All Through The House.

Christmas was lovely, in the way it always is. Got some nice books, gloves, a scarf, chocolate, money....this is beginning to sound like a list of old people presents.....notebooks, make-up and a new phone. The goose has been eaten, mostly. On Christmas night I came downstairs to find my parents and grandparents gathered around the carcass literally picking at bones like a pack of hyenas.

The seasonal television has also been great this year, with Gavin and Stacey, Cranford and obviously Doctor Who. I'm looking forward to the Outnumbered Christmas special tonight.

Today we were visited by some more 'Relatives With Different Political Opinions,' (RWDPOs from now on.) The grandparents already have their different opinions, but now two more have shown up and we are as outnumbered as Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner tonight at 10.30 on BBC. My Mum had to hide in the kitchen while they discussed their views on global warming. The RWDPOs tend to bother her a lot around this time of year.

Also, as if to welcome in the new stuff we got for Christmas, the old stuff is breaking. My brother's CD and tape player broke, but luckily he still has the iPod, my Granny broke the stepladder but doesn't know about it yet, as she'll feel bad, and the blade of the cheese knife was defeated by a particularly strong Welsh cheese. My Great Half-Aunt (although she would kill me if I called her that) gave me a ring which got temporarily stuck on my finger and had to be got off with soap.

Crazy times in this household.

EDIT:
Just to say, I am now watching the QI Christmas special on iplayer, and that I love Stephen Fry like another gay uncle and wish he could come round every Christmas so I could personally congratulate him on being awesome.

Christmas Eve Bloggins

Happy Christmas Eve everybody!
I have been having consistent fun since Katie's party, with Laura's crazy TV and film costume extravaganza and Zanny's house the day before yesterday, during which I ate way too much party food.

Yesterday the Austrian/Hungarian Grandparents arrived from Edinburgh at six o'clock in the morning, having had to take an overnight coach due to their plane being cancelled. I just picture the Polar Express whenever they refer back to this story.

And this evening the neighbours are coming over for traditional neighbourly Christmas fun. This has happened for as long as I can remember, from the days when we would all wear velvet for no reason, sing Christmas songs loudly from the landing and do row, row the boat with Jack, to nowadays, when we wear normal clothes and watch Christmas films. Although about three years ago we all did row, row the boat with Jack again out of nostalgia. I love Christmas Eve.

As Promised

As promised, it's a drunken blog post ladies and gentleman.

I think I feel a hangover coming on, like right now. Because it is technically the next morning and has been for twenty minutes, no, twenty-three minutes, and apparently I fell asleep for five minutes during the Happy Birthdays. Feeling a little headachy and sick at the mo which does not bode well for the actual morning, as in, after I have been actually asleep.

I can still use punctuation pretty well considering current inebriation, and spelling, which says good things for university. I said such a lot of crap to Laura's Dad in the car, possibly about my personal life, which Alex sang about. I hope it wasn't recorded and filmed for Christmas day television. I accidentally mixed drinks again sorry. Better not vomit all over the keyboard.

No-one was awake when I got in thank the lord and his many offspring, Goodnight.

Yesterday (briefly)

I had a lovely day yesterday. I don't think I have laughed that much for ages.

As has been voiced elsewhere, Mr. Napkin Head had us all weeping with laughter, and I accidentally gave Elise all of my money due to mathematical inability, but we sorted it out. The waiter was hilarious, although the hypothetical 'noodle incident' never happened. Secret Santa and card distribution was fun and wonderful. As was Christmas music, vaguely festive films and snow earlier in the day.

My Dad asked over lunch today; 'What goes between the dots in morse code?' the answer obviously being 'dash.' He is now in serious trouble for making fun of my grandmother's 'Oh Dash' catchphrase, and making me laugh inappropriately at mealtimes. Although not as much as we laughed yesterday at the high-fiving with the waiter.

Grandparents Make Mealtime Crazy

The seasonal influx of Grandparents has begun, with the Welsh lot arriving yesterday and the Austrian/ Hungarian lot arriving some time after the others have gone (the two do not mix well; not since a fight at my fourth birthday party about who got to make the sandwiches.)

Unfortunately, my mother has a slightly tense relationship with her mother, as they are very different in terms of world knowledge and culinary tastes. This means that she is currently slightly hysterical with the stress of discussing the right way to cook salmon, organising Christmas some more, and arguing with her parents over whether or not she ever wrote to them from university. Mealtimes are usually the worst, as my Granny will undoubtedly use her catchphrase 'Oh dash' (imagine that in a Welsh accent, with the 'oh' elongated, in fact, you've probably heard me imitating it anyway) and then my Dad and I will try and avoid laughing. It's our family's equivalent of 'what's occurin'?'

Anyway, this particular mealtime, my Mum was talking to my Grandparents about my Grandad's 'fancy woman,' or, to us modern day folk, the woman to whom he had once been engaged before he met my Granny. Then my Grandad started talking about someone called 'Marjorie the Gypsy,' at which point I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my drink, because I was confused and thought that Marjorie the Gypsy was his ex-fiancee.

Thank goodness she wasn't, because 'Marjorie the Gypsy' apparently had a grand total of two teeth, wore one man's boot and one man's shoe, and was apparently related to Tom Jones, because he has Welsh Romany Gyspy blood and my Mum described the Stop-And-Call Gypsies (that's actually the name of the town where my Grandad grew up) as 'one big Romany Gypsy family.' My Dad chose to interpret this as 'in-bred.'

Anyway, not my Almost-Grandmother; who I still know nothing about.

Lot of Happiness

History was cancelled so, unusually, I am at home in the middle of a Tuesday between English and Drama.

I have coffee, and when I commented on how we had digestive biscuits but they weren't chocolate digestives, my Mum had the genius idea of spreading nutella on them.

Not sure if I have ever been happier at 11.02 on a Tuesday morning.

Decorations and Preparations

My parents are currently on the landing outside my room, taking great care over exactly where to hang a paper Christmas tree. They are trying to decide which bar (preventing me from falling off the landing) to hang it from, and which angle, and the height. From the way they are talking about it, it sounds like serious business.

Almost as serious as the colour co-ordination of the Christmas tree, which I have never been a part of decorating as my Dad has to have a perfectly even spread of red and gold, which only he, as an architect, is capable of arranging. The mistletoe is hung in an obscure and rather dull corner of the dining room that no-one would ever consider kissing under, and my parents have printed off their e-mail contact list to write the Christmas cards in alphabetical order.

Not only do we have regimented decorations and a card production line, but every single meal has been planned until the day after boxing day. Today my Mum wrapped every single present and got, from the sound of it, incredibly furious with the sellotape, and my parents have been arguing over when exactly they're going to find a spare five minutes to put up my brother's Christmas lights before Friday.

Luckily, everything is going according to plan, as I came home from School one day in October to find my Mum making Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, and mince pies. October.

None of this is an exaggeration. We have a scarily efficient Christmas.

Frosty Day

It's very cold today. Socks-pyjamas-and-dressing gown cold.

I'm watching World's Strictest Parents. Every episode is the same; two British teenagers with deep-rooted emotional problems causing their anti-social behaviour, who go to a really strict, usually religious family in another country. At the beginning they are badly behaved and hate the family, and then they confront the fact that they were adopted/ have dead relatives/ brought up in a cupboard head on, start loving the foreign family, and then go home reformed and better people. At some point in the programme everyone cries. Such predictibility is very reassuring

Fun shopping trip with a little group of us today. The Christmas lights are pretty.

Writing

I am writing this blog in an attempt to reassure myself that I am still able to string words together in coherent sentences.
Basically, I came up with an idea on Sunday for my Original Writing Club play, then thought 'No, this is a cross between Sleepless in Seattle and the Friends episode where they're up all night' and scrapped it. Then I spent all of History today coming up with various ideas and dismissing them, until I panicked at how lunchtime was fast approaching and thought 'Um, ok...poverty.'
Now I have realised that I don't want to write a play about poverty, nor did I ever really want to in the first place. I could write a fifteen minute play on ANYTHING and I have no ideas. That's one of the problems which we also experienced in Drama; you have to narrow down what you want to write about before you can actually make any decisions.
I am also failing to write my Drama homework right now.

Oops

I sacrificed all of my homework to watch Love Actually with my mother. Now I have a mysteriously familiar French paper to do for tutor woman, which I think I may have done once before way back in the doom and gloom of the school language block.

My Mum tends to have a very emotional response to films, so she had to have a box of tissues on her lap, which I would occasionally turn around to find her sobbing into over the breakdown of Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson's fictional marriage, or at any happy part involving Colin Firth.

I should really do the French paper now, but I loathe it with every fibre in my being and am still attempting to put it off for as long as possible.

That is all.

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly

Very few things in life make me happier than walking through the park on a cold, damp and miserable day, wearing my new boots and new-ish coat and listening to cheerful Christmas music.

On this kind of drizzly day there are not many people in the park, so if I walk around smiling like an idiot and mouthing the words to 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' no-one really cares or notices. That's probably my favourite Christmas song by the way, along with the Band Aid one and the Slade one and Fairytale of New York. Some of the Christmas songs I have on my iPod, I've realised, are oddly repulsive, such as the Spice Girls cover of 'Sleigh Ride,' (Annoyingly, I like the actual song, just hate the bits at the beginning and end of just them talking) and the Billie Piper version of 'Last Christmas' rather than the actual Wham version. Silly Billie.

Oh no, the stupid talking at the beginning of 'Sleigh Ride' has started. I wonder if it's still too early to be listening to Christmas music in the first place. But then, my brother has been listening to it since November, and occasionally in July when we can't find anything else he wants to listen to, so I couldn't help it.

I'm going to watch Love Actually tomorrow, I just can't hold it in any longer.

Maximum Bleh

I have done 2 infernal hours of French work, that went on until 6.50 because the French Lady was 20 minutes late.
I have not had dinner because my Dad isn't home yet.
I missed a train, except that turned out ok because French Lady was late anyway, and forgave me for not having done the homework.
My feet are cold, having recently got very wet in the rain, which is why I am now wearing my old school hockey socks in a feeble attempt at warmth.
I am so sleepy.
But it is ok, because my Dad just arrived home while I was typing and now I get to go downstairs and eat something involving mozarella, but I am not sure what.
Also, M+S Christmas Meal Deal lunch thing is lovely and festive. And Ms E gave me one of the advent calendar chocolates in History today despite the fact that I stared blankly at the Lenin video all lesson, to encourage me to participate more. I feel sufficiently encouraged by chocolate.