Categories: random
Tags: Christmas, New Year, camera, 2010
Date: 04 January 2010 13:11:29
A few days late, but I am now back in Glasgow after a lovely week away down south visiting family, and gearing up to returning to work tomorrow (today is a bank holiday this side of the border, but before you jump up and down, we don't get the August bank holiday - I think with the various changes it still all works out the same over the year).
After a quiet but lovely Christmas we headed down south on Boxing Day and spent a couple of nights at my parents' place. I managed to do the bulk of my chapter 3 (which will later become chapter 4 as I rejig things) revision, and we had a walk through a park I used to play in as a child which was a bit bracing but nice to have a few minutes out. Then we headed slightly further south and spent a couple of nights at HD's parents (where his sister, brother-in-law and nieces were also staying, so it was a bit noisier there). I used their broadband to email off the chapter revisions, and then was able to relax a bit. We went to the Milton Keynes shopping centre as I was after a new camera, this turned out to be a big mistake (MK shopping centre is HUGE, but has no specialist camera shop! Outrageous! Plus the rest of the county and beyond had the same idea, and it was absolutely heaving there). Anyway after all that we headed off to Herefordshire to stay with HD's sister and family (the same lot who were at the outlaws - it was great to be able to spend so much time with them). Very excitingly, we went into Hereford on New Year's Eve and I managed to buy a camera from a specialist (rather than a chain) and beat the VAT rise, and so I am now the proud owner of a second-hand one of these. It's very shiny! (and was a bargain) :D
For new year we all piled down to Somerset, and spent the night at some friends of HD's sister's family (whom HD also knew though they'd not seen each other since we got married so it was the first time I'd met them). We played Wii Samba which was fun, I played with the camera, and we had a lovely time. After returning we just chilled out, built a wardrobe, chilled out some more, and then we headed back up north yesterday. HD is now back in his digs and back to work today (his contract has been extended until the end-ish of March, which is good from the work/money point of view though not ideal from the living-in-the-same-place-as-his-wife-ie-me point of view), and I finally got home about 7.30 yesterday evening. It is very cold here, and icy, so I'm a bit nervous about driving to work tomorrow. We'll see.
Rather upsettingly, when I got home I found that my key to the front (communal) door didn't fit the lock, so I thought that it had been changed. The neighbour let me in, and it turns out that it is the same lock, but someone broke in last week by picking the lock and it is now really difficult to use - it's always been a bit stiff, but I can now only get my key about half-way in. Even worse, they had broken into my neighbour's place by pretty much kicking the door in, and had stolen quite a lot of stuff. The rest of the flats weren't touched, but it is still worrying. Hopefully seeing the burglar alarm put them off. And in the meantime, we are finding it really hard to get in, and relying on neighbours who are already in to buzz us in. This morning I was woken up hearing someone trying unsuccessfully to open the door, it was absolutely freezing out there so I couldn't ignore it so I let my upstairs neighbour in (at 7am - the poor guy looked frozen solid!), and we will have to phone the factors (management company) tomorrow when they get back to work as I think it will have to have a new lock. So I have to say I'm feeling rather Daily Mail-ish about whoever it was who did it, and it's brought back some not-at-all pleasant memories of the two burglaries I had in London.
I have new year resolution-type-things to think about and other stuff, but it's 1pm so I probably ought to get out of bed :D (if it's any consolation, despite being in bed and the heating on, my fingers are still blue from the cold - according to the BBC weather, the daytime maximum temperature in Glasgow today will be -1, and at night the minimum temperature will be -8. Looks like the scraper will be getting plenty of use! Anyway - happy new year to you all, and I hope 2010 is happy, healthy and generally good to you.