Christmas day.

Well, I hope you had a nice Christmas - we did although it started off with everything going wrong.

The drain blocked, so on Christmas eve I had to go out in the wet to unblock it. Eeoo!

We are overrun with mice - it happens every so often. Around us it was all once fields although now it's houses. The field mice come in when it gets cold, looking for food.

I hate killing living things (except for one or two former employers - I could make an exception for them) so I use humane mousetraps. They catch the mice without killing them and you release them some way away. We caught loads but it turned out they were the stupid ones. The clever ones bred.

So now all our food is in an old breadbin, in cooking pots with lids and even in the microwave. Anywhere the mice can't get at it.

And (I hate this) I had to put poison down. So far they are still winning.

I boiled my ham;

My vegetarianism is suspended for this Christmas but to pay me back I got a smaller and more expensive ham than I usually get and it didn't turn out so well.

We tried to see the International Space Station which was overhead each day like last year when we saw it on Christmas eve.

Not this time; it was always cloudy or the papers got the times wrong and NASA's site was crashing.

I could go on and on but despite everything Christmas was wonderful.

We had a lovely turkey;

And a light Christmas lunch - this was before the stuffing;

The odd glass of Asti;

And Christmas spent with the most wonderful person in the world;

A Christmas pudding aflame with brandy (or about to be);

It was sad too; Robyn gave me a book made up of some of the photos we took during the last 18 months of adventures.

And she gave me a camera - I never bought a good camera for a number of reasons - I didn't think I'd have time to make use of it for one.

Also I bought second hand cameras in charity shops or pawn shops because whenever there was music I'd be in the front row, where all the action was. There was always a risk that the camera would go flying when I did.

These days I can't take that risk anymore (can't go on breaking vertebrae) so I can use a good camera.

Worst of all whenever a picture didn't come out I could blame the camera - can't do that any more.

And it's really complicated.......my head hurts.

I hope you had the Christmas of your dreams, we did.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

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