God, look at this place - I haven't redesigned since I first started writing, four years ago - and I haven't changed links or sidebar stuff in ages. Floella's still there, randomly popping up in the arched window, and really I'm a bit sick of it.

Back to parties, anyway.

So Ginah - very kindly - invited me to her house in suburban Surbiton for Christmas day.

I'd always seen this little bit of my family as being a bit alien to me. I'm down-to-earth airforce/Northern stock, a bit lower middle class, semi-aspirational, but creative and artistic - bohemian aspirational I guess, with airs of self-loathing. Ginah's family always seemed very Capital U Upper Middle Class, public school malarky and a bit airs and graces.

Take the house in Surbiton for instance.

Before this year I think I'd only ever visited a couple of times. I went about three or four years ago, after accompanying my Nan to my Great-Aunt's funeral, awkwardly meeting second cousins that I'd not seen for fifteen years.

Very run of the mill Tom'n'Barbara semi-detatched Surbiton. The house is all hanging basket sweetness, actually not at all grandiose from the outside, warm and lived in on the inside. Makes me think of The Borrowers for some reason.

You go through the house, into the living room and adjacent dining room with patio doors. So far so average. But then you see it - there, at the bottom of the narrow unexceptional garden...

The Thames.

I mean, who has the river Thames at the foot of their garden? They've got a little jetty for chrissakes! They can go ponting or yachting or whatever it's called.

"Just popping down to Waitrose in the gondola dear," my godmother Ginah would say, and off she'd row, coming back with grocery bags laden with fois gras and expensive cheeses.

Getting to know my godmother's family this year has been an eye-opener for me however. She's got two kids - my second cousins - Christina and Phillip, and nothing better demonstrates how much of a class coal-face their family is on than them.

Christina is a single mother, with a cute lil baby boy called Cameron. She doesn't work as far as I know, apart from a few bits of irregular cleaning and pub work. She's absolutely lovely, wouldn't be out of place in my sister's circle of friends, very down-to-earth and charming.

Phillip however - well, Phillip is an ex-olympic rower who went to public school, and is now club liason officer for rowing teams in the South-West. Case closed. He's a nice guy, but a class apart.

Well, anyway, I'm not slagging them - the interesting part this year has been finding out how much I like them all. The main reason I declined the invitation is because I don't want to be the guy who didn't have anything better to do. The thought of a family Christmas gets me down, because it reminds me that I can't have the family Christmas I would love to have.

So I had Christmas by myself for the third year running, and you know, I enjoy it that way.

posted at 10:59 AM •

Right, well, more writing.

So, I'm managing to bring you a little up to speed with what I've been up to through the medium of 'parties I didn't go to' - so I will continue in that vein.

Xmas party number two that I didn't go to was an invitation from my Godmother, Ginah.

Ginah - she's my first cousin once removed on my Father's side of the family (I think that's right) - a bit of my family I know pretty much nothing about - mainly because there's not that many of them and they're scattered about a bit. Normally I don't have much to do with the few of them I know - for no good reason, although it does always make me think of my Dad, which is weird for me as he died over 20 years ago.

This year something changed though, and I found myself getting a bit closer to Ginah and one or two other members of my long departed Dad's side of the family.

My 84 year old Nan (Grandmother) got diagnosed with cancer.

She'd been suffering with back and joint pain for quite a while, and following a tumble got taken to hospital where they ran a battery of tests on her. Eventually they found secondary cancer of the bones, and stopped running tests. Not really much to be done other than manage the pain and make her comfortable.

Ginah phoned me and gave me the news. I'd just left the gym when she called me on my mobile and told me. It's a weird feeling to have lost both your parents and then to lose an elderly grandparent last of all. It's sad, but it's not tragic - she's 84, she's lived a pretty full life - in fact she's done remarkably well considering she had TB back in the 40s, has only one lung as a result, and now has type 2 diabetes.

At first I went out to see her every Sunday. She was in hospital in Farnborough at first - and really, looked like she had a few weeks left. Then they moved her to a hospice in nearby Farnham, where she plateauxed. She went from rapidly deteriorating to not-getting-any-worse in the space of a few weeks, and so from there she's been moved back to her own home, with nurses popping in twice a day, me once a week when I can make it, and my Godmother and sort-of-step-cousin going round regularly.

It's kinda tough going for me, but obviously it's no picnic for her. It's a seven hour roundtrip for me on a Sunday, East London to Aldershot. I bring her a Sunday Express and a Take A Break, make us a cup of tea, tell her what news I can come up with for ten or fifteen minutes, and then she usually drifts off. She's on a constant dose of morphine - it comes in transdermal patches now would you believe - and says she's not in any pain.

There's no big emotional to-do, she's never been one for big displays of emotion. I call when I'm not going to visit, and she sounds disappointed - but then, she has the lowering intonations of a West Midlands accent (that I didn't even realise she had until a couple of years ago - you just don't think about these things do you?), "Oh hello Ste-vie" she says, lowering the tone on the "Ste-vie" - and I think, gawd I'm such a terrible grandson. I go out to see her, manage the ordeal of trudging through the military shithole that is Aldershot town centre, out into the Daily Mail heartland of suburban leafy Aldershot, and I think, that's another week done, I don't have to visit for another week or two, and I think, gawd, I'm such a terrible grandson.

posted at 11:23 AM •

Must... try... to... write...

Ugh, I'm insanely out of practice here, and my poor little brain is screaming "I'm too busy to blog" at me, which we both know isn't true. I've been sitting around for the last three days, staring at the walls/teevee/peecee with very little passing through my brain.

Of course, it hasn't always been like that. So, I have been thinking of starting up again for, um, well, the best part of the year. Didn't know where to begin.

Do I tell you about what's been going on? Nah, I can't do that without sounding monumentally miserable, and truth be told I'm not feeling monumentally miserable. A little maudlin at the moment, but then Christmas day by yourself will do that.

Not that I didn't have offers, oh no, I had lots of offers, just not the ones I wanted.

I did get invited to Xmas with my sister, common-law-brother-in-law and darling kiddie-winks, Ella and Lewis (which coincidentally, doesn't make my sis and partner Jazz fans - they just liked the names - not so much of a coincidence, more of an anti-coincidence, or something).

I visited the family and kiddie-winks just over a month ago. They're now in a new house, all jumped up the property ladder, three bedroom, semi-detatched, proper married with kids like. Except they're not married, and bedroom #3 is little more than a hole in the front of the house. "Here's where you're sleeping Steve", says sister, indicating an unplastered third world hovel with no skirting, and a multitude of insects crawling around. No shit I think - I'll take the dining room floor thanks.

So, while watching the kiddie-winks faces light up at 4am on Xmas day while they bounce on Uncle Steve's face and legs might be some people's idea of heaven - it's not mine.

Besides which, my last attempt at gift purchasing for the nephew resulted in 3 hours of terrified howling and nappy wetting (it was a TOMY plane for chrissakes, ok, yes, the snapping beak thing is a little unsettling, but god you could at least show a little gratitude you ungrateful brat). For Xmas I decided he needs toughening up, so I got him the DVD of Watership Down, complete with horrifying bunny with menacing teeth on the cover. Hell, if I'm gonna scare the kid, at least do it properly.

So, where was I? Oh yes, too busy to blog. More of that later, when I feel less, um, not-busy.

posted at 8:17 AM •

Surely you can just restart, and people will pretend not to notice the hiatus. they've all done it themselves...

Hello again.

posted at 11:04 AM •