Happy Christmas

The last few days have been great. Last Thursday saw the end of work and the start of the Christmas break, which was celebrated in the form of Xtreme 16!! The Bish, Luce, Heath and I organised a day in a cross style between a day trip and Dads Cool School Race Camp. Best bit was that the day was completely unofficial, meaning we threw health and safety out the window (after promising no-one would die) and banned all fun sheriffs (health and safety nuts) We played wide games all day in a barn and finished with an egg and flour war complete with hay bale forts... one awesome fight ensued... and dinner and a bonfire.
Friday, the Bish kidnapped four of us and took us on a road trip without telling us where we were going or what we were doing. After we got lost for the third time he told us where we were going so we could ask for directions and actually get there. We ended up in Spalding (north east England I believe) and watched a pantomime before driving back to Oxfordshire, managing to go 18 miles down the wrong motorway before we realised. All the above happened in heavy fog which had been around for three days previous (never seen anything like it before!!)
Saturday, cleaned the barn before doing Christmas shopping.
Sunday, church in the morning, christmas eve party at Lucys, midnight mass was entertaining, someone chose some weird carols so I just sang no. 18 to every song (the only line I knew was "Ding Dong Merrily on High!!", which gave Heath the giggles) and then I was tempted to put a bug I caught in the communion wine but wimped out when the bloke handed me the cup saying "the blood of Christ" ...just couldn't do it. Probably a good thing. Called home after and had a chat to the family. Went to bed at 3am for about the third nite in a row.
Monday, Christmas!!!! Slept in and was just heading out the door to catch the end of church with James when everyone else got back. Unlike normal people, the English have an unnatural tendency to open presents in the afternoon, and only once dinner is cleared away and all the men have gone for a walk around the village, it was four in the flipping afternoon before I got any presents!!! What's that about?? (was alright actually, but definitely weird) Went over Lucys for the evening and ate even more great food and exchanged presents and banter for a few hours before heading home and staying up till 3am again writing a Christmas letter.
Tuesday, Boxing Day, drove up to Derby to watch my first english football match, highlights were MacDonalds on the way there and Burger King on the way back!! I've had better matches of football dow the green, poor show, and Derby lost the match after missing about five sitters... shameful. Drove back for a much more entertaining evening at some friends place, more great food and some awesome games (see Game blog for details!! ...sometime in the next week or so anyway)
Wednesday, caught the train into London with the family (english family, not aussie one) and took a flight on the London Eye, walked over to Covent Garden for lunch at an Italian resteraunt. Stopped in Kathmandu and picked up a brilliant little L.E.D torch at half price. Did tower bridge. Checked out Tate Modern, best thing there was a tube-slide going from the 5th floor to the ground level, immediately ran all the way to the top level to have a go only to be told I needed to collect my free ticket from the ground floor to ride!! Ran all the way back down to be told by the smeg head behind the ticket desk that he wasn't issuing anymore tickets today despite not having issued one since 2 o'clock and there being almost no-one left in the building!! Ran all the way back to the top level to try and sweet talk my way onto the slide without a ticket, having failed that and finding very little I considered either "art" or "worth looking at after the disappointment of the slide", I left in disgust. From there I hot-footed it over to Oxford Street to meet up with Amy Robbo from Perth!! Hung out for a bit, saw Putney Bridge, a very very nice part of London I'd not seen before, where she's staying at the minute and then trained it all the way back to Haddenham.
Has just gone 1am and I don't know if I'll cope with another 3am nite. Time for bed me thinks.
Happy Christmas all!! Have a good one!!