The Iron Age

It seems that today has been just one big bag of crazy spiders, I don't know if I'm coming, going, arrived or departed. Everything is just so manic towards the run up to Christmas it makes you sometimes wonder why it is you bother with it all. Oh well, it's only once a year and I suppose I can put up with that sort of minimal self inflicted larceny of personal time when it only happens once every 365 days.

So why am I grumbling? Well first off I have to go to work. Any other day this would not be a problem, but I still haven't received my Mums final present for xmas, and considering we are going to Wales tomorrow it might be nice to have all the presents to take with us. So after a rather fraught and work filled morning I then have to go home at lunch time to see if the parcel has been delivered. And it aint. Luckily I have the phone number of the courier who delivered the last parcel from the same company (a number which apparently is only to be used for returns). But, what the hell, I give it a ring anyway to see if the dude has any parcels for me.

As it happens, he does and was going to deliver it tomorrow morning, that's great in respect of the fact that he actually has the stuff, what's not so great is that I'll be out of the house quite early tomorrow and heading off to Wales, and most likely that will be before he comes over to the house. So I manage to persuade him to let me come over to his house after work and pick up the parcel directly from him, he lives in the same town as us anyway, so it shouldn't be any great shakes. With that all sorted then, I head off back to work...

...Where it appears that as well as doing my ordinary stuff, I have now become the delegated christmas card writer, and let me tell you I certainly don't have any calligraphy skills in the slightest. My handwriting could in fact be likened to a modern piece of art that you'd probably find hanging in the Tate Modern which most laymen would find to be in the style of despicable bad taste, critics would swoon over and psychologists would decipher as the scribblings of an insane woman with a broken arm and 2 thumbs and 3 fingers missing. Anyway, with having to do the cards and the rest of my work for the afternoon I wind up staying later than planned and have to give my boss an ultimatum as to what jobs he had left for me to do, what jobs he'd like doing, and which jobs really had to be done, because if I hadn't I'd have been there till god knows when.

I finally get home, and then set about ironing Phil's shirt for his xmas party that he's going to tonight and after he gets home and gets changed I then take him to Oxford and drop him off. I tootle on back home and get on with packing all the stuff we need for the weekend, more ironing (that will be the second time this year, if you include the shirt I did about 2 hours ago) and sprucing myself up a bit to avoid the usual wave of criticisms I get from my Mum which are solely based on the fact that if I've moved out of home I can't possibly be looking after myself that well.

By the time I've done all that and had a bite to eat it's time to go pick Phil up again, though I have a slightly longer trip there this time as they rather handily closed the slip road off that I need to exit on. When I finally get to the rendez-vous point it becomes quite apparent that whilst Phil enjoyed the food he had at his party, the pygmy pigeon sized portions didn't quite fill the abyss that is Phil's appetite as he is clutching a Mcdonalds paper bag like an old woman protects her purse when he arrives at the car :)

Oh and I wasn't seeing things when I mentioned the big bright moon yesterday, apparently it was the biggest and brightest it's been for 20 years!

Posted by Abi on the December 16, 2005 11:19 PM