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Long week all told, busy at work so that meant stopping in Telford. Not a massive hardship as it does present some perks. Admittedly the perks revolve around watching eggheads, having a lie in till the giddy time of 7am and a different set of faces on the bus both too and from my parents house.

As you can see here, it was packed…

Other than that there is no broadband, no Sky TV and I didnt get to see Lisa every evening stood on the step of our house waiting for my return like a ruddy faced 50’s housewife.

I won’t bore you with the details of work, as you don’t care, well I assume that you don’t care as the people that tend to stumble on this blog do so via the words Tenacious and Documentary, so I assume that they are more interested about the D than they are about my week spent at work and my thoughts on idiot savant Peaches Geldof.

Briefly about work, we got all the main testing done and he saw that it was good, we got a little tinkering to do and tidying up, “regression” its called but hopefully we are putting this April release to bed. Did I actually say putting to bed???

Other news, hmm, not much really, wasn’t at home this week so know very little, oh Jo, my friend, she found out that she wasn’t going to be redundant so thats a good thing, in a couple of weeks I find out if I am, the time for worrying about that has long passed.

Last night was pretty good. Lovely to see a lot of relatives I hadn’t seen in quite some time. Notably my cousins and they have children now who I pretty much had never seen. My own siblings kids see to be growing up also.

It was an alcohol free affair for me and Lisa, due entirely to the diet, oh I lost another 6lbs this week. So all in all a good weekend so far.

We are off to Telford today, for a family gathering. I may take pictures. It will actually be very good to see pretty much all of my relatives barring my own parents who are in Ras el Khaima.

Yesterday, first day back at work was pretty much uneventful in the end, I am in a job that is reliant on other people delivering things, and quite frankly these boys didnt deliver so there was a whole bunch of thumb twiddling.

Did speak to the parents yesterday, they return to Ras al-Khaimah today, it really has been nice to see them to be honest, we only had one night round their house over Christmas but it was fun and they didnt subject us to Last night of the proms, let me tell you that was a long night.

So today, unsure, hopefully I can do some work, hopefully.

Tonight we will be having a little drunky dancing to usher in the new year. Ordinarily this will be round Jon and Lizs, but this year it involves me, Lisa, a couple of bottles of wine and our dining room. I guess we dont have to wander across the marsh’s to get home and if we do get a little tired as we invariably do, we can sneak off to bed before big ben chimes.

All I really have to do now is select some top music for tonight for us to throw some shapes to.

My beautiful wife decided that all the little rosette things off presents would look nice on her head on Christmas day.

This is my Niece.

Last night was to the parents then, I didnt drink much and a great night was had by all. We laughed and really it was enjoyable. My parents had very flash Christmas crackers and in one of them was a really nice salt and pepper set that we ARE going to steal. We also chuckled that my mum had a nice flash phone for Xmas and as she couldnt find a holder for it she is using a Pokemon case, very funny.

Time for me to get all Arkwright, its been a funny old year,  first of all festival wise. I made the move away from Leeds and Reading and if it hadnt have been for Latitude it would have been a break from Mean Fiddler and their ilk. 2008 is shaping up to be more like 2007 but certainly not the major ones that depressed me so much.
It was a really enjoyable year for festivals, the rain hardly effected me and when it should have, it didnt, it never bothered us at all. The festivals we did attend, we met some lovely people who I hope I will see at some point in 2008, they not only made me feel welcomed, but also my wife.
Musically, away from festivals at the start of the year I spoke about a gig hiatus, well we almost stuck to it, we saw Hips like cinderella twice, the cribs once and nofx once, which for us is pretty good going. Outside of gigs, the cribs or the view produced my favourite new albums of the year, the evangenitals and pullover did as well, 4 albums I have played considerably. Best festival performance could be the glitzy baghags at Workhouse or Camera obscura at Latitude, just because they played almost the entirety of their last album.

Favourite festival this year would be workhouse or shambala, the line up for the former, everything else at the latter.

Personally 2007 was a really bad year outside of festivals and music, but its only bad in my world, my dog got ill and cost us a couple of thousand to put right and the small print of the insurance policy meant that we could only claim 250. Lisas mum went into hospital for alcohol related illness, where she remains to this day, and you know a few other things. But in the end, its all ok really.

Found out in November that I could be redundant in the new year, so I am realtively focused these days.

And thats about it, an ok 2007, lots of room for improvement, a few highs, shambala, workhouse, my kid starting uni, pullover recording a new album. A fair few lows, but all in all, a good 2007.

Here’s to 2008, hope you and yours have a good Christmas and a fairly stunning 2008.

Have I started a load of entries recently with “I am really busy”? I am though, honest, its all I can do to make a move on Scrabulous, but I find time.
I had my end of year review which was really positive, odd that I recall early on in the year how much I really didnt think testing was for me, seems a change of teams was the ticket. Still the spectre of redundancy hangs over us but I am happier now that I have had my review and they essentially said Peter, you are ace.
Christmas presents are pretty much all bought, a few more small items for Lisa, probably a jumper and the odd CD, nothing huge though, ooh that reminds me, we still have stuff to buy for Pippa.
Outside of all that I am clutching at straws as to what I have been up to, working, yep, I know that, ooh, the tree went up as ever on December the first, and I also note that the village near us has most of its lights up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haughton,_Staffordshire

Haughton is a village that my bus takes me through twice a day and every Christmas it seems like the whole village dress their houses with lights and the like and they put collection buckets out for charity, they raise quite a bit for such a small place, but anyway, they have most of their lights up.