{"id":144,"date":"2023-01-02T17:55:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T17:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottysblog.com\/a-crazy-christmas\/"},"modified":"2023-01-02T17:55:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T17:55:47","slug":"a-crazy-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottysblog.com\/home\/a-crazy-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Crazy Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phew – and breathe! Good to be back home and with nothing more to do than write this and collapse back onto the sofa, after a VERY busy three weeks or so in the run up to Christmas and the festive bit itself. <\/p>\n

In rough chronological order – and with apologies to those lovely peeps we also saw but for whom I was too slow to whip out the camera – thanks for a lovely December and some bloody good catch ups!<\/p>\n

Starting with seeing Mark & Charlie for supper at Dora – just before they foffed to South Africa for Mark's birthday and Christmas – surprised Mark with a candle classily stuck in his bread & butter pudding..<\/p>\n

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Then the snow came down – Maddie's first experience of cold crunchy white stuff – and she loved it! Cue lots of skidding, head over heels tumbling etc as she certainly didn't work out how slippery it was.. Rather nice for Mr H & me to hear the crunch of snow under our feet, one of my favourite, rather rare sensations..<\/p>\n

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Then we were out at Pam's annual chipolata party, mostly with the Aces hockey girls, as Pam has come to play for us this season. The usual chaos, vinyl oldies but goldies and a lot of mustards..<\/p>\n

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I had both my older ladies round separately for coffee, sausage rolls and a mince pie – Maureen very pleased with her slippers, penguin tea towel, penguin M&Ms and tree decoration – yup, a woolly penguin. Her favourite..<\/p>\n

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Had a fab Xmas week lunch with my two uni chums, the Helens Vickery & Tebay = only managed to nab a photo of Fruity trying her first ever espresso martini. Not a bad effort for lunchtime, and with her bike waiting outside to get home!<\/p>\n

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Next up were the Martin family – usually a Xmas Eve visitation but a day early this time – meant I had no idea all Christmas what day it was as that one threw me! Emmy liked her braiding kit and a very grown up Patrick chose to keep his till Xmas Day – a first!<\/p>\n

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Which gave us the very nice opportunity to have Pam round for supper on Xmas Eve – Finn as ever cocking his big boy dog leg up our armchair. Apparently he only ever does this in our house, should we be strangely honoured?! (No…)<\/p>\n

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And with all that under our belts, we just about crawled our way into Xmas Day. With one of our best joint presents being the felt Scrumpy that sister-in-law Mel very kindly – and super accurately – crafted for our tree. Mr H also particularly chuffed with his marmalade prepping chopper device – well done the Capons!<\/p>\n

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On Boxing Day we somehow crawled out of the house and into the car for our trip down to Dartmouth, via a lovely lunch of leftovers at Jules' parents' house en route in Dorset. Good job we had a short walk first, god knows how H stayed awake for the drive onwards to Devon after that feast..<\/p>\n

Always lovely to see the sea and walk up and down beaches, in the usual mix of 50mph winds, driving rain and even a bit of sun! One very happy dog, practising her swimming technique (currently more paddle steamer than triathlete)..<\/p>\n

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And our last, but never least, stop was at the cottage back in West Sussex, joining J&R for 2 nights to see in 2023. No fireworks these days due to Flossy's noise sensitivities but still managed some sparklers in the drizzle and at least 80% of the right words to Auld Lang Syne at midnight.. Excellent London fireworks, lights and drones display this year, hey?<\/p>\n

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VERY luckily I remembered as H and I were driving out of Dartmouth that we had ordered 4 huge halibut steaks, 30 large prawns, a dozen oysters, 2 pots of crab and almost the partridge in a pear tree. All of which we scoffed while together, so thank goodness my memory for once came up trumps and the shrieked phrase 'FUCK, the FISH!!!!" which I yelled in the car has now gone into the Hawkes history books..<\/p>\n

We are fortunate to have made it to the end of another year in relatively good health, it's not fab but we keep on trucking. <\/p>\n

I'm bracing myself for a third stem cell harvest (several days at Kings' Hospital in Jan being consented for the harvest then having my stem cells gathered via a 'blood out of one arm, blood back into the other arm' loop). Not with a transplant in mind at this point (thank god) but hopefully to make sure I have enough cells in the freezer bank should they one day be needed. An extremely unusual thing as most people are lucky to have one SCT, and to be well enough, with enough remission between relapses and still young enough to be considering a third is unheard of. Fingers crossed the injections beforehand stimulate enough to top up the tanks.<\/p>\n

Happy January lovely people, hope to see you all v v soon x x <\/p>\n

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Phew – and breathe! 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