Another fine night

We don't need an excuse to spend time with friends, but we had one last night. Ostensibly we went over to Chesterfield to "plan" our activities for New Year - meals, whether we'll be going out or staying in, what we'll be doing if we stay in, etc. In reality, as you might have predicted, this only took about five minutes. Which left the rest of the early evening and night free for general socialising.

Unusually for us, we didn't venture out to the pub before dinner. We'd all brought plenty of liquid refreshment which, combined with the cold weather, was enough to make us hunker down inside for a lazy chat before dinner, during dinner (a fabulous lamb tagine, preceded by some excellent dips and followed up with a delicious berry-fruit pastry), and after dinner.

Somehow I managed to consume the better part of two bottles of wine on my own. Nikki was no help at all, confining herself to a single glass with dinner, but a man's gotta do, etc. This may have contributed to me not remembering an awful lot about Big Band Night on the X Factor, which we settled down to watch off the DTR much later on. A poor show given that I was supposed to be reviewing it. Thank heaven for t'Interweb forums, and YouTube :o)

The only slight downer on the evening was the lack of Ian & Gill, who couldn't make it on account of being temporarily discumbobulated, but we drank a toast to them, and somehow managed to polish off their portions of dinner, so it wasn't a total loss.