Quick note to say hi and bye 
Me and the boys are off to sunny (ahem) Wales with some friends for the New Year. There’ll be 8 of us in total in a lovely cottage together, should be awesome fun, just hope we don’t get snowed in!!
Although hugely looking forward to this break I’m apprehensive about the damage that’ll be done to my already suffering diet over the next few days! My clothes are already feeling tighter and I’m registering additional poundage on the old scales already so it looks as if January will be a veeeeery sensible and quiet month for me
I’m not sure this cottage will even have mobile phone reception, let alone wi-fi… in fact I’m positive it won’t have the latter so updating y’all is unlikely to happen until next week so please be patient!
I have lots to tell and photos to share, I’ve had a wonderful Christmas at Joe’s parents though thought this year that it might have been a bit too much of a strain for his Mum as there were a lot of us to cope with and she is not a young lady anymore (despite not looking anywhere near her true age!).
Next Christmas however should be a different matter, we’ve put in an offer on a four bedroom house which is just a couple of mile down the road from our current one but is in *such* a nicer and safer area.
My son got mugged by a fully grown man at knifepoint in November and that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel’s back. Living close to Brixton (aka Scuzzville) is bad enough but I can cope with the scummy people as long as they don’t trouble me or my family. However, at quarter to five in the afternoon on a week day some lowlife piece of shit decided to put a knife up to my son’s throat and tell him that if he didn’t hand over his phone he’d cut it.
Nice.
Fortunately my son’s not an idiot and gave it over straight away, he knows that a) his phone cost £30 (last year his phone was nicked again, but this time by an opportunist older boy who snatched it from his grasp) and b) no material possession is worth taking a kicking, or worse, for.
He was pretty shaken up though to say the least and was hysterical for a while from the shock and fear, as I said, what kind of scum puts a knife up to a kid??
Anyway, as I said, that was the final straw so we started looking around at different areas and we’ve found one a little further away that we know and love and also have friends in and around (very important as we’re not quite ready to move out to the sticks yet!).
House prices in that area are sky-high though, because it’s such a nice place to be for families, so we’re having to purchase somewhere that needs a bit of work, but it’ll be a fun challenge and will be so worth it to be able to put our individual stamp on it instead of paying developer’s premiums for someone else’s idea of ‘the finished article’, but it’ll be a good couple of years before we reap the benefits!
Saying that though, having an extra two bedrooms and not having to look over our shoulders quite so much will be worth more than anything, it’ll just be a bit of a pain in the arse to get to work now, no more 20 minute journeys, dammit!!
Anyway, that’s my recent news, I still have to update with pictures from Christmas parties and a wedding to boot!
Hope you’re all well and had a truly fabulous Christmas, I look forward to updating you all in the new year.
If I get the chance I’ll try and send some phone blog updates, either on here or twitter but I can’t promise anything as I may just find myself in two states over the next week…
1) Drunk
2) Hungover
Actully, there’s also a strong possibility I will be:
3) a combination of the two!
Lots more festive love and best wishes for a Happy New Year!
TJx
