Happy New Year!

This is going to be an uber entry to catch up with what's been happening.

The six days in France was fairly uneventful, just really really cold. They have really neat halogen heaters at the Gard du Norde which kept Lynda and I nice and toasty while we waited for her parents to find us.

As usual, I took the opportunity to do some clothes and media shopping. France is a hell of a lot cheaper than the UK for both these items. I came back with a nice new pair of jeans, a new coat and a handful of CDs including the rather cool Enigma remix album.

We got to see the building site which will, next year, become the new home of Lynda's brother, Kamel, and his fiance, Sonja. It's in a fairly quiet neighbourhood and will give them a lot more space than they have now.

The trip back from France was a bit of a nightmare. Various signal and "technical" problems with the train left us arriving back in Waterloo over an hour late.

We got back to the house and started the mammoth task of unpacking and tidying up. It was at this point I started to feel a little bit ill.

Much later, after a trip shopping, I was in bed with a fever and a very very squirty stomach. I managed to lose over 10Kg in under 18 hours. At least I don't have to diet now :)

For New Years, we went to our favourite restaurant called Perennial which is on Columbia Road in east London. It has to be said that the food was somewhat below their normal standards and the normally quiet atmosphere was broken by a very very funny man singing along to Frank Sinatra. Hey, he was having fun :)

We got home and, as I was the designated driver and alcohol free, I opened what turned out to be a fantastic bottle of red wine. I then proceeded to play computer games til about 8am while Lynda slept. I grabbed a few hours sleep, then up and about and preparing for work tommorow. Boo! Hiss!