Hope anyone who happens to read this had a good Christmas.  Our family had a lovely time with Maureen cooking us all a lovely dinner - quite an achievement considering the traumas of last Christmas when she was seriously ill in hospital.  It was a fairly quiet time but just nice to be with our close family and enjoy the children's excitement.

The worst thing is that my central heating system broke down on Christmas Eve.  It had been making funny noises for a week or so and finally gave up the ghost - it's a fairly new system - only three years old so I don't know what the problem is.  I do know it is a real problem trying to find a gas engineer over the Christmas period, especially one that doesn't charge the earth!  We have someone coming maybe tomorrow or if not Tuesday, so it's been a bit of a struggle trying to keep warm, luckily we have an electric immersion heater as a standby so we do have hot water.  Still, I'm sure there are people who have been far worse off than me this Christmas so I'm not complaining too much.