It’s snowing! In london! (And extremely cold, i picked a bad day to be in dress and tights!)

Long, long overdue update! No I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth though it feels some days like I have… it’s been a weird Christmas, though, what with an uber-frantic last week at work, the visa disaster (still in limbo – probably won’t know how it turns out until I actually submit the application and hear from the home office, which may take months), the frantic scrambling rush of card-mailing which I got so lazy with that I still haven’t sent a little pile of them, the absence of any big dinner on Christmas day itself. Thinking back, for the first time it dawned on me that for the past four years, my Christmas day has always been spent in a big way – in Spain, in Oxford, in York, in Germany – though Christmas eve this year with Jake,Wee Zi and Eleena was lovely in its own quiet, cosy way.

I like the little reunions that mark each holiday season, I like the catching up and the greetings and the fact that at some point of time over these two weeks from Christmas to New Year everyone always thinks of someone else, old friends, distant family, whom they wouldn’t have thought of for a while. I like Covent Garden at this time of year, I like the lights and the mulled wine tea in Whittards, I like the tinsel round my computer at work. I got to speak to my family on the phone, see many muchly beloved Yorkies and spend New Year’s Eve counting down to the truly spectacular midnight fireworks at the banks of the Thames with Nic and Weez :) which was really the pinnacle of the whole break for me. Walking an hour and a half from Westminster to Pimlico after it all, armed with a tiny and largely unhelpful map from TFL, through crowded celebrating streets which eventually thinned out as we neared Victoria – random strangers tapping me on the shoulder to say happy new year with a smile and dancing drunkards taking their turns on the tarmac – we were all so cold that freezing would probably have been an understatement, we couldn’t feel our toes, we’d been standing for hours in an insane crowd, but ah the atmosphere!

On top of that I was also sick in a big way from Christmas day itself, on and off (still coughing a little), which has contributed to the past week feeling like a great big daze; I spent hours and hours of it sleeping off fevers and medication and sniffles and general malaise. Though I can’t say being sick for Christmas is very much fun, on hindsight it was probably good for me to have been forced into bed for long periods of time, and not be up stressing over my visa or jostling with crowds at Boxing Day sales or spending hours trying to get anywhere when half the transport network is shut down.

It is back to work and nose to the grindstone for me tomorrow, but it’s been a good rest. :) If only it were warmer… the weather, as always, has been abysmal. At least one thing here is constant.