Christmas in South West London

I thought I would break my blog silence with an entry about my Christmas activities.

On the 23rd December, I went over to my Mum and Dad's house to stay for the Christmas week. The first key thing I did was attempt to bake. I should probably explain that normally I am not a baking person. I don't tend to spend my time baking cakes or pastries and although I love "The Great British Bake Off", I'm generally a bit lazy to give it a go myself. However, I decided to try making the mince pies. Turned out that making pastry is not too difficult although I was a bit terrified it wouldn't work out. Luckily, I cheated and used pre-made mincemeat so there was at least one part that was guaranteed to work. Sadly, I didn't quite make enough pastry so I had to use some cutters to make fun designs to go on top of some of the pies. I think it paid off and the finished results actually tasted alright.

Normally, my Gran and my sister are also with us for Christmas. As you may know already, my sister is in Indonesia teaching English and is sunning herself in Bali for the Christmas break (little bit jealous). My Gran was all set to come and stay with my parents from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Unfortunately, on the 23rd December the south of England was hit by quite significant storms. Although the storms did not cause any damage to the roads we required to collect her, she decided it would be best not to come after all. For the first time that I can remember, there was just the three of us for Christmas. Very strange.

We started Christmas day off in the normal way for us by going on a walk in Bushy Park with some friends of my Mum. We decided to be energetic and cycled there, my parents on their tandem. Despite being fairly full of a cold, I managed the bike ride and the walk around the park without feeling worse. After the walk finished, my Dad took a couple of my Mum's friends for a ride around the car park on the tandem. Having grown up around tandems, I forget how weird they must be to ride for the first time. 

Once back at my Mum and Dad's house we had some wine then opened some Christmas presents. I was very lucky and got some very nice things. My parents seemed to like their presents too. Bonus. Once done unwrapping things and drinking our wine, we had Christmas dinner. Pretty traditional turkey with roast veg and all the trimmings (except brussell sprouts) followed by Christmas pudding ice cream. 

In previous years, we've followed up Christmas dinner with a drive into central London to view the festive lights in Oxford and Regent Streets. This year, my Dad didn't fancy the drive and I didn't fancy doing it instead of him so we decided to go for a second walk. This time we wandered down to Teddington Lock. The storm had caused the river to get up pretty high and there was a bit of flooding too so we didn't walk up too far. It did prevent us all from having the post Christmas dinner lull/nap time and conveniently meant we missed the Queen's speech. When we got back we managed to catch Megan for the second Skype chat of the day.

On Boxing Day, we went to Bognor to visit my Gran. Although the storm had caused some flooding and fallen trees, this had not affected the roads we used. The journey still seemed to take ages though, think everyone had the same idea of visiting relatives on Boxing Day. Luckily, the weather in Bognor was sunny and we were able to take my Gran for a quick push in a wheelchair up to the seafront. As there was a lot of shingle on the promenade, we couldn't take her too far along as the wheelchair was really not up for that kind of obstacle. 

I spent a further two days with my parents, mostly being lazy and recovering from my Christmas cold. I am still off work until 2nd January. In that time, I don't really have much planned but should be attending my friend's New Year's Eve house party on Tuesday to mark the new year itself. Here are some fun pictures from the last few days:

 My amazing mince pies

 Classy hand decorated Christmas cake

Christmas day walk

This will probably be my last entry for 2013 but don't worry, there is much to look forward to blog wise in 2014. Not only will I probably go on some trips around the UK in dubious weather but I will also be meeting up with Megan in Malaysia in April. That will definitely warrant a few blog entries and hopefully they will be even better than this year's selection.

To Hull and back

Firstly, I need to apologise for the slightly overused pun based title of this entry. However, it is true. I did go to Hull and back in a short space of time which I feel justifies it.
 
When I was at university, I studied American Studies. A combination of history, English literature, film and cultural topics all focussed on the USA. In 2013/14, the American Studies department at Hull celebrated it's 50th anniversary. As part of the celebrations for this, the department arranged a 50th anniversary Thanksgiving dinner which I went to with my friend Lucy who also did the same degree as me.
 
We went up to Hull on Thursday by train. The view of the Humber Bridge as we came into Hull remains one of my favourite views ever.

 
We stayed at a hotel opposite The Deep - Hull's aquarium (known as a submarium, not sure what the difference is). Once we had arrived and dropped our bags into the hotel, we decided to take a nostalgic trip to the university campus. Turns out a lot had changed in six years since we had graduated. The students union had been done up and work was being done to upgrade the university library. Luckily the University of Hull sign at the front was still there for us to pose next to.

 

 

The meal in the evening was a lot more fun than I was expecting. Both Lucy and I were quite concerned that there would not be a large turnout. Luckily, there was over 100 people there from across the fifty years of the department. Our decade, the noughties, was a bit under represented compared to some of the other decades. There was only six of us on our table which mean that the Dean of the Faculty and Director of Cultural Studies were sitting at our table to make up the numbers. Despite this, we mingled with our former lecturers and met a lot of interesting people. Including one of the first ever graduates from the 1960s.

 

The next day, we went for breakfast in old town Hull and took a quick wander of the cobbled streets in that area. The city has recently been awarded UK City of Culture 2017 so there was a lot of excitement in the area. All the taxi drivers we spoke to were hopeful that being City of Culture could lead to great things for Hull. Hopefully, it will.

Sadly, we had to return to London later that day but I'm hoping to go back again next summer with a few more days to spare so I can fully explore the area and maybe catch up with old friends in the area