Snow, snow, everywhere.
But not a drop to drink
Just don't eat the yellow snow.
As the title suggests 'Bring on Christmas' I say. Work has been crazy busy. I have been running around like a mad man trying to finalise drawings and specs for a building conversion I have been working on. Like I have literally been mad; talking to myself, winking uncontrollably with head jerks to coincide.
I worked 12 days in a row just last week and the week before that.
Epic.
Enough about work anyway.
You would have thought that the cold miserable weather would put a dampen on the Christmas attitude. It has done, in fact, quite the opposite. I have never seen such cheer. Everywhere is decked out with real Christmas trees, selling food and drink to hail the festive season. A few weekends ago we went out to Winter Wonderland, an area in Hyde Park that has been converted into a Christmas playground. It has been bloody well done. I didn't expect it.
Temporary stalls sell one off craftwares like jewellery and so forth. There are food stands everywhere, fun park rides, fair games, and of course a whole lot of bars selling mulled wine and hot ciders. We headed into the Jamie Oliver stall and made our own gingerbread men which we then decorated with as much chocolate buttons and icing as was structurally possible. Lucky I realised the bending moment of biscuit was invertly proportional to the quality of flour used in its production.
We ate them and felt crook so decided the best thing to do would be to go on a rollercoaster and a giant drop.
Renee nearly spewed.
I said "If you're gonna spew, spew in this" and offered her a small white lolly bag.
We finished off the night with dancing where I pimped my shirt and Cossack danced.
I've been to a few Christmas parties with work recently. Our clients for the project I was talking about earlier took us out and shouted us beers. They are all Irish so they said "As long as there is Guiness on tap, I don't care. Howty towty" That night was good.
I got smashed.
On Friday we had our own office Christmas party which got pretty loose. We were taken out to a French restaurant where I had a steak that I'm sure must have been cuddled and read books before it was sliced and diced. It was amazingly tender and literally melted in my mouth. That came with Foie Gras, which is a portion of liver from ducks that have been force fed corn until they bloat and die.
A fitting end.
Things then got messy, with someone mentioning that Sambuca would be great to have right now. Idiots. I tried to sing Karaoke and everyone stopped dancing and just stared at me.
That is the last time I try and sing George Michael
Once things wound down, I tried to walk to Trafalgar Sqaure to catch a night bus. It was during this walk that I found myself in a spot of bother. You see, there are few public toilets in London at the best of times.
Let alone at 4:30 in the morning.
I did what every self respecting man would do and wee'd against the side of a building.
I was close to my station and thought I could just walk there from my wee spot of relief. Until I saw that I was down a one way street and the only way to get back on track was to turn around and walk a km back. I could literally see the station through the gates of a park that had been locked up and posed the only obstacle in my path to victory.
I jumped the fence and swore as I noticed my phone had fallen out of my pocket and smashed everywhere. You have no idea how hard it is to find pieces of phone, in the dark, in the snow, amidst a foot thick of dead leaves. And I was pissed.
I managed.
Then I realised that the park I had jumped into was being patrolled, so I Mission Impossible styled it between trees to the fence on the other side. Upon getting there, unavoided, I noticed that this street that the fence bordered had much more foot traffic than the street I entered the park from.
Actually, that street had none which led me into doing all this in the first place.
After assessing my options, I jumped a fence adjacent and then found myself in the backyard of some inner city apartments.
'This is going from bad to worse' I thought.
I'll let you know, these weren't no ordinary fences either. They were the fences with spikes on top of the railings. Spikes that could easily have made me a eunuch.
I decided to call it a day and made for the fence near the station with the heavy foot traffic. I jumped it, springing like a pansy when pins and needles shot through my feet due to the impact, and finally sorted out my manbag and dusted off my jeans. Then I looked up.
Officer Billy was staring straight at me.
I put the horse blinkers on and hurriedly made my way to a street corner, just expecting a loud yell and a hand on my shoulder.
It didn't happen.
I started sprinting, got to my station, jumped into the bus, scaled the stairs and slid down into a seat on the upper level, counting myself lucky.
I then fell asleep and nearly missed my stop, waking up just at the right moment to get off the bus, startling the pissed teenager that had ended up sitting next to me.
.....................
Just recently, it has started cranking the snow. Saturday was spent staring out the window as mini snow storms wrecked havoc on the backyard. It was sensational. Our water pipes froze which stopped us from having hot water, but still, it was awesome.
We went down to Wimbledon Park and attempted to make a snowman. After half an hour of freezing snow packing I gave up and then noticed other people round the park had huge snowmen. I'm talking 2m in diameter. these things were about 10 ft tall. The English are pro's at this sort of thing.
I laughed, rolled a snowball and smashed my flatmate in the face with it.
Tou-che.
Finish up work on the 23rd, celebrate Christmas at our flat with a few other orphans and then head off to Portugal and Spain for 10 days on the 27th.
Lets hope I can get to the airport.
