xmas 05

unofficial, not really xmas related, lunch.

yesterday was my last office lunch, just family ones to go now. it was also the first one involving crackers.
i wore my paper crown for an important presentation i was giving in the afternoon and i was pleased to see my boss wore his too.

saturday night was my work christmas lunch at the trocadero centre in london which is a very funny place.

we had a really nice time, mostly because we had one of those evening when you realise lots of your work colleagues could also be classed as ‘friends’ and it was quite easy to involve our spouses in our conversations.

on saturday i took the girls to get a christmas tree. jane told me to try and make it last as long as possible as she was busy making christmas cards.
we saw a sign for christmas trees pointing in to a lawn mower repairing place which seemed like a nice combination, so in we went. things started very well when we came across this ‘no dogs’ sign:

inside we were offered two options – precut trees or a fresh one from the field, so off we went hunting

we identified a likely looking tree (here it is still in the ground)

and then we headed back to get the saw

and then i chopped it down (photo by esther)

here it is felled by my fair hands. what a monster

then we had to put it through the ‘tree netting service’. it was so small (only about 4 foot tall) we needn’t have bothered but we wanted to see how it worked !

when we got it home we had stretchy fun removing the net

and we took iit inside after decorating the base and plopping it in

then yesterday we decorated it:

there was something quite special about going with my daughters to ‘catch us a tree’ in a field. i’ve never done it before but i hope we’ll do it again. we drive by the field we went in quite regularly so we’ll watch out for them growing next year.

xmas lunch number 3 (the best so far in terms of singing and general jolliness)

here i am in the glasses (none of them mine)

this time we had rather fancy table decorations which looked like they were a pile of nuts stuck together with chewing gum

and we even had a visit by Mr X Mas, who is seen here running towards the emergency exit signs

i passed this butchers on thursday morning and it was amazing. hundreds of dangling turkeys all around the roofs and walls.

it’s called allen & co and is very famous. definately worth a visit to gaze through the window at this time of year. you can imagine things haven’t changed for hundreds of years

here is stella mccartney’s shop with its rather mad xmas lights (which were switched on when i went by at 9am). i saw stella mccartney on a bike in tottenham court road about a year ago and forgot all about it until i saw a picture of her on a bike earlier this week. so there.

i had my first christmas lunch yesterday. here is some of it.

this year’s extravaganza in the grande place is trees in bubbles

by night they play psychedelic era beatles tunes and project giraffes chasing pink elephants across their town hall

and the english flag and a load of beefeaters