Liadnan

My annual dash down to Winchester for the Cathedral carol service last night, in the company of Frankie. Splendid as ever. Now it's Christmas. Except that instead of continuing on down to my mother's some twenty minutes from there I had to come back to London for some bits and pieces today. Specifically: (1) finishing the Christmas shopping for OnexMother; 3xSibling Plus 3x SiblingSpouse; 9, count them, 9 x nephews&nieces ranging from under a year to 13; (2) sending out an opinion that won't be read before New Year but it shows willing; (3) manning the clerks room while they go and have a boozy lunch; (4) An Party.

Should be on the train by 1.30 tomorrow: no email or indeed interweb whatsoever until I return on 29th or 30th, in the highly unlikely event anyone needs to contact me the miracle of mobile telephony is your friend: there's a filtered post here with the number which hopefully everyone likely to need it can see.

In the meantime, a very happy Christmas &c to everyone who wastes their time on the nonsense I put up here. My apologies for failing abysmally on the Christmas card front this year. And a splendid 1894 2005 2007 to us all.

Toodle pip, see you on the other side.

Well, that's pretty much it for 2005, wrapping it up on the Winter Solstice as is only right and proper (I feel like Will Stanton, which reminds me to wish a joyful and long life to a certain just-born Master A.T.H (all is well to those who know to whom that refers but didn't have the news).) Not exactly the best year of my life, but one in which some fairly significant things happened.

God and my alarm clock willing I have a flight at 7AM to Southampton Airport tomorrow, and thence a taxi to my mother's and the land of no interweb (anyone who needs to reach me: text message is probably best). And then directly on to Winchester for the cathedral carol service: yes my main reason for going back tomorrow is indeed to avoid missing this. The siblings and spouses and sprogs (that's a total of 14 people, plus mother and me) all arrive around the same time (save the one who actually lives nearby) so this is almost my last night of peace. I shall indulge in finishing off checking that all of the Firefly dvds in the box set I bought for my brother in law are indeed ok. (Incidentally, I can't say I'm that blown away. It reminds me of Lexx only with more expensive SFX and not quite so silly.) Or I would if I'd finished packing. Oops.

Since this is going to be the first Christmas without my father -it was on New Year's Eve last year that he really went into his final decline- I'm not sure it's going to be that much fun, but we'll see what we can do.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and happy whatever holidays you care to celebrate to all who read this. See you on the other side: I may even start writing regularly again in the New Year. Time will tell. Have a good one all.

Toddled down to Hampshire -and back- for the second time in three days purely to go to the Cathedral carol service. As I may have mentioned in previous years, it's just one of those things I do: I've been every year since I was 8 and I'm buggered if the facts that I live and work in London, am largely lapsed and have never been an Anglican anyway, and have something approximating to a professional career, are going to stop me.

I amaze myself when I think that there was a time when I could, effortlessly, soar away on the descants in Once in Royal, Of the Father's Heart Begotten and, scariest of all, God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen. It's all been downhill since then you know.

Anyway, the point is that as a result it is now properly Christmas, and the mere bagatelles of a 10AM meeting tomorrow and an adjourned trial on Thursday are not going to cast any shadow on my cheer.

Bah humbug. Where's the sherry?

"Count" Nikolai "I'm related to the novelist, sort of" Tolstoy appears to be making a complete arse of himself in the TLS letters' pages at present. I say that partly with a certain sense of loyalty to the object of his dislike, my former employers the Oxford DNB* (it's all about inaccuracies he's identified in the biography of Patrick O'Brian#) but mainly I say it because the man is an arse. And has anyone ever actually finished his godawful Coming of the King?

*Coo, this week's Lives of the Week are a good bunch: Stella Gibbons, Lord Lucan (I remember the heated debate about whether he should be acknowledged as legally dead and hence eligible for an entry), Jack Hobbs, Elizabeth Campbell and Lady Craven.

#Mainly, he thinks he should have written it. Far be it from anyone to question Tolstoy's competence as a historian. Except Lord Aldington...

Except for the planes. And the automobiles. I seem to have organised my life so that I will be travelling to and back from Winchester several times over the next week. Fule. Still, I promised me mum I'd go and help her sort things out this weekend before the hordes of infants descend, can't really back out now.

And Monday I really do have to do some Christmas shopping. Oops.

But really, for fucks sake. I have spent my last few lunchtimes trawling round Oxford Street and TCR looking for a coffee pot, as my current one is on its last legs. (And haven't found one yet: some might say this is because I am both an Olympic level procrastinator and dangerously obsessive about coffee and how it is made, I prefer to think that I am a careful shopper who knows precisely what it is he wants and is sceptical about clever new twiddly bits on coffee pots because they tend to break.)

This, however, is not about that, but about the fact that in Heals yesterday I found them putting up Christmas decorations.

Bah, as someone once said, humbug.

Went to the Borders China Mieville and Susannah Clarke reading last night with Gez: highly enjoyable it was too. She seemed to be the recipient of most of the questions, but I did note with interest Mieville's comment that he is dissasociating (there are too many ss in that word) himself from the "New Weird" label. Why he will apparently explain in due course. Clarke has apparently been writing Jonathan Strange for nearly ten years: her response to various questions (including one from Mieville) on the lines of "how the hell did you get a 782 page first novel published?" ("Well, I just got an agent" ['cos they're two a penny] "plus I told them it would be 100,000 words less than it turned out" [so, an entire ordinary novel then,,,]). None of which, of course, affects the fact it's a very good book. And then on to dinner: this is actually the first night I have been entirely sober at 10:30 in a week and a half, which is not entirely a Good Thing.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my main email personal address is regularly falling foul of spam filters, particularly on yahoo and hotmail. Which is an immensely irritating thought, though better than the alternative: that nobody loves me.

Right. Back to preparing for an utterly ridiculous case. Right at the moment I want to hit my client over the head with a hammer, several times, repeating my advice with each blow.