New Year's Eve

Posted on 2009/01/01 14:03:54 (January 2009).

[Wednesday 31st December 2008]
Well that's it then, another year comes to a close.

(a brief geeky paragraph follows which you can skip if you're not interested in such things)

I spent most of the daytime on the computer, rather obsessively trying to add a new feature to SBM (the engine I use to write this blog) to automatically add a set of blog entries based on a set of pictures. I wanted to get the blog up to date before the end of the year, and it occurred to me there would be a lot of manual effort in adding all the blog entries for our week in Abergavenny, and that effort was largely duplicated in that I'd already done something similar to generate the pages for all the pictures I'd taken that week - each day's pictures already had a title, date, short bit of blurb, and a sample image - so rather than type that all out twice I thought I could just get SBM to import the XML file which Cheese generates.

All such geeky activities were forced to come to an abrupt end towards the end of the afternoon, as I realised time was running out - the shops wouldn't be open that late, we had guests coming in the evening and I needed to get some things for dinner.

To my slight surprise Sainsbury's was absolutely overrun - I had never seen it so busy. They'd also entirely sold out of every kind of potato, which, this being a fairly pivotal element in tonight's dinner, meant we also had to pop into Tesco.

Originally Chie and I had just planned to stay in London by ourselves for New Year's Eve, and wander down to the river to watch the fireworks. However, my friend Mark had got in touch a few days ago and seemed to also like the idea of watching the fireworks in London, so we invited him over for dinner and a few drinks first - he also brought his other half Cristelle with him, and another friend of ours Jim (also known as Yeti).

I'd decided on a Scottish hogmanay style theme to dinner, and so we had haggis, neeps and tatties, with a Scotch broth to start. That all seemed to go down rather well.

We headed out around 11:30 to wander down along the river and see the fireworks, and I was surprised by the hordes of other Londoners doing exactly the same thing. It was hard to find a decent vantage point which wasn't absolutely heaving, and so in the end we didn't get a particularly great view of the fireworks, but we enjoyed the atmosphere nonetheless. I took along a little bottle of Billecart Salmon rosé which we'd picked up in Paris, and we drank this out of little plastic teacups. Which was all quite jolly.

After the fireworks had finished, and once the crowds had dispersed a bit, we headed a little bit further down the river to Parliament Square, and enjoyed some very nice views of Big Ben lit up at night. There was still rather a jolly atmopshere in the streets.

We then headed back to the flat for a nice hot cup of tea to round off the evening, before Mark, Cristelle and Jim headed back to Reading.

Quite a pleasant evening all told, and here's hoping that bodes well for the year to come.

Happy New Year everybody.

Vi auguro (a te e Chiara) un buon anno e una vita coniugale fiorita !

Posted by Sheri at 2009/01/02 16:07:51.

Sheri: Maybe that comment was meant for me? :P

Posted by Lox at 2009/01/02 21:42:13.

Yeah Lox, it was meant for you all right. Sorry John : Happy New Year to you too.

Posted by Sheri at 2009/01/03 12:46:54.

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