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Our Christmas was nice and quiet. My mother was trying definitely to clear her horrendous cold before my cousin's wedding on the Saturday. She managed it, but my dad did start coming down with it on the Friday! We didn't over-eat, I did actually watch Doctor Who and at one point my brother and I were both on the wireless broadband.

Boxing Day I dashed round a friend's house to give her her present and card, then after lunch we hit the road for Harrogate. Not as quiet on the roads as I expected, but still OK. A pleasant night was spent at the Best Western with dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. My cousin's wedding was at 1.15pm on the Saturday and I managed to survive the second Catholic wedding service of my life - I don't know what it is with my cousins and Catholic weddings My mother complained at me later for not even trying to follow the service, but I call it disrespectful to pay lip service to someone else's religion. If you don't mean it, you shouldn't say it.

My cousin, three years older than me, had a nice selection of 80s songs at the reception. I managed not to hurt my Uncle Karl after he started telling me it was my turn for the next big family get-together in the form of a wedding and that I should hurry up In retrospect I should have told him that I must have at least 3 years...

Next morning I met up with a friend from York who's back from Japan for the holidays, had a good wander round Harrogate, a pot of tea and some toasted teacakes etc. Then it was time to head back to Gloucestershire and an evening with a friend and her husband drinking mulled wine, eating snacks and watching The 39 Steps. Then I realised I had to drive the next day and put a stop to my mulled wine! I'll definitely need to get some more white mulled wine from M&S, that was superior to the red stuff for sure.

I have now escaped back to Bristol - too much interaction with my family is not a good thing. My brother and I had started sniping at each other, which I took as a sign that now was the time to go. I've spent my iTunes and Play.com gift vouchers and look forward to an evening spent catching up with the Mark Gatiss ghost stories and Wallace & Gromit that I recorded over Xmas. The latter will, I suspect, be cut off, since BBC was deliberately running about 7 minutes behind its schedule, but I presume that's to make people use the iPlayer.

Tomorrow will be boring stuff like getting the washing done, hoovering etc. etc. But at least no work until 5th January!

DW