Home for Christmas

After a few days in BKK spent emailing, Christmas shopping, packing and repacking our bursting rucksacks finally the 13th December arrived and it was time to head for the airport as for Christmas presents our parents had paid for us to fly home for 3 weeks. To say I was excited would have been the overstatement of the year and there wasn’t much else id been thinking about for the past few weeks!

We flew Egypt Air which was nice enough apart from the fact that all Ben had been saying for the few hours we were in the airport was that he was looking forward to a beer and watching a movie then he’d be able to sleep, half an hour into the flight we discovered they don’t serve alcohol and the in-flight entertainment system was broken! We had four hours to kill in Cairo airport which went quickly enough even though our flight was delayed an hour, when we got on we were told it was because they had been attempting to fix the in-flight entertainment system - but had failed!

To be honest I don’t think I even noticed as all I could think about was how soon we would be home and I’d be with my family

Mum and dad met us at the airport and bought cheese sandwiches on wholemeal bread mmm mmm mmm which was just the tip of the three week cheesefest iceberg that me and Ben embarked on – well it was a cheesefest for Ben anyway for me it was more of a general foodfest, we had extremely long lists of all the foods we’d missed whilst we’d been in India and the plan was to make sure we ate all of them before we were flying back to BKK on Jan 4th

Whilst home I had Chinese takeaway (all praise Ming Wah ribs and free crispy duck courtesy of the ever fabulous Sylvie), Indian takeaway WITH lashings of mango sauce because without it WHAT’S THE POINT PEOPLE!!!!!, toad in the hole, cauliflower cheese, the ultimate tuna sandwich, mint sauce, elly special tiramisu, avocado, lettuce, chutney, wholemeal spaghetti, goats cheese, feta cheese, mature cheddar cheese, stilton, real bread, butt’s leek and potato soup and her BUTTerfly buns, oh god just thinking about it all now is making my mouth water and I haven’t even got round to mentioning the pinnacle of the festive season the one and only Christmas dinner …

It was bliss, pure bliss the gravy, the potatoes, the cock (ho ho ho), the veg (oh how I miss just having vegetables!), everything about it was perfection not only because the food was so wonderful but because I was at my sisters house with my family – in what has now become Garrod family tradition we sang all six verses of Good King Wencleslas as the Christmas pudding arrived and in what I hope will become Garrod family tradition we spent a good hour after dinner attempting to play Christmas carols on whistles!

So Christmas was fantastic and even if I’d just been home for that day it would have been totally worth it but we were lucky enough to have three whole weeks to see our friends and family

However the first afternoon was a bit hectic – we’d landed at 1pm and after a quick stop at home to drop of my bags we went to my sisters house and a few hours later as I was sitting playing with Oscar and Henry and Oscar was telling me all about how his monkey was taking up the floor boards and stealing the wires so we wouldn’t be able to make tea while at the same time Henry was telling me about Per and Mr Goat and his blankee being his friends I suddenly realised I hadn’t had any sleep in about 36 hours! Luckily coffee got me through the rest of the afternoon and kept me awake enough to see my brother in the evening and enjoy a fine Ming Wah

The first Saturday back I went with Chris and my nephews Dylan and Oscar to the pantomime just to help get us all into the Christmas spirit, there was much booing and hissing and he’s behind you-ing and a bit of "Watcha Wishy how’s your little fishy" – with actions!

On the Sunday Cathy had organised a little do at her flat - as her and Kaz were celebrating Christmas early – and it was the perfect opportunity to surprise Emma and Jim who didn’t know I was coming home, it was sooooooo much fun especially as they were both late meaning me Cathy Kaz and Jenny were just getting more excited – and they were trying to decide where I should hide - anyway surprise them I did (popped up from behind the sofa) and both of them made me cry!

Next in line was Kate – unfortunately she knew I was coming back for Christmas but she didn’t know exactly when and I’d been plotting with Fabrice (her boyfriend, who she lives with) for a few weeks trying to organise the best time to surprise her. He was a marvel at secrecy and though she continually tried to crack him he didn’t falter and he managed to sneak me into the flat while Kate was in the shower completely oblivious, he sneaked back out to get food and I sat and waited for her to come out – then I started to worry she might wander out naked and it didn’t seem like such a good plan but thankfully all was well and Kate was clothed! She was properly surprised and had to ring her mum to tell her!! Fabrice cooked us a lovely meal (sweet and savoury crepes mm mmm mmmm), we drank wine and talked loads (quelle surprise!) and it was just perfect but too short!

After that I was left with no one to surprise, which was quite upsetting as I had been rather enjoying it!

On the 23rd Emma had a fabulous party where I dressed up (like a pink fairy) but no one else joined in with the fancy dress theme! Christmas pressies were exchanged, sangsom was drunk, karaoke was sung and Jim dipped his cock in the chocolate fondue!

Between Christmas and new year Framboise and Olav came to stay for a couple of nights, the first evening they arrived started as a few drinks in the pub – Ben found a pound on the bar so took it and put it in the fruit machines, it turned out Framboise had left it as a tip for the barman! – then we went to Cathy’s for jacket potatoes and ratatouille (delicious) and the music went on (and me and Olav kept turning it up) and the sambuka came out then Cathy brought out green stuff then Olav was break dancing and before we new it all of us were waking up with horrible hangovers and some of us with carpet burns!

The day after we dragged ourselves up at lunch time and went back to my house for lunch then headed up to my sisters, Framboise had one of my sisters cakes and didn’t know it had jam in – this pushed him over the edge and he had to go and hide the rest of the cake in his coat pocket, oh and at one point Olav was sat on the poof eating a fairy cake – this pushed Chris over the edge and he had to go laugh in the kitchen! By evening we’d all recovered somewhat and managed a rather civilised dinner with my parents and a rather fine game of pictionary won by me and dad in spite of his tiny little pin head people, then after my parents went to bed me Olav and Fram ate the hummus mmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmm

For Christmas Mum and Dad had bought me and Liz tickets to see Dirty Dancing on 2nd of Jan, they also both plied us with money for train tickets and dinner that we insisted was too much then pretty much spent all of! We had a delicious meal at a Greek restaurant washed down with a little rose then headed for the theatre, the show was fab – virtually word for word to the film but with a few extra scenes thrown in – amazing dancing and great music and it was nice to get my sister alone for an evening, although she would have had us miss the train back so she could get a cup of tea!

Otherwise the majority of my time was spent hanging out with my family and playing with my nephews, learning to cope with Henry who had just been talking when I left and is now all sentences and demands "I want my milk NOW", luckily he’s very cute and he soon learnt that there was no point screaming at me as it wouldn’t get him anywhere – he scowled at me instead, then quickly got over it and started talking about Thomas again, which was mostly in reference to the tank engine but sometimes meant hummus! Oh and he took to calling me Mr Elly, bless his little weasel socks. I went to a big indoor playpen with Liz and Chris and the weasels one afternoon, which was great fun – they have trampolines, slides, climby things, spinny things, and lots of other play things all of which are soft. Chris encouraged Oscar to show me one of the ways out which was a series of platforms that you climb in-between and they get closer and closer together until at the bottom you have to lie flat and drag yourself along to get out! Needless to say I was unamused! Then we lost Henry for about 10 mins – Oscar is good as gold and if you ask him to wait he waits, Henry smiles and runs off! Lots of fun but rather tiring

Three weeks passed so soon and suddenly it was time to leave and say goodbye again so we packed our now slightly smaller bags as all the pressies we’d brought home had left some room but a fair part of that had been replaced with received pressies!