Right so its Tuesday, four whole days on from my last post when I said that by Monday all would be finished I would not be stressed life would be peachy. Why then am I still waiting for 3 sets of print files? This has to be the worst bit of publishing, I am so nearly to Christmas and lo, yes here comes the sore throat just in time to get me for my time off. But not even a sore throat can bring me down today, oh no. Sam is coming round tonight to make mince pies and watch films in the warm, tomorrow night is my last violin lesson of the year and at this very moment half my Christmas shopping is done & wrapped (smug? Yup, you said it).
The weekend was fantastic, the P party (I did go as xml in the end despite how great it would have been to pull off the pologiest get up) was cool. Best costume had to be a toss up between the girl dressed as the pack of cards (white dress with playing cards stapled to it in an alice in wonderland style) and the prawn (genius, just pure simple genius). Sat morning, early I end up waking up next to a purple sparkly hat as worn by Tom (nice biologist who I met at the party, he shares a house with Matt and was dressed as a pimp at the party, obviously with him being a bioligist we talked woodlice (I did environmental science at A level, what I don’t know about woodlice isn’t worth knowing), what’s the bet he thinks I’m weird now?!). Swear to return the hat. Saturday morning a bit later Barney is stuck on a train about 1/2 a mile outside of Oxford. Grrr trains. When he finally arrived I attempted to show him the city of dreaming spires… As it was drizzling this wasn’t a special as it could have been and we retreated to the vaults (awesome food, I wish it was less rammed with students more often, usually you just can’t get in). We looked round the indoor market and ran into old festival friends Sly & Mel who wished us a Merry Christmas, and then onto the Grande Cafe which unsuprisingly Barney liked (who wouldn’t). A swift glass of Merlot later we were on the bus heading home to get ready for Meg’s Christmas party. Got home, changed, ate, made Barney watch Merlin (talking dragon = essential viewing) went out again. Meg’s house had been transformed into a Christmas wonderland, there was festive music, quality street and enough booze to sink the Titanic. We ate drank, made merry. Barney managed to crack walnuts with his bare hands. He will live on in the memory of my Oxford friends for quite some time because of this trait. Midnight, we went home and straight to sleep.
7.30am Sunday morning I am woken up by a paw in the face, Mabel is awakee and wants feeding. I feed her got back to bed. 8.30 am Sunday morning I am woken up by paw in the face, Mabel is awakee has finished destroying the Christmas tree and wants to go out. 10am get Barney up and make him breakfast of croissants and proper coffee, am nice friend. We watch countryfile (John Craven = god amongst men). Barney is heard to utter the phrase “so this is how country folk live”. Hmph. Put Barney on a bus back to Oxford & rush back to house. Its 12, am supposed to be round at Beth & Nick’s at 1.30, ooops. Make rum truffles, mixture goes everywhere, oh really. Get showered, apply makeup, gather foody offerings and secret santa present and rush round to Beth & Nick’s to find I am the first one there. Relax as the first glass of wine mysteriously enters my hand. When we are all assembled we sit down to a proper festive meal of turkey with all the trimmings. Beth likes her present of a cat mug with a beanie cat and I am equally thrilled by my paint your own santa kit (which I later find out is from Beth). It starts to get messy as the drinking games are brought out (you have to blow only a couple of cards from a deck on top of an empty wine bottle, who knew it was this hard?) but the evening ends quietly enough with us all falling asleep in front of match of the day 2. Hartley & Smitho head back to mine to get some sleep and arrggghhrrr its Monday again!
