Crimble post

This is not a look to the past or really much into the future, that'll come later in the week. This is just this week.

I got back from London on Friday afternoon, picked up by The Teacher from the station and home. She's managed to get most of Christmas organised with the help of the Daughter and The Boy - who are both tremendously helpful and neither had the terrible teens the way that they are supposed to.

The Boy has no gigs over Christmas, which is nice, and the Daughter's friends are all local so apart from providing a taxi service it's almost as if she never leaves the house.

Christmas Eve brought a trip to a local village where we each had £10 to buy stocking fillers for one other member of the family. It worked very well. A good new tradition we shall continue if we can, though it's possible the Daughter will be in the USA next Christmas. Which would be sad.

The kids were taught the proper meaning of Christmas in the evening by being required to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas compilation - including the full Andre Previn incident. ("You're playing all the wrong notes" "I am playing all the right notes! But not necessarily in the right order.") Both found them to be extremely funny. They've been brought up proper.

Christmas Day. Presents. The entire Buffy for the kids, the entire Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes for The Teacher and I. We don't buy chocolate because the Teacher is bought tons of it by her pupils. I got the Lis Sladen autobiography and started welling up just looking at the cover. How I'm going to be able to actually read it I have no idea. The death of someone I didn't know has never affected me so strongly before.

Boxing Day is movie day. We shut the doors and windows, close the curtains turn off the lights and watch wall to wall films, belonging to a series. For three years we did only the Lord of the Rings, 12 hours solid. In recent years we have branched out - all the Die Hards for example; this year we're doing Harry Potter - well, no, not all of it that would take two days. We're doing episode 1 and then 6, 7 and 8.

Wednesday is role-playing day - we're doing Victoriana with a select group of friends (the kids love role-playing games, as I said, they've been brung up proper). Thursday nothing specific but probably a big walk if it's not raining. Friday we head off for family visits down south - my sister even invited the dog so she'll get everything she deserves.

That'll do. I'm being called downstairs for a game of Cleopatra.

I hope your yuletide exceeds your expectations. And, regardless of all else, remember the wisdom of Bill and Ted: "Be excellent to each other!"

(And party on, dudes!)

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What's on the turntable? I can hear Mama Mia on the DVD downstairs...