Pole to Pole

Wanting to have as relaxing a New Year as possible, we elected to venture out today for both groceries (a short, sharp shop) and to see if we could finally find some curtain poles for the study. The first and only place on our list for these was Housing Units in Failsworth and we were lucky to find a reasonable selection of both poles and finials.

Naturally, the pole you want doesn't quite have the finial you want, and the finial you really like isn't available with the pole you decide looks nicest, but that's just life plain and simple. Too much choice and not enough combinations of that choice is a recipe for stress, and a lengthy discussion, deliberation and decision process, which we duly went through.

The situation is complicated by the larger of the two windows being a double sash. It has a casement between the two sashes which is not at the same level as the wall. It's further out. Hence any centre bracket has to be longer than the wall brackets on either side (and the window is, according to received wisdom, too wide to take a single pole without a centre support). A final further complication is that the window frame is set very high in the wall, so there is no gap between the top of the frame and the cornice. Hence the pole can't be mounted above the window as would normally be the case.

After much debate I agreed that the only way around it would be to make a small supporting block for the centre bracket, and screw this to the window frame. This was, in fact, the way it had been done prior to the strip out, but as usual not very accurately, so the pole had quite a bend in the middle. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make a better job of it this time round.

Before we set out today Nikki had found a few places online who would custom-make the poles and brackets, and if we'd decided to go with them we could have had the centre bracket as big as we liked, but as always everything comes at a cost, both financial and in further delay to the project. So we placed the order, benefitting from a 10% sale discount, and returned home feeling well satisfied with our short sojourn.

Friday Five

1. If you could change your name, what would it be?
When I was twelve I thought my name was boring, so I took the chance of meeting a new friend at a family wedding to tell him my name was Chris. Hours later I could hear this voice shouting "Chris! Chris!" so I looked around to see who he was yelling at. It was me, of course. I decided right then I'd better stick with John, even if it is common.

2. What is the worst name someone has called you?
I can't spell it.

3. If you could meet someone famous, who would it be?
Ha ha! You know my track record with meeting famous people. I'd probably dribble all over them. I wouldn't mind meeting Patrick Stewart though, just so I could bring him home for a coffee and casually say to Nikki "I've brought a friend round to meet you."

4. How do you like to travel home?
I drive, but I don't like it. The one part about going to London that I don't mind is the train journey home. Firstly, it's coming home, and secondly I can relax and read, or play games, or write and not feel guilty about not "working."

5. What kind of phone to you have?
It's an old Sharp. I also have an SPV C600 that I've not transferred over to yet. Basically I pick up Nikki's cast-offs every time she buys a new phone (about every 12-18 months). Each one is better than anything I would pick, so why not? She's more of a gadget girl than I'm a gadget guy.

Happy Christmas!!

Just enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in front of the 'puter before we open our presents (during which we'll be sipping a few glasses of chilled Eiswein which has been on ice since last week), and I thought I'd take the opportunity to say "Happy Christmas" to everyone. The "Now Xmas" album is playing as I type (and we'll be putting it on via the XBox when we transplant ourselves downstairs shortly) so the Christmas spirit is alive and well here.

Despite the Spice Girls Christmas Wrapping in the background I still feel a bit philosophical. This is our second Christmas in this house and a lot has happened this year. Two major projects completed on the house, great upheavals at work, but when I look back at how much I've achieved artistically I have to pause. It's a full two years since Annie and I put our first album together, and although we didn't set ourselves a deadline for the second one, progress this year has been dismal. Almost non-existent (we finished the eighth song in April). And on the second major project of mine (which chronologically and from a longevity perspective, should really be called the first project) - my novel - passed the first anniversary of the completion of its first draft back in August without any substantial progress on the editing.

By contrast a friend of mine had his first novel published this year - ironically on my birthday. Naturally I wish him all the luck in the world with that (good luck Chris!), but his success certainly did focus my mind. I've been enjoying writing for TV Scoop and it's true the profile of that site is on the increase (they're now achieving 8,000 unique visitors per day) so there's a lot of people reading my TV reviews, rants and suggestions for future viewing. But on a personal level, that is secondary to where I really want to go with my writing, and I know I'm going to have to give that more focus next year if I'm to get anywhere with it. I have a dozen ideas for other novels and none of them can really start until the first is properly finished.

I don't make New Year's resolutions or set goals, but if I did that would be #1.

I don't usually plan things either, but I know there'll continue to be a lot of work to do on the house this coming year too, with plans to do the kitchen and at least one of our bedroom or the dining room. If that's not to encroach on my writing time I'm going to have to be very disciplined and make sure I do protect that daily space - and it has to be daily - to write write write. I don't want to be looking back again this time next year on another 12 months of excuses and no progress.

Quiet Christmas Eve

Nikki had to work today, just for the morning, so I dropped her off at 8.20 and returned home to finish the wrapping. Incidentally I spotted another cool number plate on the way home: WH05 NXT (who's next). I wonder what he meant? Something rude I suspect, but the car it was on wasn't that much of a babe magnet lol.

On the plan, this morning was for wrapping Nikki's presents, but I'd managed to get that done lunchtimes on Thursday and Friday. I just had a couple to do for the girls and a rather large and unwieldy present for Annie. That was, until the postman called. With impeccable timing he brought the last of Blythe's presents, which I'd given up on. One more for the wrapping pile, and an increase in the success rate for online shopping. I've done well over 90% of my Christmas shopping online this year, and everything has arrived except one of Nikki's. I'm quite disappointed about that, because it was a "big" present, but it's the only one so I don't think I've done bad, and for this missing one I've printed off a picture so I can wrap that ;o)

While wrapping I took the chance to catch up on some TV we'd recorded that Nikki wasn't bothered about watching, namely: Frankenstein, a 2-hour updated dramatisation that had been on ITV in October. A good idea to try and bring the story into the 21st century - they'd created the monster through stem cell research instead of stitching body parts together - but really I had to admit it was a bit crap. I cleansed my audio-visual palate afterward by watching High Plains Drifter; something else I knew Nikki didn't really want to see.

She called at 12:45 to say they were finishing at 1, so I drove over and picked her up and we settled down for an afternoon of Christmas TV watching - there were more seasonal films and programmes being broadcast than you could shake a stick at, the highlight of which was Patrick Stewart in a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol. There was a considerable amount of Thornton's troffing as well. How decadent!

Going for a croak

We'd been invited to a rather original party this evening - karaoke and pancakes. Whoever dreamt that up needs a medal. Combining two of my favourite things with a little wine and good company was bound to be a great evening.

It was a small but select do, and all the better for that. The pancakes, spread as they were with the traditional lemon and sugar and hence reminiscent of my childhood, were superb and seemed to get better throughout the evening (even though I wasn't drinking much, having driven to the party) but the highlight of the evening as always was the karaoke. Brilliant. If I were to have my time over again I'd move heaven and earth to be a professional singer. Just need to sort a few of those cdg files out, eh Annie? One of them was reminiscent of the karaoke we did in Fuertenventura one year. If you hadn't known the words to the song you would have been knackered, as they were appearing on screen a fraction of a second after they needed to be sung. Doh!

Friday Five

1. What's the last movie you saw?
When I originally filled this in it was Shall We Dance, but we've moved on a bit since then, past Deja Vu to the fabulous oldies we watched today while wrapping presents: White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life.

2. Are you gentle?
Like a kitten, baby.

3. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut?
No. Unless either or both of the girls are in the house. Then we all need our privacy. Oh, and at weekends. Closing it helps keep the streetlights out so we can sleep in longer :o)

4. What's your middle name?
Christopher.

5. Friday fill-in:
I could learn to like ___.
Stephen Fry.


Interesting day today socially. We popped round to the new neighbours for a glass of wine and a mince pie as we'd been invited by Christmas card. It reminded me of us, a year ago. They moved in on almost exactly the same date as us (only this year) so they've been in about 9 weeks and the house is still looking a bit unlived in, if you know what I mean. Like things aren't quite in their right places yet. But the welcome was warm and quite a few of our other neighbours were there, so we expected to pass a pleasant 90 minutes or so before making our excuses to leave in time to prepare for the main event of the evening: mulled wine & mince pies at Jamie & Lise's. That was until conversation turned to what movies we've watched recently and one woman said she was looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass. Our host's demeanour changed instantly. "Oh no, you mustn't," she said seriously. "Philip Pullman hates God and his stories are all about killing God. You might think it's a simple story but the movie makers are doing what they did with Harry Potter... they'll draw you in and then in the final instalment you'll be watching them kill God. Don't go. Spread the word, warn all your friends about it."

Honestly, I thought I'd stepped back into the 11th century or something. We just sat there quietly not really knowing what to say. The usual advice is you shouldn't discuss religion or politics with friends and these were people we'd only known for like an hour. I wasn't about to engage them with any high level discourse on how His Dark Materials is set in a fantasy world and even though they're called daemons they're not actual mythic demons. Not, you know, works of the devil. And I certainly wasn't going to get into a debate about how anyone who believes God is omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of everything, could possibly be worried by a story, even if that story does involve killing God. Actually I think if you look a bit closer it's more likely to be about getting rid of the church, which is a different subject altogether. Anyway we stayed long enough to be polite and slipped unobtrusively away. If they ever find out about the ritual sacrifices, we're done for.

We opted to walk to Jamie & Lise's, because I didn't want to have to watch what I was drinking overmuch and because we didn't really have a feel for how far it is. The answer, surprisingly is "not far." Barely more than a 20-minute walk even allowing for the fact that the pavements were icy and the roads even more so.

We stayed until midnight, until the cockles of our 'earts were well and truly warmed by the wine and the great company, and then walked home again. Surprisingly for that time of night it seemed to have warmed up a bit. The cars that had been unused all day were still rimed with frost but those that had been out at some time hadn't frosted back up again.

Christmas Do. (part 4)

Lunch in the staff restaurant has never appealed to me. I always bring my own. Christmas though - that's a different kettle of peaswax. They make a special effort, and I can never have enough turkey dinners, so it's kind of a match made in heaven. Today was even more special, since it's my last day in the office for 2007. Three of us went down from my bit of the office (aside: you can't say "from my office" any more. Not since they went open plan. Time was when we all had offices big enough for small groups. Back then you did things by the office. I went down the pub with my office. I went bowling with my office. Not now. Now they've knocked all the walls down and the desks are arranged in little floats. Two desks back-to-back, arranged in groups of three. So six desks to a float. You can hardly say "I went to lunch with my float" can you? Makes you sound like a milkman.) and the place was really buzzing I can tell you.

We opted for roast tomato soup and crispy croutons for starters. Could have had liver paté or parmahamwithmelonballs. I thought paté might be a bit heavy for lunch time and when I eat melon I like to bury my face in a wedge, not delicately place individual balls in my mouth. Besides it was a cold and frosty morning (yes, Steve and Dave, I'm still playing the "get Christmas carol lines into the conversation" game) so I thought a bit of soup would go down lovely. It did.

Mains was the traditional roast turkey dinner and they had done us proud. Three thick slices of breast meat with a slab of stuffing on top, carrot batons, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts and as much cranberry sauce as you like. Fabulous. Feeling already somewhat stuffed (we've been dieting for three weeks after that fateful visit to the local club, and my stomach's shrunk) I joined the line-up again for dessert. What else - Christmas pudding. "Watch out for that brandy sauce," one of the dinner ladies advised. "It's a bit potent." She wasn't wrong. I think I had an entire bottle of brandy in my portion alone.

We sat at the table for half an hour after finishing the pudding, debating this and that. It wasn't that the conversation was especially stimulating, more that none of us could move. And all for a fiver, too. When you consider how much I paid to (almost) go without Tiramisu at Don Giovanni's, deciding which was the better meal is a bit of a no-brainer.

It's a wrap!

I wrapped my first Christmas present today. I can't tell you what's in it (obviously!) but I'm quite pleased with it. It looks like a regular box, but it hides a clever little secret. Bwaahaahaaaaa!

We don't have a problem wrapping the girls' presents. We won't be seeing them until Boxing Day, so we can leave them lying around on the table now in various states of undress. But Nikki & I have to dance round each other a bit. I'm planning to make a start during the week on the days I'm at home. Lunch in one hand, sellotape in the other. She'll get her chance on Sunday when I go to visit my Mum and then I have a final opportunity on Christmas Eve as she has to work during the morning.

It's getting quite exciting now that the pile of presents has started to grow.

What goes around does indeed come around

I guess there are some things that you can't blog about. Sometimes this is because it's simply inadvisable to reveal too much, and other times it's because, although something may have gone on around you, it's not really your story to tell.

So by way of allegory I'll recount a tale from my university days. Maybe this explains why the "how old are you" quiz on Facebook declared me to be 75 today. One of my answers was that I start my conversations with "When I was a kid..." Well hey, when the other choices are "You can't even talk anymore"; "wow, did you see those boobs/abs"; "MOOOOOOM..."; "yo, yo..."; and "listen to me..." wtf else am I going to pick? Anyway, I digress.

Around the beginning of my second year at Uni I started going out with a girl and pretty soon we got pretty serious, if you know what I mean. If we weren't staying at mine we were staying at hers and there weren't many nights we were staying at mine AND hers individually. During the holidays I drove down to Buckinghamshire to spend some time with her at her folks' place and was surprised (not to mention delighted) that her parents just quietly assumed we'd be sleeping together. Remember this is 1976/77 we're talking about. The summer of love was ten years old but parents weren't really part of it, at least not in my world.

So time ticked by, we carried on seeing each other, and eventually in the Easter break she wanted to repay the favour and come up to Nottingham to meet my folks. My folks who had always claimed to be very broad minded, and open minded, but who...well...maybe we'll save that story for another day. Let's just say they didn't always practice what they preached. Which gave me a bit of a dilemma. Did I let things ride and submit to sleeping on the sofa, which I knew would be the default option? Or did I make a stand for human rights (not a very well-used phrase in 1977), which would clearly be the more uncomfortable option parentally speaking?

In the end I decided to make a stand. Pun not intended. I took my parents on one side and said, basically "look, Sue and I sleep together while we're at Uni, and we sleep together while we're at her parents' house. This is your house and what goes on here is up to you, but in the light of what's already going on, are you really going to make me sleep on the sofa?" I didn't plead or cajole or try to make them feel inferior, I just put the facts in front of them and then we went out to the pub.

When we got back, there were two Cadbury's Creme Eggs sitting side by side on the pillow in my bedroom. My Dad's uniquely cryptic and non-embarrassing way of telling me they'd decided to accept the inevitable.

Right there and then something crystallised for me. Although it was never in any doubt in a subconscious way, I made a conscious decision never to put any offspring of mine in a similar position, be they male or female. Because to my mind, if a young person is ready to make that kind of decision, then as a parent you have to be ready to let them. During the intervening years, on the odd occasion when this kind of topic has cropped up in conversation with friends and colleagues, I've come in for some stick on this point. The general consensus of the rest of humanity seems to be "you'll feel differently when it's your own daughter," or "no-one will ever be good enough." But I never subscribed to those views while the conversation was hypothetical, and I'm pleased to say I continue to hold true to my decision, and my principles, now the topic has become material.

Heroes - Volume 2

Oh Boy. Spent most of today watching the second series of Heroes. This show just gets better and better. I know Tim Kring is on record admitting that it got off to a slow start, but when you watch seven episodes back-to-back it just ROCKS.

You know you should stop, and make the dinner. Or even stop for a drink or a toilet break. But then you think "nah - one more episode."

I hope they resolve the WGA writers' strike soon. I'll start getting withdrawal symptoms again before long.

Friday Five

1. Are you married?
Not at the moment, although I am in a long-term relationship. With two failed marriages behind me (and the last split particularly acrimonious) I'm kind of phobic.

2. When do your claws come out?
More than anything else the thing that is guaranteed to get me boiling mad and spitting is being accused of something I haven't done. Several nasty examples of this before the age of 10 has made me hyper-sensitive. Often, it doesn't even have to be anything especially important.

3. Have you ever been in a car accident?
Several fender-benders but one really significant and scary event where I hit a patch of black ice, span round twice and rolled over into a ditch. I hung upside down in the seatbelt for a few seconds before releasing the clasp and landing on my head. Dust and grit from the carpets rained down all around me. When I reoriented and pushed the button for the driver's window it opened onto the side of the ditch. Grass. No crawl space whatsoever. I opened the passenger side window and on that side, luckily, the ditch side was angled less steeply. There was a 9-inch gap just big enough for me to pull myself out, which I did - energised by visions of the inverted car exploding in a fireball at any second. When I stepped onto the road I nearly fell over - it was a solid sheet of ice. As my eyes accustomed to the gloom (it was around 6.30am) I noticed another car 30 feet from me which had suffered the same fate. I looked the other way and was just in time to jump out of the way of a third car pirouetting across the road to hit the ditch between me and the first.

When the police brought me back to the car later that day to pick up the rest of my stuff, I could see in the daylight that if I'd left the road 50 yards earlier or later there would have been no ditch to break my fall. A steep embankment fell away 100 feet to the moor below.

4. Who is the last person you held?
Nikki.

5. Describe a time you've gone overboard:
I went literally overboard when three mates and I took a boat on the Norfolk Broads in 1976. We anchored in the middle of a lake and went swimming.

Christmas Do. (part 3)

The final "do" of the year was this lunchtime and was organised by one of the ex-secretaries from our old building in Wythenshawe.

There was a strong sense of camaraderie in that building. When we first went there in 1996 the sense of something new and exciting starting imbued us with a kind of team spirit that has survived for ten years, even though many of the original joiners have since left the company. It was a new venture - the first time we had tried to build a business around Microsoft technologies and application development - and they were exciting times.

The excitement has long since passed, but the friendships remain and we'll probably continue to enjoy a Christmas dinner together every year as long as Chris keeps organising it. At 15, numbers were slightly reduced this year owing to many people working away from Manchester, and as it turned out the ex-staffers outnumbered those of us who are still there. That just meant the conversation was more interesting, as everyone brought their tales of the year's activities to the party.

We started out with a drink in the Paramount bar on Oxford Street and then repaired to Don Giovanni's for the meal around 1.30pm. The meal was nice, but nothing special. Tuscan bean soup followed by the traditional turkey dinner. There was one slight hiccup when the dessert course was served. We'd already waited for it for half an hour when the waiter came around with a notepad. I thought this a little strange, as we'd all placed our food orders over a month before, but didn't say anything except to repeat my request for Tiramisu.

He returned to the table ten minutes later to inform us that Tiramisu was off, and the remaining choices were profiteroles or panacotta. I was really disappointed with this as I'd been looking forward to the dessert all day, and I wasn't really in the mood to take it lying down. I layed into the guy, loudly telling him it was a disgusting way to treat Christmas guests, I'd only come for the Tiramisu, we'd placed our order months before so how could they have run out? I placed an order for panacotta but added I was very disappointed and it was the least bad choice as far as I was concerned.

The panacotta arrived (and between you and me looked quite nice) but I left it untouched in front of me. Ten minutes later the headwaiter came striding across the restaurant, beaming widely and carrying two plates. He'd managed to find two remaining portions of Tiramisu and placed one in front of me, and one for the person next to me. I thanked him graciously and tucked in. It was delicious. When I'd finished I noticed he hadn't removed the panacotta, so I polished that off too. Bonus!

Arseholes

This is what I woke up to this morning. Well, not THIS exactly, because this isn't a photo of my actual car. Funnily enough my first thought on discovering that some little scrote had put a baseball bat through my passenger window was not "oh, I must go get my camera and take a photo of that for my blog." But you get the picture. Ha ha.

Nothing was stolen. Truth is, there's nothing in the car TO steal, but since there was a heavy frost last night, the bastard had to smash the window to find that out. And if it had been one of those rare but occasional days when I'd forgotten to take the car radio panel out? Well then he would have won the star prize. A bog-standard, manufacturer's issue, crappy CD radio that won't play 8 out of 10 CDs and takes an hour to warm up to the point where it will turn on, if you made the mistake of turning it off. Whoop-di-do.

Who buys knock-off car radios anyway? And what would it fetch - a tenner? I would gladly give the twat a tenner just to save the hassle: a very cold and windy drive there and back to drop Nikki at work, staying in all day for the glass repair man and therefore not being able to get the grocery shopping done until 9pm, and an hour sweeping the broken bits off the footpath which, being old tarmac, hangs on to those little bitty pieces like they were diamonds. Oh and the small matter of £120 for the replacement glass and fitting. Which coincidentally is exactly the same as the insurance excess for window damage.

There's just a chance that someone saw me fiddling with my iPod and RoadTrip a couple of Sundays ago and wondered if two weeks was long enough for me to become complacent and leave it in the car, but the most likely explanation is they did it for a laugh. The same kind of laugh they get from smashing the glass bus shelters that we see littering the pavements every few weeks. Funny, isn't it?

Christmas Do. (part 2)

Not a bad night at the De Vere hotel, Daresbury last night (ooh, it do sound posh don't it?). A very nice room, after our complementary upgrade to an Executive King suite (that's a bigger bed to you and me, and very comfortable it was too) caused by the fact they'd over-booked the Christmas do in the "Alice Room" (the whole place has a Lewis Carroll theme) and had to bump us into a smaller side room instead.

OK, the decorations weren't up to much - a single Christmas tree plonked into one corner - and the dance floor was a little smaller, but it didn't affect the food and drink ;o)

We arrived as usual mid-afternoon and spent a pleasant couple of hours sipping drinks, chatting with Nikki's colleagues and, since the diet was once again on hold for the day, tucking into a plate of club sandwiches and chips. This is the best part of the event for me. The meal is just like any other mass-catered Christmas meal, the disco holds no interest whatever and the dinner conversation can be a bit hit and miss, but the afternoon session is the height of civilisation. Comfy seats, a warm lounge, beer (or, in this case, Magner's cider since the draught beer selection on offer was uniformly awful) and pleasant chat. I love it.

We repaired to our room to freshen up around 6 o'clock and returned, showered, shaved (that's just me doing the shaving) and togged up, to the bar for a pre-dinner drinkie around 6.30.

I carried my third pint of Magners of the day into dinner with me and was immediately offered another by Nikki's manager. You can't say no can you? It would be rude. I'd ordered a rather nice salmon roulade to start and a traditional Christmas dinner, which was fine as mass catering goes apart from the sprouts which were like bullets.

The pud was a bit disappointing though. One of those occasions where you stare longingly at what someone else has ordered (in this case the strawberry pavlova) because your own choice is not quite all that (chocolate tart). The coffee was piss-poor too. I don't think I've *ever* had a good cup of coffee in a hotel.

With crackers pulled, hats put on and taken off, balloons blown up and shot across the room and the disco in full swing I began to flag a bit. I was surprised to discover it was already almost 1am so I made my excuses. Nikki was enjoying the disco too much to want to leave just yet, but I was more than ready to sample the delights of the king bed and watch enough snooker to send me to sleep. That is, about 3 minutes' worth.

Sad nerdy geek speak

A few things we needed to sort out this morning prior to going off for the night to Nikki's works' do, chief among them going to the hair salon. Coming back from there, a band was being interviewed on the radio and as is my wont, I was only giving it half an ear.

The band are on tour at the moment, and the lead singer was telling the DJ that they only had 6 gigs left.

My immediate thought?

"Well that's plenty of space."

>sigh<

Christmas Do. (part 1a)

Hmm. Incipient senility. A frightening thing. I was convinced I had three Christmas do's in a row, but the one that was "today" - upon checking - is actually *next* Friday. Oh well...an unexpected bonus for next week!

Christmas Do. (part 1)

First works Christmas do of the year this evening - or I should say yesterday evening given that it's now past midnight - and it had to be in Reading.

Most of the guys in the Technical Group are based darn sarf, so that's where the meal was booked, even though the CTO sportingly tried to suggest somewhere more middling like Birmingham or Solihull. We didn't have anyone in the group who knew a decent curry house round there, so we gave up and resigned ourselves to a long journey.

I wouldn't have gone normally, but the CTO had arranged a meeting for the afternoon (which meant we could claim expenses for the travelling) and I also had a four-hour meeting at 10am which I *could* have attended as a voice conference, but in this case provided another excuse to go along to the meal.

We had about ten attendees from the North, and everyone but me arranged to stay over. I like my own bed too much though, and (thought) I had another Christmas lunch to attend tomorrow...err...today, so I wanted to be back in plenty of time.

The Technical Group meeting broke up around 5pm giving us 90 minutes to drive the 15 miles from Bracknell to Reading, park, and congregate at the nearest pub, which the organiser said was Branningham's. It was pissing down as we left Bracknell. I'd offered a lift to one of the other guys and we passed a pleasant 45 minutes in the rush-hour traffic catching up with what we'd each been doing since we last worked together. After we'd parked, we discovered neither of us really knew where this place was - either the curry house or the pub - so we wandered aimless through the pouring rain towards the Oracle shopping centre - the only landmark we'd been told about. Two nice young ladies pointed Branningham's out to us, but it wasn't much use. The place was a nightclub, not a bar, and didn't open until 9pm.

We spotted the Slug & Lettuce across the water and headed for that, me on the phone to the organiser to explain the situation and arrange the Slug as the alternative rendezvous. I downed a gin & tonic prior to dinner (still conscious of the diet even though the rest of the evening would be a disaster as far as that went!) and having all assembled and wet our whistles, we headed for the restaurant - the Bengal Reef. My passenger and I agreed we would never have found it - on the first floor of a separate mall round the back of the main precinct and down a narrow street that looked more like a service road. Once inside though, the restaurant looked very nice. We were shown to our tables - a 16-seater and a 10-seater - and perused the menus while sipping on bottles of Cobra.

Suffice to say the meal was equal to anything Manchester has to offer, but at 9pm with the prospect of a 200-mile journey ahead of me, I made my excuses and left. The rain continued unabated pretty much for the whole trip home, but at least the roads were clear and I arrived back soon after midnight, tired but buoyed up by the good food and company.

Having started the Christmas celebrations with our mulled wine party at the start of the week, this had been a perfect next step!

What is friendship?

We didn't go to the quiz tonight. We'd been invited by one of the girls from the book club and I was up for it initially, but Nikki had had such a shitty day at work and wanted nothing more than to cuddle up and watch telly. I know she wouldn't have minded had I wanted to go on my own, but sometimes it's more important to be together isn't it?

This small vignette into the complex world of relationships made me think about friendship in the large. If you're a regular reader of these pages you'll know I'm lucky to have maintained strong links with friends I made during my schooldays. I'm told it's unusual for a bunch of blokes to stick together the way we have - for over thirty years and through good times and bad. We've seen our mates' partners come and go, but new partners when they've been found have been welcomed into the group, which has continued to play a big part in our lives for all of those thirty years.

I couldn't even tell you what it is that keeps us together. Maybe it's one of those things that it doesn't do to look too closely at. One of us is a staunch (almost rabid) football fan. The subject bores me rigid. We all love music, but our tastes vary greatly (apart from a shared love of Genesis). Our beliefs too are varied. One comes from something approaching a "high church" family, I'm a Spiritualist, the rest are what you might call armchair atheists. We all work in (sometimes only slightly) different jobs. If I had to think of one thing that keeps us together, it's the shared experiences we've had, and continue to have. We were thrown together at a particular time, hung out, and gradually built up that catalogue of memories that now draws us together like the stitches that make up a tapestry.

But it's not always like that. Lest you somehow get the impression that any one of us is something special - some "friendship guru" to whom others flock looking for those elusive connections in their lives - I have to say that I've had times where I've felt I didn't have any friends at all. Two areas where, traditionally, people make good friendships are university and in the workplace.

While I was at UMIST I got to know three distinct bunches of people: those I lived with; those I studied with; and those I hung out with at the Students' Union, principally on the Socials Committee (which I led, as Socials Secretary, for a year). I met almost all the guys I lived with through sharing a floor with them in Owens Park tower. We got on alright, well enough to decide during our second year to share a house. Since leaving Uni almost exactly 30 years ago I've met one of them again, on one occasion in 1984. An awkward occasion it was too, which did nothing except prove the only thing I had in common with them was the fact that we shared the same space. I didn't much enjoy sharing space with them in my second year either. None of them knew how to wash a dish, or cook anything more complicated than bangers and mash.

The story is pretty much the same for the people on my degree course (which I didn't finish). I can hardly remember any of them now and those I can remember I knew from the off I wouldn't want to stay in touch with. Around the Socials Committee it was slightly different, and indeed I did stay in touch with a few of the guys from there - sharing a house with two of them in the first couple of years I worked at ICL, and socialising with another and his wife who stayed in Manchester. But the ties weren't strong enough for the friendships to last more than a few years.

So I think back and try to put my finger on exactly why they were "friends" and I realise they were at best acquaintances, and in reality probably closer to people you spend time with because otherwise you'd be on your own. You forgive their foibles, turn a blind eye to the mess they live in, agree to go to the pub when really you'd rather have a night in, just to be in the company of a few warm bodies and not left alone because you don't really fit in. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know. I don't know what "right" means in that context. I know we had some fun times and some laughs. Laughs I wouldn't have had if I hadn't made the conscious decision to join in. We drove a VW microbus to a Genesis concert at Hammersmith Odeon once, which was a great night. We took the same bus to Blackpool for a long weekend and slept in it. That was a good laugh too. There's no doubt I would rather have these memories than not. And there's no doubt I would never have had them if I hadn't decided at the time that their company may not have been "perfect" but it was what was on offer. That probably sounds really pompous, but I'm just trying to be honest. It wasn't really even a conscious decision at the time, but looking back it's obvious that none of them was "my kind of people" but that didn't prevent us all hanging out and having a good time. It just stopped us from having any incentive to keep in touch once we were no longer sharing the same space.

It's a similar story in the workplace. I get on with most of them. They're all decent, regular, "normal" people. In some cases I'll have known them thirty years come January 2008 (I'm starting to get seriously worried by the number of times the phrase "thirty years" crops up in these blogs). In one case I sat next to the same guy for almost 12 years. Worked with him day in, day out on a variety of projects. Travelled abroad on business with him. We shared a joke every day - had a very similar sense of humour - and we got on really well. Then he changed department and went to work in a different building. That was five years ago. I think I've seen him three times since then, and we hardly ever exchange emails.

Was he a friend? I thought so at the time. In fact I thought he was probably one of the few real friends I'd made at work. It's undoubtedly also true that if we found ourselves sharing an office again we'd pick up where we left off. But it's not enough for either of us to make the effort to keep in touch. And I think that's the crucial point. Making the effort - either to spend time with people in the first place, or to stay in touch with them when they move on.

But at least we have the excuse now of being separated by a few tens of miles. There are other cases I could quote where the distance between buildings holding old colleagues is a few tens of yards, yet none of us makes an effort to meet up for lunch, a coffee, or a walk around the car park.

I'll probably come back to that another time, this whole topic actually, cos this is already a bit of a diatribe. And then there's the subject of making new friends, which has happened a lot recently and really reinforces the point about making the effort. Meanwhile, there's a piece of old anonymous Internet lore about friends that come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I've linked one example there, but if you Google "reason season friendship" you'll find hundreds more. Not sure it really illuminates anything except why people move in and out of our lives, and it certainly doesn't answer my initial question.

Mulling it over

Last year, our first mulled wine party was a little later than expected and fell foul of a couple of works' socials. This year, we were determined to be first, not only with the decorations but with the partying. Maybe it's a little early to be celebrating Christmas, but at least it is December.

Last night the wine was mulled in perfect time, the nibbles distributed, the conservatory flung wide and heated, the candles lit and the music playing (streaming via the XBox from my PC, of course) when the first guest came knocking at a polite ten past eight. It was our new neighbour, who had moved in only a few weeks ago with her daughter and grandson. She was followed by the rest of the street during the next couple of hours, with only one house not represented and two couples only half present. A pretty good showing and easily comparable with last year.

But this year, of course, we knew everyone a lot better, so the conversation was even more relaxed, the pace laid back and the evening another sterling success. Don't take my word for it, we were told as much by each departing guest.

The longer we're here, the more I love it. One thing though. I mustn't stay on mulled wine the whole evening next time.

Tis the season...

Well the best laid plans did indeed gang awry this week, as the tree stood bare in the hall day after day, its decoration slipping backward in the priorities until we reached the point of no return - today: the day of our mulled wine party.

After a fairly relaxed start we set off for Homebase to get a few extras - candles for the house, a few extra decorations, that kind of thing. Our flabber was totally gasted when we pulled up at White City retail park to find the shutters down and the Homebase warehouse totally deserted. It's closed down! Luckily B&Q (Home Depot for my North American readers) is just around the corner, and proved to have an adequate supply of goodies. More than adequate actually. What we'd really gone out for were curtain poles for the study. What we came back with were three wise men fetchingly rendered in polymer resin, three lengths of tinsel and a pot of three candles.

It was down to business once we returned home, and after spending a little over two hours decorating to the sound of Christmas tunes, the tree was looking fabulous. Even better, if I may say, than last year. But there was no time for idling - we had holly garland to thread up the banister, lounge and conservatory decorations to hang, cleaning and tidying, and sorting out the party music to attend to.

So here we are at a little after 6pm, with everything done. Now all that's left to do is shower, shave, change, eat, and await our guests!