Saturday 11th December

We're off to Bristol today for various reasons - partly as a little holiday surrounding the Godspeed You! Black Emperor gig we have tickets for tomorrow night, partly to visit Matt and Ellie and go to a house party with their friends Sam and Heather. The train leaves from Paddington at 11, so we get up fairly early and make our winding way through the tubes to the West London station, both feeling a little delicate and a bit snappy with each other.

We get some food for the train and find our seats quickly - and though I stick my laptop on (and have fun trying out using my phone as a portable wi-fi hotspot with the SSID name "train wifi is a rip-off" - you can't do that on iOS!) the journey is so quick and smooth that we're at Temple Meads before I quite know that we've left. It's immediately nice to be in Bristol, and it seems like a long time since I've visited. While we wait for Matt and Ellie to pick us up, we grab a little lunch and chill out in Wetherspoon's to use their wifi. The married couple soon arrive though and we head to Sam and Heather's house in St. Paul's.

The house party tonight has a "bad taste jumper" theme - and though I hate dressing up for parties K has at least managed to convince me to bring one of her more garish jumpers along to wear. The others are less prepared though, so we head towards Gloucester Road to do some charity shopping. The girls also want to go to Primark and New Look and the usual sort of the-same-clothes-shops-as-we-have-at-home-but-different-somehow shopping trip looks likely to ensue, but in a crushingly stereotypical Christmas shopping move, us boys get sent to the pub and out of the way. None of us are complaining of course, and we have a nice couple of jars while (shockingly) cooing over the new external hard drive that Sam has just bought from Maplins. I'm sure for some men this is done with cars or business cards or something.

After a couple of hours we head back to the house where the girls are waiting and Heather is getting some dinner sorted. We have a couple of bottles of beer and some tasty truffle-oil macaroni cheese (fancy) before heading out to a series of very nice, very well hidden local pubs.

Of course, by the time we actually arrive at the house party (probably somewhere around 9pm but who knows, really) I've had a fair few to drink and while I've made the sensible switch to wine, the majority of the event is something of a blur. I know I don't embarass myself too much (though I lose the silly jumper pretty quickly given the heat and business of the party) and we actually stay there til gone midnight, which never really looked on the cards. Eventually, K, Matt and I walk back to Sam and Heather's house, leaving Ellie and Sam partying on, and we roll out the futon in the living room to crash.