Christmas in London

Spending Christmas away from the family fold, various Australians, including Brother Paul and myself, converged on Clapham to make the best of things. Arriving late afternoon on Christmas eve, first stop was Tesco's to stock up for the festivities. £168 later and we were all turkeyed, porked, puddinged, custarded and wined up, or at least sufficiently equipped to be all of those things and possibly more. A modest evening in anticipation of tomorrow's excitement was extended in scope by the appearance of Mr Timothy J Le Souef, physics and engineering graduate of the University of Western Australia, now resident of Bristol, whom i had seen only briefly in the past three years hence was delighted to share reunion, as was he, no doubt as well as being almost totally incoherent, like overcome with Christmas spirit and stuff.
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Christmas morning saw us spring up, relatively bright and moderately early, to open pressies,

and spread the joy,

and, in some cases, get started on the Christmas cheer.

Straight after breakfast we threw ourselves with great gusto into the preparation of lunch. What we may have lacked in competence, we definitely made up for in enthusiasm.

Paul looked like he knew what he was doing with the turkey,

and he was definitely having a good time:

We weren't sure about the appropriate culinary utilisation, if any, for the turkey neck,

though the obvious (inappropriate) comedy utilisation just had to be pursued.

Paul and I smartened up our act in honour of the main meal,

which turned out to be just as good as we'd hoped:

and was devoured with remarkable gusto:

It was quite a feed, with notable contributions from all (big shout-outs to Paul for the turkey, Alex for the veges and me for numerous trips to the shops for a whole lot of what turned out out to be unnecessary items... ):

and was generally regarded as a worthy substitute for the traditional family meals.

Not long after dinner, it could be, relatively diplomatically, said that the festive cheer got the better of us:

Big ups to Paul for getting through 95% of the above-displayed 1 litre bottle of gin - well done you drunken bastard. I'm certainly in no position to criticise, having concluded the evening a little bit like this:

Meeeeeeh-eeeeh-eeeeh-ry Christmas!!! Thanks for coming everybody!!__________________________________________________________________

Boxing Day was, no big surprises there, a bit slow. Eventually made good of ourselves, moseyed across Clapham Common

to K and A's place for a couple of warm-up rounds, then off to dinner at Nando's.

Headed to the pub for a few more reflective libations,

Things went downhill quickly (again, oops-a-daisy):

Returning to MJs, I wrapped up the evening with a few nice facial expressions,

then turned in for the night, after which my inconsiderate "friends" and sibling decorated me with a beer can and a cardboard tube. I guess.

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Paul had to fly out to Dublin first thing in the morning, to go and adjudicate at the World Debating Championships of the World. As I was up then, having just been for my morning run and done my yoga, I offered to accompany him to the tube station where we had an emotional farewell.

I think i can speak for both of us in saying the main emotion experienced at the time was "a headache".

It was really cold that morning. Cold enough, in fact, for snow!! Wooo-hoooooo!!!!!

Or in Alex's immortal words: (3 c's above middle) Snooooooooooooooooooooooow!!!!!!!!! Here MJ rings her Mum (Hi Jane - word up!!) to give her the first-hand weather report:

In atonement for the festive excesses of the previous few days, a day of cultural sophistication and artistic contemplation was in order. Met a friend from Cambridge, Sinead, at Warren St and moseyed down to the Wallace Collection,

The Wallace Collection is wicked - an unbelievably comprehensive collection of painting, sculpture & decorative arts from 1500s to 1800s that was gathered by one family before being donated to the nation - highlights are Rococo paintings, Boucher, Watteau, Lancret plus the good old Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals, I think you'd all know that one, and Titian's Perseus and Andromeda - fan-ferkin-tastic.

Sinead, being a Londoner originally, just loves being shown around by a poncey know-it-all Australian upstart who has been to London all of 6 times (each of them weekends):

Headed to the National Gallery for a bit more cultural stuff,

to have a look at, amongst other things, the photography exhibition of Tom Hunter - allegedly the first photography exhibition @ the National Gallery!

Met up with MJ & Alex at Tam's place, (she had become engaged only two days before - congrats Tam & Ben!),

Tam and I killed Alex and MJ, fair and square. Wiped the floor with them. Call of the game was Alex: Something to do with ants. MJ: Um er um, anthill? anteater? Alex (after time's up): Antler. Apparently living in France for 8 months is an adequate excuse for losing one's grip on the English language.

Here the winning team revels in its grand and well-deserved victory.

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Headed out to see more sights with Alex and Andrew. All of us are from Perth but, as mentioned above, Alex has been living in France for 8 months, Andrew has been living in Portugal for two years & I, as you avid fans would all know, have been in Cambridge for 7 months. All friends of MJ but none of us really knew each other before Christmas, the adventures that lay ahead would bring us together in ways we'd never imagined. Or something.

We did have a rockin day though, that's for sure. First stop, London Bridge,

where it was real cold,

then past the Monument,

and along the edge of the City,

to the Tower of London,

and a bit of a peepy at the Tower Bridge,

over which we walky-ed to see the Yann-Arthus Bertrand (Earth from the Sky guy) exhibition.

By that stage, it was freakin freezin, so we scurried along the south bank,

to the nearest pub, where we jammed entire plates of Yorkshire pudding dippers into our gasping gullets. That simply wasn't enough, so we had to go back to Clapham for a bit'o'din-dins at The George with The MJ and The Lauren,

before I headed Camward again, bidding London farewell after my longest trip there thus far, in my life ever, in the world, in the whole of time ever. Awesome times - thanks to all involved for a top Xmas!!!!