Lovely Things || December
December, how quickly you crept up and disappeared in a flash! Yikes, I can’t quite believe it’s already 3 5 days (you see how long it takes me to write a post when I’m a busy bee!) into January! I had a lovely Christmas break and haven’t beaten myself up too much about scoffing too many quality street whilst wrapped tightly like a literal pig in blanket, it didn’t half fly past. In the midst of packing up the flat during every spare minute we have, blogging has taken a breather during December with my lowest post count ever. I’ve missed it, I really have!
Then again, whilst compiling my lovely things, I’ve remembered so many things I’ve done over the last month, can you blame me? Prepare yourselves for a long old list my lovelies, you’re in for quite the ride! Why not grab a cuppa, hibernate in your duvet for a bit and amuse yourself with a little voyeurism into my life. As it turns out, with my boss still in Cambodia and spending the majority of the month running around like a headless chicken, I also managed to pack in a whole lot of other festive treats, so here goes…
Visiting London 6 times during December…
Although we work in Somerset, both my bosses tend to spend quite a lot of time in London.
With Mark away working in Cambodia for 2 months, this then meant that the baton fell to me to travel up to the smoke for all the annual meetings we hold with clients to renegotiate contracts for the coming year. With quite a few to get through, and diary clashes, I actually ended up travelling there six times in December! With an average journey of 2 ¼ hours each way, this totalled 27 hours on trains!
I actually really quite enjoyed it.
The meetings went really well all in all and I was pleased for the responsibility. On only one occasion I managed to scheduled two days back to back which meant staying overnight, and being the first staff member to trial AirBnB from a business perspective. Do it. Seriously. Not only was it way cheaper than a hotel, I had a super location near Baker Street, great WiFi and didn’t end up going for dinner by myself in a restaurant, instead choosing to save the company money and buying an M&S meal for one, veggies, juice, butterscotch pancakes and a banana for less than £6. Bargain! After work I managed to go for a little night time explore through the Christmas lights along Oxford Street, and after some great recommendations from my lovely friend Amanda, headed over to the House of MinaLima which is a free Harry Potter exhibit from the designers who made a lot of the paperwork props in the films. Travelling around so much certainly made the time fly and before I knew it, we were into the last working week of December and Christmas was upon us!
Dad’s Birthday
You know when you’re a child and months are highlighted by friends and family member’s birthdays? I’m still that child!
December has always meant Dad’s birthday on the 4th, and one of my best friend’s Katie’s on the 6th. For Dad’s this year we had a lovely day out with Grandma which included a lunch at her favourite pub. I mean, I also love this place as their dessert menu has about 20 different delicious choices! What more to love?! FYI I chose a double chocolate mousse pot with lavender shortbread and it did not disappoint!
December Away Day
I’m seriously lucky with my job. Like, really lucky. Not only do they provide us with lunch every single day (lifesaver!!) and give us Champagne at Christmas, we also usually get 2 away days throughout the year, one in the summer, one in December. This year in the summer we went fly fishing, and then voted for go-karting followed by a pub crawl this winter! I’ve not ever been before and didn’t really know what to expect. However, even though I’m heavy and not a speed queen so naturally didn’t win (I also didn’t lose so there’s that…!!) it was SO much fun! Sweaty, adrenaline filled fun! I also seemed to be the magnet for crashes that weren’t my fault, people just used me as a bumper car and luckily, I didn’t come away with whiplash!
Afterwards we headed into Topsham for quite the epic pub crawl including a pretty damn tasty Indian! We do secret Santa between our colleagues each year and I was pleased to have Mark, which meant together Marcia and I could put a box of Christmassy goodies in the post to fly across to Cambodia. Think games, magazines, Cadburys chocolate and some fairy lights/awful Christmas attire to jazz up their house. Our accountant Eileen had me again, which was great as she’s a good present buyer 😉 This year I received some amazing recycled glasses and a little bottle of Bath gin! (As in, from the city of Bath, not gin for your bath!)
Catching up with friends
December has been a month of catch ups! I suppose it’s natural when everyone flocks back to their home town, and even then, I still haven’t managed to see everyone I’ve wanted to. We had a lovely visit from Anna who came to see us in Plymouth, even though it rained stupid amounts and we ended up inside all afternoon! I also dragged my brother Harry and uni friend Jugs along to see Richard James launch his EP in Exeter, in a cool new over 21s bar called The Terrace. One weekend whilst Adam was working I hopped over to Newton Ferres to see my gorgeous friend Nat and walk 5 miles in the chilly sunshine with Sennen her dog. On the last badminton session of the year we invited our favourite ladies back to ours for drinks and nibbles (of which I went crazy and literally baked enough to feed a small army!). Charlotte, Hatty and I kicked off the start of our Christmas break with a stomp around Culmstock across the fields and Devon hills. Then right at the end of December was Pete’s birthday, which we celebrated in true style with a big ol’ brunch at Spoons! I can fully see that this is more for my diary making purposes than of any particular interest to you, my faithful reader, but I will say it’s totally worth making the effort to keep friendships going. I’m highly sentimental about my friends, and try my very best to stay in touch with everyone when I can!
A trip to Cornwall & being a #Girlboss
The #GirlBoss moment to me actually wasn’t that much of a big deal. However, my mum and brothers seemed pretty impressed so I was still chuffed with myself. Basically, I drove to Cornwall with Mum and Harry in tow, to visit Ned on his last weekend in December before he came home. All went well, until we pulled up outside his house to hear a big old hissing noise from my tyre.
It was drizzling, about 8.30pm and dark, so I shrugged it off, grateful we’d got the whole way before I inevitably ran over a nail and said I’d sort it in the morning. This is where I’m super duper grateful that Adam and my dad have always taught me to do my own mechanics. First thing, without too much fuss or hassle, I managed to jack my car up, swap my tyre for the spare and had already found a garage to do a puncture repair for £15. Not that big a deal. I was surprised however, that more people didn’t stop to ask if I needed help. A total of 2 women, of all the folks that walked and drove past in the 15 mins or so I was kneeling next to my obviously broken car, stopped and suggested their husbands could give me a hand. It felt good to say I could handle it on my own. Seriously ladies, you might have breakdown cover that will sort you out after waiting on the roadside for 3 hours, but changing a tyre really isn’t that hard – learn to do it on a sunny day at home and you won’t find yourself in a pickle if and when it actually is required! I even wrote a post about it, if you fancy!
The rest of my Cornwall trip went wonderfully. Seriously wonderfully.
I miss and love Falmouth, as you’ve undoubtedly gathered from my MANY mentions of it in the past, and this weekend was no exception. I had a day of pottering and shopping with my family in town with a delicious lunch at Good Vibes – their pulled BBQ chicken bagel is insane! In the evening I also popped over to Annabel and Paul’s for a rather unintentionally drunken evening with their friend Alice. Knowing I had to get up early the next day I called it a night at 1am and slowly meandered my way home beaming ear to ear from the happiness a place you know so well can bring.
Now, Saturday morning was epic.
I got to row for the first time in nearly 3 year!
With my old club, Nankersey, in my old boat Serafina, in my old seat even, number 3. I was scared I’d forgotten it all and I’d now be crap, but with my oar in hand, it felt so natural, so wonderful to be back! The water could not have been more perfect, in fact, the cover photo was taken as I was waiting for the previous row crew to return. Of everything I tried and loved doing during my time at uni, gig rowing was definitely the highlight and I seriously look forward to the day when I can do it again regularly!
This has turned into a long section, I apologise, I warned you it was a busy month!
On Saturday afternoon we had our Cornish Bloggers Christmas Party at The Alverton. Everyone got dressed up, we had a swanky meal in a swanky suite of the hotel and Anna wrote up a great post on it! I love those friendships that I’ve built during 2016 and can’t wait to spend more time with them during the next year!
Family Christmas Time
Ohh goodness, there’s even more I could say about Christmas! December is such a huge lovely things list (I’m not complaining!!). We split our time between my family and Adam’s, enjoying the company of our sister, brother in law and niece who were over from Canada. We had a perfectly chilled Christmas, seeing my Dad’s side of the family on boxing day as usual, and celebrating Adam’s Grandad’s 85th birthday at the end of December with his whole family. We also had a hilarious time completing the Escape Rooms in Plymouth which was a challenge to say the least and in the hour we had to get out, we managed it in 59:55! I loved most of all hanging out with the youngest members of our family – my cousin Hannah’s little girl Emily, Adam’s cousins two little ones and Violet, our 18 month old niece, who has such a funny and strong-willed personality! It breaks my heart to think we now won’t see her until Christmas 2018 when she’ll be a very different 3.5 year old, accompanied then also by her new brother or sister – exciting!
New Year’s Eve
The end of the year is always reflective, and it was great to spend the last few hours in December with some of my favourite people once again. The 8 of us have been friends for so long, it’s so easy in everyone’s company and we ate good food, drank some tasty drinks and played a lot of games in The Royal’s (Will and Kate) new house. Sparklers at midnight saw in the new year in a happy and relaxed atmosphere.
And finally, before I fill up this little space even more with my December ramblings, I thought you’d all appreciate this photo I took when we were driving somewhere in Plymouth the other day. Yes, it’s a dog, on a motorbike, with a helmet! Happy New Year to you all, I’m so excited for what 2017 is going to bring, personally, career wise and importantly, for this blog too!
