Christmas at Kings'

The choir of Kings' College, Cambridge. Famous for the annual broadcast of their Nine Lessons and Carols service each year on Christmas Day. This year, we were there.... queuing up at 8am to stand in line for one of the 600 places offered to the public.

The day is probably best told in pictures.

Snow day!

Yesterday, it snowed. And I mean really snowed. There was chaos that truly put last year's to shame.

Brendan and I had separate adventures! He left work at 3:30, I left work at 3... 

His facebook update: spent 3 hours driving home in the snow. This included the battery dying, pushing the car off the road, buying jump leads, killing another car attempting to jump my car, getting a third car to jump the second car and mine, getting stuck on an ice-covered hill, twice, and then ice-driving through the frozen back streets of Basingstoke. 

My facebook update: 

So far I've spent 4 hours in my car in the same 4 miles, killed my battery .5 miles from a safeish place to park it, pushed my car, jump started it and parked at aldermaston, waiting for train that might not come...

What happened... an enormous amount of snow! Basically most of the roads in Hampshire and Berkshire were impassable. I left work at 3pm and didn't get back until 10pm! I spoke to many many people who had similar stories of being stuck in their cars for hours and hours, batteries dying etc.... My car is still in Aldermaston Wharf at my boss's house. 

It was nice though, because people were very kind-spirited about it all and helped each other. 

I spent 45 mins getting the few miles from work to Tim and Carrie's house in Aldermaston, then another 3 hours getting the next mile or so. You'd pretty much move a car length every 15 minutes - I was timing! After 3 hours of this I decided it was ridiculous, and heard a man talking about how the road was blocked by a lorry stuck on the hill by AWE. So I turned around and went back... 45 mins later I was about .5 miles from their house when my car battery died! Luckily I had jumper cables in the car (thanks Brendan!), and luckily some lovely guys helped me to jump start it and push the car until it got going again. 

However, even though I parked at Tim and Carrie's, neither of them were there... Carrie, Lucy and one of our clients were all stuck in Basingstoke at a client's overnight! So I took the train from Aldermaston into Reading, and then back to Basingstoke. Thankfully they were delayed but still running, and I managed to get home. Many other people didn't.

Here is what the BBC had to say...

And here.... 3000 people trapped in cars overnight

And here... Basingstoke still at the centre of it all

And here are some pictures.... I was on the AWE road, and the roads of the IDR in Reading are incredible as well. When I took the train home to Basingstoke from Reading I saw cars stopped there at 9 at night!

Ice-skating in Winchester....

Last year we went iceskating with Lina at Winchester,and it was awesome. This year we went with Liz and Gareth, and it was just as good if not better.

Here's the cathedral and the Michaelmas Christmas Fair... very traditional.


Here's us iceskating... I'm getting much better and can go really fast! I still can't stop as well as I want though. (I.e. only by crashing into the barriers a little...)

The days are getting very dark now- the sun goes down at 3:30. So depressing. But only another few weeks to the Winter Solstice, and it will start getting light again.


I've been extremely busy with work recently - I'm being naughty tonight and having a night off. Lots of copy to write and projects to manage! But I really do love it. And I work with the most awesome people. Brendan has also been very very busy with his work, with two big projects. He's just bought the game Dragon Age and has been rather into that as well, leaving me with less choice for Christmas presents. ;)

I also have a new car so I can drive to work by myself! :) So we have two cars now as Brendan has the other one. It's grey and has a sunroof.

Right, time to leave you all with a photo of the River Thames taken from my work in November, right before all the leaves dropped off - I can look out the window at work and see this, although it's not usually as still and reflective.