Saturday, December 30, 2006
So then, now all of that's done and dusted... Christmas, and the run-up to it.On the 21st, Andrea and I went back to Milton Keynes for a couple of days, mainly to drop off pressies for my family, but also to do a spot of shopping.
As it's a damned long journey, we figured it'd be better if we stayed the night in a hotel, and while we'd initially booked a room at Newport Pagnel services, at the last minute, Andrea managed to get us a room in The Cock Hotel in Stony Stratford.
This was ultra cool for two reasons.
Firstly, Stony Stratford is my absolute favourite place in the whole world, and at Christmas, with all of the lights up, the place is absolutely magical.
This pic really does the place no justice at all, but you get the idea.
Secondly, we've stayed at The Cock Hotel before, and though on that occasion, our room was a little shoddy, we really liked the atmospehere of the place. So this time, we were thrilled to bits when we got a vastly better room for an absolute knock down price.
As you can see, the room was a decent size, with a double bed, decent sized sofa, HD TV, and wonderful decor and general ambience.
Now if that was all, I'd have been impressed, but the view from the window was really good too. Maybe if it hadn't been Christmas, it'd have been a little less impressive, but as it was...
This was the view looking directly out and down, while looking up the street a little...
So that's the run-up... what about Christmas itself?
Great day.
The build-up to Christmas is always pretty stressful, or at least, I find it so... so the fact that Christmas day was a really chilled and relaxing day was a real bonus.
With Andrea's 3 offspring all in attendance, it was a full house, with much food, drink, pressies, and tv. Just how things should be.
What did Santa bring me?
Among lots of other really cool stuff, top pressies were a Colecovision (early 80s games console... expect to find details in my Consoles And Computers section in a week or so), some books on photography and historic buildings, and Top Gear DVDs which repeatedly caused me to wake Andrea, coz I kept laughing at them, watching with headphones while she slept.
Yup... top Christmas.
Labels: Christmas, holidays, hotels, photos, Stony Stratford
Steve 9:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 20, 2005
This afternoon/evening we went back to Sheffield to see the turning on of the christmas lights.We got rather sidetracked, wandering round and exploring the city centre area, so by the time we got back to where the lights were, they were already on.
No biggie.
I got a couple of great photos though.
Here's one of them.
Steve 6:42 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Well.... ate lots, drank lots (though maybe not as much as I'd planned), watched lots of tv and movies... generally a pretty laid back day.Yeah... can't complain :-)
Must've slept in an odd position last night though, coz when I got up today, I had a seriously stiff neck and upper back... quite painful. Ah well... alcohol well render it ignorable.
Got quite a nice variety of alcohol here for a change too. Beer, sherry, red wine, white wine. Where to start, where to start?
*slurp*
*burp*
*hic*
:-)
Labels: Christmas
Steve 1:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, December 24, 2004
Christmas preparations seem to be pretty much in order at last.I tried getting into Tesco to pick up some last minute bits and pieces yesterday, and quite literally couldn't move. It was insane. Needless to say, I gave up and went home.
So this morning I made the trip back there at 5am, and would you believe it was still seriously busy.... but at least this time I was able to get what I needed.
Now all I need to do is go and deliver a couple of cards that I've left far too late, and tidy this place up.
Anyways.... if I don't blog again before tomorrow...
Merry Christmas everyone :-)
Labels: Christmas
Steve 8:51 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, December 26, 2002
What an enjoyable christmas.Good company, good food, fun pressies, fun times.
Things took a very disturbing turn in the kitchen though, as this picture shows...
"Keep drying, or prepare to be probed."
"Er... okay, but can I take this silly hat off?"
"Silence!"
Steve 6:16 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
It's christmas eve and so far, I haven't really mentioned christmas at all in this blog. I guess that's 'cause I know not only are there a lot of people who don't celebrate christmas due to their religion and whatever, but there's also plenty who simply don't enjoy the festive period for entirely personal reasons and get sick of hearing about it. Truth is, there've been times in the past when I've made a great effort to completely ignore the whole thing.Well not this year, and I think I've held off long enough, so here's what's happening this christmas in the Land Of Benway.
I'd been a little concerned as to what I was going to wind up doing this year. Having lost my gran earlier in the year, I really didn't want my mum to be alone. My sister's in Scotland, while my brother being a complete arse, can't be relied on to do the right thing. This left me knowing that if anyone was going to have my mum round for the day, it was going to be me. I guess that makes it sound like a chore, which it certainly isn't, only this year I wanted to spend the day with Brigitte. The solution turned out to be simple enough, we're taking my mum round to Brigitte's place on christmas day, so now I get the best of both worlds.
This has to be the first christmas ever when I've actually finished all the shoppinng, pressies and all, before christmas eve. Last friday in fact. It's a nice feeling, not having to rush around at the last minute. I finished wrapping the last pressie about half an hour ago, and all that's left to be done now is tidy the place up and make it presentable in time for Brigitte's arival in a few hours. I've been saying I'd do that for weeks (months?) now, but I'm such a slob. Hehehe.
Anyways... it's gonna be a busy couple of days, so if I'm not about for a while, Merry Christmas... and to those who don't celebrate it, I hope you have whatever kind of time you'd like to have, and call it what you will.
Labels: Christmas
Steve 12:39 PM [+] (0) comments
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