It would appear to me that the number of presents given to small children is in inverse proportion to the number of…

Er, or should that be the number of children is the inverse square of presents divided by age…

Oh, I don’t know – I failed GCSE Maths the first time I took it!  I do know that there are two small children in Bexley both of whom got a ridiculous number of presents today.

And me?  I’m perfectly happy with some books, an electric hammer drill (mains powered, not battery), an Airfix model of the Saturn V rocket, a small penknife and a grow-it-yourself pot of herbs for the kitchen.

And some socks, naturally.

So, it’s Christmas Eve afternoon; I’m stuck here in the office with nothing important to do, just waiting/hoping to hear from my boss (who’s supposed to be here) about a reasonably important small last job that needs finishing before I can, in all good conscience, leave.  The reasonably important small last job that needs finishing should take about four minutes to finish, but nothing can be done about it by me alone because of an annoyingly silly cock-up.

Sigh.

There’s no one else here now except me, as far as I can tell – certainly no one at all in my part of the building.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse.

I just made that up; that’s how bored I am.

The Lovely Melanie has phoned to say that my parents have arrived at ours and I’m not to forget to buy some milk.  She’s probably quite glad they’ve arrived – certain smaller members of our household were getting more excited than is good for them this morning…

Oh, yes – one odd thing to mention: Millie’s advent calendar has 25 doors in it, instead of the more traditional 24.  I was looking for the last unopened door this morning and checked the number on the first one I saw and it was 25.  I blinked a bit, then saw a second still unopened door that had 24 on it.

Anyone else ever come across an advent calendar with 25 doors?

Sigh.

Well, I’m going to stare out of the window blankly for another hour or so then head for home.  Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year, too, just in case my Christmas presents are so amazing that I forget to add anything here for another week!

One good thing about the current sub-zero weather is that I couldn’t go to the cinema last night to see Avatar in 3D (at Peckham, so it’s only £2.99 on a Tuesday) because I was scared I might not be able to get back – particularly following the trauma of Monday night, trying to get home, slightly the worse for wear following my departmental Christmas meal and watching the departures board at Charing Cross as every train on it was either cancelled or delayed (sometimes both!)

I left the pub at about 9.30 and walked in the front door at about 12.30.

But I was saying one good thing about the weather is that because I couldn’t go to the cinema last night I stayed in and finally finished Millie’s Christmas present, a book called Millie and the Princess of the Moon.  The Lovely Melanie, who works in publishing so has final say on such matters, has pronounced it acceptable – excellent, even – which is extremely gratifying given the amount of time I’ve spent on the thing (about 20 hours, give or take an hour or two).

I did the same thing last year, write, illustrate and make the whole thing, to produce a masterpiece called Millie In The Woods which has, gratifyingly, become an occasional bedtime favourite.  So I decided to do the same again – except that this year I forgot that Millie is a bit older and so needs a story correspondingly longer and more complex.

But Millie and the Princess of the Moon is finally finished, which means I can go out for a quiet drink with friends tonight safe in the knowledge that my work as a father is complete.  At least for this year – the Lovely Melanie has pointed out that to be scrupulously fair I need to write a book for Amber next year, and that’s assuming Millie doesn’t ask for another one!

More ice chaos this morning (as you might have guessed from the title).  Despite moving the car from the fiendish deathtrap garages it still took AmberG and myself five minutes to go two metres this morning. Every time I v-e-r-y slowly tried to move the car it would go forward a few centimetres and then slide comfortably back, as though it particularly liked that position.

We don’t live on a massive hill or anything, but it was parked on the very short, very gentle slope that leads from the garages to the road, and even that was too much for it.  I racked my brains trying to remember how to get cars moving on ice (salting the road in front of us was out as I’d poured all our salt on the path from the house to the car – which made an impressive crackling sound but no real difference to the ice).

Just as I was about to ring the hire company and say “Umm, I can’t bring your car back, it is being most uncooperative and is a very naughty car,” I suddenly remembered that steering to one side, i.e., off the current patch of ice and onto a different one, might help.  And it did.  We inched painfully forward under some remarkable clutch control, and just about made it off the ice and onto some beautiful black, sticky tarmac.

Like the pope arriving on a foreign visit I nearly got out and kissed the ground!

AmberG, sat in the back, thought it was hilarious shouting “Wheeeee!” the whole time, and once we were off the ice I joined her, both of us yelling “Wheeee!” each time we turned a corner or went over a hill.

I was still a bit nervous, however, when after dropping her off at nursery, I had to take her car seat back home before returning the hire car, so I parked halfway up the street and carried the seat the rest of the way.

We made it across the country and back despite some decidedly treacherous weather conditions!

London to Bristol to Swindon to Hatfield to London, and despite some tiredness and allergies we’re all OK.  Thanks to everyone we saw and who made our journey so much fun – I now feel proper Christmassy!

I took some pictures on our travels.  Some of them are a bit silly.

We are sadly without Millie at the moment, as she’s staying with Grandma and Granddad for a couple of days – school may have finished but work has not (and neither has nursery, which is how come AmberG is still here…)

Blimey, but it’s cold here.  We left on Friday with snow on the ground and we’ve come back to ice – proper, dangerous ice; so much ice that when I tried to reverse the car into a space in the garages it fishtailed all over the place!  When we got out of the car we could barely walk without slipping over.

AmberG didn’t like it at all.  She’s always assumed that the ground, at least, was a safe and unchanging thing – to have it suddenly turn so treacherous and slippery has deeply shaken her.  Everything she knows (or thought she knew) is now under threat!

The Lovely Melanie, for her part, is not liking that we turned the heating off before we left and the house now seems to be stuck at an ambient temperature of about 2 degrees C, despite the gas fire and the heating having been on full blast for the last three hours.

GeoTagged, [N51.44072, W0.13205]

AmberG likes snow A LOT, far more than her sister did at that age. Millie likes it now, but as a toddler was quite befuddled by the whole experience. Amber is more hands-on.

There’s a slight problem with our trip to Bristol this morning…

Christmas has crept up on us to some degree again this year.  We still have to do the food shopping (although I’ve bought a tonne of sweets to be distributed in bowls around me the house), but all of the presents have now arrived (except my one for Amber) and this weekend we’re going to distribute them around the country.

We’ve a car hired from tomorrow so I’m going to collect that in the morning, then Millie finishes school at 1.15 and we pretty much depart immediately for Bristol.

At least, I hope we depart for Bristol: the weather forecast is not so great, and unusually for December in the UK involves snow (and ice and freezing temperatures, but it’s the snow most people are interested in).  I haven’t driven in snow for almost 20 years so we’re going to be taking it slow and steady down the around the M25 and down the M4.  We may even be extra cautious and pack some blankets, extra food and hot drinks, just in case things get a bit out of hand and we get stuck in snow.

I’m not expecting to get stranded in the snow, but then, no one ever does, do they?

So, tomorrow we’re off to Bristol for a night to see Trev and Conny before they head off to Germany for Christmas; then Saturday is in Swindon, including a Saturday night Christmas dinner with friends there, plus a visit to assorted great-nannies; and Sunday afternoon we’re heading home but taking a different route – clockwise round the M25 instead of the the usual anti-clockwise, as we need to drop Millie off at the grandparents’ in Hatfield.  She may well have finished school but her parents still have to work, so she’s going there until Tuesday.

The Lovely Melanie and I had a super time at The Return of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People last night.  This was despite the babysitter being late and some kind of a kerfuffle at Charing Cross station, which meant the Lovely Melanie nearly missed it, and me discovering a hole in one of the shoes I was wearing (the shiny blue ones that Millie and I both love) so having a wet, cold foot all night.

Still, we made it in the end and it was nice to be out, just the two of us (and for me to discover, clandestinely, that one of the Lovely Melanie’s Christmas presents I’ve bought her is something she really wants, even though she didn’t ask for it.  I rock at buying presents for people!)

Johnny Ball was, as expected, a bit mental, and Alan Moore was, as expected, hugely interesting – but unexpectedly even funnier than some of the comedians!

And tonight I’m going to treat myself to some L4D2 me-time – although I will be manning the helpline for BLISS, too.  Shooting zombies while simultaneously counselling emotional parents, now that’s what I call multi-tasking!

A stressful day – the only positive thing so far has been some snow here in central London.  Not a lot, but enough to make me smile.

Millie and Amber both a royal pain in the behind this morning, and it was with relief that I got into work only to find myself having to navigate a whole load more mess.  Sigh.

Thank goodness the Lovely Melanie and I are going out together tonight to see The Return of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People at the Bloomsbury Theatre, which we saw last year and both thoroughly enjoyed, not least because we so seldom get to get out together these days, let alone to the theatre!

This year I’m excited about seeing Alan Moore and the Lovely Melanie is looking forward to Johnny Ball (who I saw at a discussion a long time ago and all I recall is that he went off on one about how brilliant nuclear power was).

At least, I hope we’re going out – if the weather keeps getting worse we may not be.