We are home.
It is two in the morning, and although I am not drunk tonight, I must own up to not being exactly sober either. This is going to be a bit abbreviated, because I am hoping to get to bed before Father Christmas turns up. I do not wish to interrupt him as he fills the living room with sooty footprints, and I am the last one still awake.
I have been in a bit of a state all day, largely related to my most recent seasonal excesses in the alcohol department.
Of course the day started off still in the Midland. We sat in bed with coffee and groaned for a while. It is the loveliest hotel, but it is in the middle of renovating itself at the moment, presumably so that they can add another nought to the prices, and we had got a reconditioned bedroom, with a wonderfully reconditioned bed. If you are going to be hungover, I recommend these surroundings. You might as well be disorientated and a bit sorry for yourself under a thick duvet and crisp white sheets.
Actually, bacon and sausage and scrambled eggs helped very much.
I had smoked salmon and dill cheese as well, in order not to miss anything.
After breakfast we all ambled off our separate ways to pack, and I should perhaps tell you that we went back to bed. You do not have to check out of the Midland until lunchtime, and we did not feel in any great hurry.
I was glad that we had done this, because the rest of the day turned into something of a frantic dash. We went to Asda.
Lucy and Oliver played violent games all the way round. These have taken a slightly different slant now that if Oliver manages to get in a lucky punch he is Assaulting A Police Officer. Lucy demonstrated her restraint techniques on him, and was suitably unimpressed by two Cumbrian police officers who had come in to Asda to buy a sandwich, and who had neither cleaned their shoes nor zipped up their pockets, the rogues.
Elspeth and her family were coming across for dinner, and of course not only was dinner not ready, I had forgotten to take most of it out of the freezer.
Thank goodness for the latest in modern hi-tech microwaves.
I do not know if it is a good idea to microwave pork pies but I did. I had some, and so far I am not dead, so probably it was all right.
Lucy and Oliver made the most enormous pile of cream eclairs whilst I faffed about and made salad and cooked sausages.
I had no idea how I was going to prepare dinner for eleven people if I did not start until three in the afternoon, after I had filled the kitchen with Midland Hotel washing, but I did.
Actually the children helped massively. They are real grown-ups now and Lucy helped drink the wine as well.
Of course it is Christmas Eve, and Ritalin Boy was very excited. He wrote a note for Father Christmas, and went to bed in an excess of bounciness, I am surprised that he has slept a wink, but actually he went out like next door’s cat after it has been discovered weeing in your plant pots.
I am going to do this now. Go to sleep, that is, not wee in the plant pots.
When we wake up it will really be Christmas.
I am almost as excited as Ritalin Boy.
