Wow nearly a week since my last blog - must have been busy!!

Friday night was the firms Christmas party which was held up in London at a restaurant called Papageno's - it's a themed Turkish restaurant with Opera singers as "entertainment".

Bob Dylan said in his biography that there is no such thing as good music and bad music just different types of good music - Opera is the exception that proves the rule! And anyway this Opera caberet thing has been done to death on the conference circuit which we spend our lives in so it was a bit of a busman's holiday. In the end though you could hardly hear it - should have got us to do the sound!!

Some of us started drinking early at the Coal Hole on the Strand and I'd drank a pint or 4 of "Santa's Little Helper" before we got to the restaurant. One of the lad's had made us all little badges with our South Park Character on it, which has replaced my picture on here. I left to get the train at about 11 and finally got home just after 1.

Sunday we went off to France on Eurotunnel to do some Christams shopping. It was worth the money to do something different. We went into Calais but most of the shops were shut so we had something to eat then went to Cite D'Europe. It was nice to escape the tradional Christmas music that gets piped into shops at this time of year and listen to the sounds of a French Christmas. At one point a band of people wearing Pere Noel costumes came past playing bagpipes and drums (I assume they were Breton pipes but I'm not an expert - nice sound though)

We stocked up with wine and beer for the forthcoming festivities and generally wandered round the shops. It made a nice change and I'm sure I would rather have been there than in Bluewater. We had a problem with Eurotunnel on the way back and we missed our train and had to wait an hour for the next one.

Monday was my eldest daughters 15th birthday - the third birthday this month, mine then my brothers then my daughters. I bought her an MP3 player for her birthday and she spent the evening loading tracks from Blink 182 and Green Day onto it. We didn't go out but got Pizza and Cake. The girls had to go back to their mums until Christmas eve this morning but at least they'll be with me on Christmas Day again this year.