sound like a seven-year-old boy I know, but that’s because secretly I still am. We spent the afternoon and evening at my parents’ house with my brother and his other half and enjoyed a day of over-eating, drinking all manner of beers, liqueurs and spirits, and playing board games. Murph had some Christmas presents of his own which he was over the moon with, and has promptly chewed-up all over the living room rug :).
That missing week, the one in between Christmas and New Year, the one that just hangs somewhere in the ether, that was spent firmly planted on the sofa. I put in a serious number of hours playing games, reading, watching TV and films and eating yet more food. That’s not to say I didn’t get out of the house at all, because I did. Murph went for a few jaunts down at the beach to make the most of being home during daylight hours, and he loves the beach. There’s so much stuff to smell and more importantly, to pee on. The surfers must’ve been loving this Christmas, the surf was clean, offshore and about 5′ all week!
The end of a set at Portreath, Boxing Day
I’ve never been a massive fan of New Years Eve, it’s always seemed like a massive, overly-expensive, hype-fest which dies a death after midnight (yeah I know, this from me, the man who loves Christmas), so I wasn’t really too bothered by what I’d be doing to see in 2011. Some friends of ours in the awesomely named village of Frogpool hosted a party for our group of friends and it turned out to be just about the best NYE ever. We ate, drank, played a well-organised quiz of the year and then headed to the local pub to count down the end of the year. When I say local, I mean local. The fact that the village doesn’t even have a shop means that the entire place congregates in the pub, and despite the fact that everyone looked at us when we went in (they were in the middle of their raffle and 10 of us walked in, suited, booted and dressed to the nines) they were really friendly. It was surprisingly understocked for a pub, so out attempts to get a few shots were hampered by the fact that they had no tequila. Or sambuca. So it was that we ended the year smoking cigars and drinking drambuie in the middle of nowhere.
I’ve got high hopes for 2011, but I really don’t know what they are at the moment. It’s got to be better than the latter half of 2010, that’s a given, but with the first of my close friends about to have a baby, my class re-opening (and hopefully growing) and potentially my senior first dan grading coming up, it’s going to be a good one.