My last post was supposed to be the final one before I head off to Germany for the IS, but I’ve had such a lovely Christmas, it would be a sin not to blog about it

In our house we actually pretend to be continental, and have a lot of our festivities on Christmas Eve. It all stems from the fact that we’ve spent every single Christmas Day (except one exceptional circumstance when my mother was ill) by ourselves in our own home, and whilst I realise that it’s kind of traditional to open your presents on Christmas Day, it’s also a lot more fun if you can open them in the presence of the people who gave them to you We tend to see most of our relations on Christmas Eve, hence it kind of makes sense to open our presents then too. (more…)

Sunday morning we got up bright and early because we had decided to head to the beautiful city of Regensburg in Eastern Bavaria. I don’t have any photos of it so you should definitely click on that wiki link to see some, because I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s beautiful. A UNESCO world heritage site, the town is situated on the river Danube and largely escaped bombing during the second world war, so has a virtually intact medieval centre which is well worth a visit. It’s quite a surreal place; almost every building in the town centre would warrant being a museum piece in another location, yet people do actually have to live normal lives here and so you have medieval churches with a discreet sign outside indicating that they now serve a wide range of spaghetti (more…)

Despite the fact that we successfully checked in online for our flight to Munich, we still had to get up at 4am 4am on a Saturday morning in December is not a pleasant sort of time, all the more so because it was literally tipping it down with rain. The world’s most talkative taxi driver refused to drop us right outside the terminal building, so we had to walk quite a distance in it and ended up very wet indeed Feeling rather tired after a week at work I was desperate for a coffee, and as soon as we got through security, the plan was to head to Costas. Security was unfortunately rather a nightmare on account of it being a Saturday, and by the time we made it to the departure lounge there were only twenty minutes until boarding. That ought to have been long enough to get a drink, but sadly the queue in Costa was so long and the staff so inefficient that my sister and I were literally just in the process of paying for our lattes when my mother arrived to tell us the flight had been called As you can imagine, I wasn’t a happy bunny and it’s made me question the whole value of ever checking in online. (more…)

I feel a little bit less depressed this afternoon than I have for the rest of the week. I’ve been having one of those weeks where you don’t want to get out of bed, not because you’re tired, but just because you feel you can’t face the day. The audit I’m working on is so rubbish – I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing and the client isn’t here/keeps refusing to speak to us, so it’s virtually impossible to get the information I need to do my job, even if I could work out what that was. Obviously I am doing some work, I’m working quite hard in fact, but most of what I’m doing is probably inadequate and that’s kind of depressing. Like I’m doing it as well as I can based on the knowledge and resources available to me, but that’s still probably not well enough, and everybody out here is basically just hoping that the company goes bust and we don’t have to finish the job. With net liabilities of £11million, it is somewhat difficult to argue that the group is still a going concern! (more…)

On Boxing Day morning, my family and I made our traditional journey to the little village of Broadway in Worcestershire. (more…)

My Christmas Day featured neither mistletoe nor wine, and there was also a regrettable lack of children singing Christian rhyme. There were no logs on our fire because we haven’t had the chimney cleaned recently, and it wasn’t practical to hang gifts on the tree because it’s an artificial one from Argos and the branches aren’t terribly strong. Finding time to rejoice in the good that we see was also a bit problematic, due to an unexpected electrical failure which temporarily plunged our home into darkness Despite what Cliff Richard may thus have determined as festive shortcomings, it was nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable day, not least because I received so many lovely presents. (more…)

 Yesterday was the audit department Christmas lunch.  That is to say, to call it the Christmas lunch would be a trifle misleading, as we didn’t actually get a sniff of any food until half four.  We’d been booked in for the half past three sitting of Christmas lunch at a local bar, on the grounds that there was a 20% discount available for not eating your lunch at lunchtime.  What accountant could bear to turn down a discount?! (more…)