The 2011 holiday season began on the 18th of December. I’d taken the whole week before xmas off as leave, so I had over two weeks of time off to look forward to. Things started on a less than stellar foot when Bean barfed all over himself, his pushchair and – most importantly – his sausage-lady sausage in the middle of market square on market day. He’d been complaining about his tummy hurting all morning, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue. He must’ve caught the tummy bug that was rampaging merrily throughout the nursery. Still, being covered in puke didn’t bode well for our chances to avoid the bug. More on this later.
We spent the next few days at home – close to the potty – but I managed to get all of my still-as-yet-not-done gift wrapping out of the way and got some cooking prep done for later on in the week. We got everything packed into the car and left for Leicester on the 21st. We were planning on leaving from there to go to London for Katy’s birthday. We already had non-refundable show tickets, train tickets and hotel reservations :) Considering that Katy is always ill on her birthday, this was a gamble but I was determined that this year would be different.
Which is was. I caught the tail end of Bean’s stomach bug and was violently ill that night. The good news is that after that, I felt much better than I’d felt all evening :) The following morning, Mel’s IBS was flaring up and he was in a grumpy mood, which didn’t help the general feeling of malaise but dagnabbit, I was still determined for us to have a good time. Off to London we went!
We walked a lot that day. As in, A LOT!
It started with me forgetting to bring the London A-Z, so we had to rely on Katy’s use of The Force. Now, normally, this isn’t a problem. Katy was also feeling a touch under the weather that day though, and she doesn’t do well in crowds so The Force was weak on that day (though she did manage to growl impressively at somebody who’d knocked into her).
We had lunch at Taro, a noodle bar in SOHO. That was good. After that, we went to have a look at the xmas displays at Fortnum & Mason. You’d think that a place that posh would have nicer loos, but you’d be wrong. Sad, really. Anyway, the displays were nice but, I dunno, it left me feeling a bit odd. The fact that there are people who can affort to pay £26 for a single stupendously fugly plastic xmas bobble makes me realise just how much out of their league I am, yet these people probably have more money than taste. Anyway, I digress.
We did a bit of window shopping. Katy bought the next book in the sparkly vampire series she’s currently reading, then we went to a cafe to have a drink and rest our weary feet. Katy admitted that she wasn’t feeling very festive at that moment, because of our combined state of poor health. When prompted on what would make her feel better, she admitted that what she really wanted were red velvet cupcakes, but where to find them? Internet to the rescue! After waaay too long a time searching and finding nothing, I realised that there was a Hummingbird bakery branch not too far from where we were so off we went. We also had to find a lollipop for the Bean, because that’s what he wanted Santa to leave him. A yellow one! How long did it take us to find that stupid lollipop? Waaaaaay too long. But that’s later in the story.
After walking for several more miles in a roundabout circuit, we made it back to the general vicinity of the theatre where the Phantom was playing later that night. We had dinner at an Angus Steak House, drinks at probably one of the most pretentious bars in London (though it had really nice drinks, fantabulous loos and ginger-butter flavoured complimentary popcorn) and then it was time to see the show.
It was good. I was crying like a little girl all throughout the first half. I still don’t know why. Les Miserables normally does that to me, but never Phantom. Go figure. Anyway, after the show, we made our way to the hotel and crashed. We didn’t get upgraded either, poo! The next morning, we made our way back to Leicester. We had planned on having a nice lunch at San Carlo, but Katy’s innards were still actively rebelling so we cancelled that. We stopped by John Lewis to get the child his yellow lollipop and went home. We spent the rest of the day chilling out and getting some basic food prep done for xmas.
We visited Anna, Rho and Anna’s parents on the 24th. That was a fun little interlude. Anna’s dad made a lifelong friend in Bean. He was following him everywhere. It was really funny. When we told Bean that the television was broken and that he couldn’t watch a movie, he plomped himself down in front of the oven and watched lasagna cooking for about 10 minutes :) Bean enjoyed watching “Twas the night before xmas” on Rho’s ipad.
Once Bean was asleep that night, we had dinner and opened our presents. Once that was cleared up, we got everything ready for Bean to open his on xmas morning (once Santa had been there and delivered everything!) He had so much stuff given to him this year, he didn’t know what to open. Lesson for next year: less is more :)
Stu, Jeminie and Sonal came for xmas dinner. All of our prep the day before was helpful, because as in the year before, we only had to get the meat cooking in the morning and let it go be itself. We had all the trimmings, and I even made turkey gravy from scratch :) It was a good meal!
It was a funny evening. Katy’s mom and dad got seriously pissed! The curtain pole incident will live as long as the Beatles (they’re good, aren’t they?!) :)
Boxing day was quiet, with more eating and drinking, then it was time to head back home on the 27th and see the state the house and the animals were in.
scottsdales
colchester zoo
bad mental health day
lots of cooking
new years
finally some quiet time
back at work