Christmas is Around Every Corner

My second Christmas in Edinburgh wasn’t in Edinburgh, which resulted in a highly un-festive flat after New Year. Luckily Christmas is on every street corner and in every bin at this time of year, so I get to see plenty of trees on my way to work.

Even of the Waters of Leith had a Christmas tree.

You will also notice that even on such a cold day there was no snow in sight, the sun does indeed always shine on Leith!

I don’t know why people throw out perfectly good trees so early! Last year we kept our tree alive until July, the decorations were removed (from the tree, not the ceiling) and we considered it part of the family. We didn’t name it though, just in case we became too attached.

The fun of having a tree last year made me feel a bit sad about not having one this year, but sadness does not last too long in my new flat.

You see one of the housemates took it upon himself to recycle a street tree, he brought it up to the flat after popping out for shopping on a Sunday morning. It didn’t take long for us all to ‘get festive’ and decorate it with anything we could find.

A piece of modern art, both Dada and Surrealist, Duchamp would be proud, Emin would be thirsty.

Merry WithWoodmas.

Homecoming!

With Christmas over that leaves us with one more prescribed day of fun (until my birthday of course).

This end of year bash I will be travelling somewhere secret, somewhere safe, somewhere called Aberfeldy.

I’m excited, it’ll be good to get away, you see I’m not really keen on the whole street party vibe, or New Years as a whole, bunches of people hugging and kissing strangers. I believe you should start the year as you mean to go on, these people wouldn’t even tip their hat to me on a regular day, I’m not about to get stuck in a hug based on lies. This is why a weekend away with friends will be good for me, they’ll be willing to hug and kiss me any day of the year.

Sadly, I don’t have much to report from my visit to the motherland, but I do have a snap of its main attraction.

Looks like it’s made of cardboard, but it isn’t, that’s just what they want you think.

Happy New Year?

No.

I get very grumpy when everybody else is overcome with joy, I prefer it when a select few are happy and the rest are miserable. New years seems to be a time when even the lonely have a good time, they can run out into the streets and make hundreds of new friends in the space of one final countdown.

The street party was cancelled, which meant everybody did their new years hugging near Princes street, but not on it. I like hugging, but it seems to happen a bit too often on new years day. During every hug I have to make sure that my wallet remains in my pocket and not in those of the h(m)uggers, this is easily achieved by hugging with one arm and protecting the wallet pocket with the other.

It was a reasonably fun night until I returned home to find that my room resembled a squat and that I hadn’t imagined somebody being sick on my bed. Why the bed? Why not the bin?

Well, tomorrow I go back to work in Leith, so where should I go on my lunch???

All very exciting places. I’m spoilt for choice, which is why I’ll let you decide.

Not sure why this won’t integrate into the blog, but it still seems to work:

Take my poll