I was greeted at the airport - well, by no one - we live pretty near Heathrow so my family has a knack of always being late to meet flights as they either underestimate how long it takes to get through customs [piss easy and very quick], or make you call once you're at baggage claim and then they set off. But my sister moseyed on up after I'd been waiting a couple minutes for them brandishing this wonderful sign:
Her logic was that there would be lots of people at Arrivals [there were] so she'd stand at the back holding this sign up high and I'd know it was her. The girl is indeed bananas, but it made me laugh after a long flight where the inflight entertainment system was down the whole time [yeah, thanks Virgin...]
We drove back to ours, had brunch. I went to get some juice out the fridge and saw this message my dad [Bruce] had left for my ma [Sara] - made me simulataneously grin upstoppably and kind of want to cry:
They've known each other for over 30 years, been married for over 27, had two bratty kids [yes I do mean my sister and I], been through so many ups and downs and yet still my dad leaves little messages in the fridge magnets for my momma...
My sister dragged me out Christmas shopping in the afternoon as we had nothing yet - I of course made beelines for Topshop and Primark, but we did eventually manage to come up with a pretty good haul of stuff for the parentals. And a little bit for ourselves... Primark, j'adore...
Christmas day we headed out to Suffolk where my mum's twin sister Tina and her fam live in a place called Aldeburgh. It's a little seaside place, where if you don't sail and drink heavily [not necessarily at the same time] there's not much to do. It was fun; my aunt and uncle are pretty heavy drinkers and my dad was trying to keep up so by 6pm, after we'd eaten, there were a lot pretty merry people [apart from me, who couldn't stomach more than a glass for some reason, and my cousin Ben who was on Lifeboat duty]. My aunt made us play some game she kept going on [and on] about - which was made so much more funnier by the fact that she was *quite* that drunk. Two of her best answers:
Jimmy: He wrote the James Bond books...
Tina: Ernest Hemingway!
Jimmy: One of the Sex Pistols, not Sid Vicious...
Tina: Sid Vicious!
Berrrilliant.
Boxing Day [Dec. 26th] me and my sister slept in pretty late while some Boxing Day barbecue started going on downstairs. We made it down there for about 2:30, grabbed some food and wine, ate, then escaped the house and walked down the sea a couple minutes away.
It was cold but in a North Sea way, kind of beautiful. The sky was a bruised pinkish purple colour - "looks like rain" my sister commented - a couple minutes later it started tipping it down, so we hid under the steps of the Lifeboat place.
I seemed to spend most of the couple days we spent there eating my own body weight in Quality Street and watching tv... so nice to do sometimes! And good British tv like I hadn't seen in ages like the Eastenders Christmas special [yes, when Alfie came back for Kat I did indeed have a tear in my eye...]
We left on the 27th to head back to London - the M25 was jam-packed where we get on at Essex, so we ended up driving through London which was kind of awesome, reminding myself of how amazing this city can also be...
Tower of London
London Eye & City Hall, on the South Bank
Westminster Abbey
and the journey was capped off by a pretty sunset [this from the Hammersmith flyover]
Since then I've just been enjoying being here; catching up with high school friends, going for Thai {Busabas on Wardour St], Vietnamese [as documented, with James D, in Shoreditch], Chinese [CCK, also on Wardour St - although the other end], going for quiet drinks, tripping over uneven paving stones and mashing up my knee, buying vinyl I'll listen to maybe two or three times before I have to leave it here as I have no turntable in NY [sob]...
And now I'm just procrastinating from packing [ugh]. Tomorrow I return to my wonderland in NY. And I still don't know exactly what I"m doing for New Years Eve...
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