So that was Christmas and 2009

My holiday break started with a bump on the Wednesday before Christmas. The combined icy conditions and previous evening's rain turned the roads into highly polished glass. Without checking the university website, I stupidly cycled into work coming off worse from a) cracking my arse after slipping off my bike and b) wasting my time after discovering the university had closed due to the conditions. The catch-up drink at the Eagle pub on Gloucester Road cheered me up with my Elf t-shirt going down well. Christmas Eve was a restrained one with the core (K n K and P n S) though never got to play our new Buzz game on the PS3.

Another missed opportunity was watching the Christmas Day swimmers down at the pier. After unwrapping the presents we ran out of time and scrambled into action for a last minute tidy up for my dad's arrival at 1pm. As well as unwrapping his present to us (see picture), I kept him entertained (and sent him to sleep) with a recording of Channel 4's Queen in 3D until Kerry had served our amazing seasonal feast. The rest of the day was a more relaxed affair, though we didn't quite appreciate my dad's choice of DVD, Jeremy Clarkson's The Duel. We ended the evening watching an old Only Fools and Horses episode where Delboy sells bottled water from the Peckham Spring. Hardly worth mentioning in the blog you'd think until we discovered that the allotment used in filming was in fact two streets away behind our house in Brighton. See Moulescoomb Estate Allotments, Natal Road Flickr photo. Brighton featured quite a bit in this episode with the The Grand Hotel on King's Road, the Old Shoreham Road recycling depot and a farm shop in Hedfield which is only a few miles away in the countryside.

We didn't escape the house until after Boxing Day with no buses running. Instead we started the excellent Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the PS3 and caught up with the many hours of TV recordings eating chocolate, sausage rolls and nuts until bursting point. We met up with the Brighton regulars with some Brighton Pier attractions (Haunted House is pathetic, a zombie sneezing hardly qualifies as scary though the bumper cars made up for the excitement), a hearty meal at Cafe Rouge and a serious booze binge back at Kev and Karol's with Ibizian Nick and bro turning up later.

As well as Mr. Christ's birthday to celebrate, it was Hyperrealandsupercool blogger, Mr.Wilde's this week of which (for the benefit of everyone else) he avoided the train strikes in favour of some seaside fun until after the New Year. Another boozing session after a Wagamama meal which may have gone on too long for some as New Year's Eve saw a few early causalties.

NYE
Joining Emma and James was old chum Giles who later transformed himself into a Norman Cook double sporting an Hawaiian shirt on our last night of 2009 at Paul and Sarah's. We had planned to do Life with the Go-Bang disco crew but with the so-cold-it-hurts temperatures and Kev's laptop playing up I was forced to DJ earlier. It seems that VirtualDJ likes to synchronise with other laptops to f*ck up too as the left hand deck timecode went nuts. After a tune or two I had to abandon one side of vinyl control in favour of mouse clicking but this didn't prove a problem as I played one of the best sets yet.

With the party running out of energy by 6:30am I decided to go home just as the Life clubbers/gatecrashers turned up without an invite. Apparently, headliner Idjut Boys did the worse, unprofessional set ever with a shambles of a set. Plus after 2am, a lot of people went home leaving just the hardcore of regulars. I hope Pual and Sarah got some well deserved rest after this.

Happy New Year everybody!