Our family is not like other families.  Most children abhor the idea of spending time with their parents, let alone uncles and aunties they hardly ever see, and anything family-related at Christmas time is definitely out.  Not in our family.  Every year (if we can) we all meet up shortly after Christmas for “Draisey Day”.  We usually descent on my uncle and auntie’s house in Woking, spending the whole day eating, playing silly games, playing music, and generally catching up on the past year or so.  And it’s one of the highlights of my year.

This year was no exception, not least because we brought with us a portable people-magnet – a little baby boy.  More than that, Samuel is the first of the new generation, which makes him even more significant.  I’m pleased to report that he lived up to the hype, and thrilled everyone the whole time we were there.  He was passed from person to person, he fed when he had the opportunity, he slept very little, and he kept everyone amused without doing a single thing.  What a gift it is to be a baby.  Shame he’s too young to realise it.

We drove up to Woking in the morning and arrived around lunchtime, just in time to be fed, which is always a good bit of timing.  Uncle Mark brought out his traditional array of party games, all of which were cringe-worthy and unnecessary, but we did them anyway and thoroughly enjoyed it all.  By mid-afternoon I was lagging a bit, so I went and got some sleep for a couple of hours – that’s not something I would have been able to do before Samuel was born!  Sleep?  In the middle of the day?  When there are lots of things happening and lots of people making lots of noise?  In an unfamiliar bed?  In jeans?  But apparently I was tired enough to overcome all those obstacles.  That’s what a baby does to you.

Another part of the Draisey Day tradition is the music.  With a family of musicians, we’re not too dissimilar to the Von Trapp family.  Pretty much everyone plays something.  And if they can’t play, they can certainly sing along.  Most years we have a Christmas carol sing-along, where we take turns on the various instruments (because we’re all multi-talented) and muddle our way through whatever carol gets mentioned next.  This year it was a bit different, because our musical contribution took the form of a jazzed up jam session.  At first it was just Peter and I on the piano, but soon everyone else joined in too.  We had a minimum of two people on the piano, a keyboard providing a drum backing, a viola, an alto sax, a couple of guitars, and even a little hand drum.  And everyone else watched and danced and listened and recorded it on camcorders.  It’s possibly one of the most fun jam sessions I’ve ever been part of.

Overnight it was rather cold, on account of the heating system playing up.  Samuel took a little persuasion to get to sleep, but we managed.  And in the morning we headed back home to get some rest.  It’s not exactly been a quiet Christmas, and we’ve not been endowed with sleep and energy, but we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

I use my blog to tell people what I’ve been doing recently.  My readers are usually friends and family, unless a passer-by happens to stumble across something via Google that interests them.  My posts are generally about things I’m interested in, things I’ve done, things I meant to do but didn’t, or things that I want to rant about.

But now I’ve fallen in love with Twitter, my Twhirl client always running on my desktop, ready to accept my latest status update as and when I feel led to bend the world’s ear with my 140 characters of insight.  No logging in, no pressure to write unnecessary paragraphs of fluff, just a short blast of information.  No time like the present.  The result is that I feel like I’ve told the world what’s going on, despite the noticeable absence on my blog.  So I apologise that I’ve not posted more here in recent weeks.  Blame Twitter for being so darn addictive.

In fact, so addictive and successful is Twitter that I have all but forgotten the existence of Facebook.  Remember Facebook?  I used to use it to find all my friends and keep in touch with what they were doing.  But once all my friends were found it sort of lost its attraction.  I logged in occasionally to check the news feed to find out what people’s latest status updates were, and that was about it.  Don’t even try persuading me to take interest in an application, I have absolutely no desire to clutter my life with anything else.  Once I started using Twitter I realised that the status bit was all I was using Facebook for, and Twitter was just better at doing that.  So I suppose another apology is required for Facebook aficionados.  No time like the present.

So, an update, then.  Yesterday (which was Sunday) Ellie and I went to church.  Four times.  We went to the 9:25am service, which is the more traditional one, where we sang surprisingly few carols given it was the second Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday in December.  Then we hung around for the 11am service, which is a more contemporary and informal service, a bit like the old Chaplaincy services of yore.  While we were there they were advertising the Meditation service that was happening at 5pm, and we thought “why not”.  No time like the present.  So after lunch and an hour or two that I remember very little about, we headed out to church again.  The meditation was candle-lit, and was actually quite useful in getting my head focused on God again and taking Christmas seriously.  Then, after a few cakes and refreshments we headed over to the Salvation Army for The Gathering, which is an ecumenical Churches Together service with some singing and prayer, where we ate more cake.

And now we’re waiting.  Still waiting.  Our baby is officially due today, Monday 7th December, but I don’t think anyone’s told the baby.  We keep trying to persuade it that it’s much nicer out here, that it’ll have more room to move, that there’s more to see, and that there’s no time like the present, but so far there’s no indication of anything happening.  In all honesty we’re both getting a bit bored of all this waiting.  They say you should cherish each moment, because you’ll never get those ‘just the two of us’ moments again.  But then they said that about a lot of other things too, and we don’t believe them.  We want a baby.  We ordered it, we were told the delivery date, and it hasn’t come yet.  Maybe we should contact DHL and see if they have a tracking code for it…

Oh, and our house is all Christmassy.  We were thinking about it last week, and that with the baby due any day now we ought to get the decorations up sooner rather than later, otherwise they may never be put up at all.  No time like the present, after all.  So I dug out all our decorations from the garage, and we decorated the tree.  Trouble is, our house has grown.  That is to say, this house is significantly bigger than our previous house, and our decorations don’t go as far any more.  So on Saturday we went to Tesco to find some more.  We were very disappointed at their range of decorations, truth be told, and came away with very little.  So in the afternoon we went to Dobbies Garden World to see what their Christmas range was.  They had a huge range of stuff, but it was all rather expensive and arty, and we didn’t pick up much their either.  Turns out we have a much cheaper, tackier approach to decorations, and neither of those shops catered to people like us.  We managed to find some cheap tinsel in Focus though, and our house is now a lot more Christmassy than it was.  And in years to come I’m sure it’ll be even more heaving, what with paper chains and home-made decorations and suchlike.

That’s all from me for now.  Things to do.  No time like the present, so I’m told.

At least, that was until I noticed I had a backup CD in my folder that I had created way back in 2002, on which I had crammed 9 music albums, some of them 2-disc albums, in MP3 format.  Lo and behold, there was the All Souls Orchestra album!  So I got to listen to the Christmas music after all.

Well, eventually.  Trouble is, I found there were a whole load of other albums backed up there that I thought I’d lost and were in need of a good listening to.  In particular I found “Who Plays Wins”, a recording of a Stilgoe and Skellern show.  Richard Stilgoe used to be reasonably well-known a couple of decades ago, known particularly for his appearances on one of the news programmes where he would compose a song based on the news items of that day.  Peter Skellern had a top-10 hit with his song “You’re a Lady” some years ago (i.e. before I was born), and while he never matched that level of national recognition he went on to record several more albums in which he sang 6 part harmonies with himself (multitracked, obviously) and played the piano.  Stilgoe and Skellern made a fantastic pair, and we actually went to see their final tour a few years back in Torquay.  The CD I unearthed included several of the songs from that tour, and it’s absolutely hilarious – Peter’s sheer brilliance on the piano combined with Stilgoe’s sharp wit and use of language.

Also among the treasures was a CD of Spike Jones (think 40s jazz played very badly, on purpose, using hose pipes as instruments, crazy sound effects and crazier lyrics, and then add a load more randomness, and you’re almost there), some cinema organ music, and a couple of Christian albums.  It’s nice to know that my backups actually come in useful eventually!!