Well, I'm now off work until the New Year (my extraordinary four-week break in October having meant I still had three weeks of my usual holiday allowance to use up, which was nice), and very much in the spirit of my recently hectic social life I've celebrated the start of this holiday with a weekend in which I've barely stopped moving for 48 hours.

It started early, with Vicky's birthday do on Friday night. The Sala Thong is a particularly nice Thai restaurant that I hadn't known about before, and in spite of taxis this weekend being utter doom I managed to get there, get to Vicky's afterwards and get home thanks to lifts from Colin and Becky (consecutively), so I owe both of them drinks.

Saturday morning was Christmas shopping, in which I wandered around shops trying desperately to find something - anything - which jumped out at me and screamed the name of someone I should buy it for, but nothing whatsoever did so and I came home empty-handed (well, apart from one or two small presents for myself). Then to the Gallery for lunch and to say hi to Liz, with the secondary purpose of collecting Gareth and Mary to give them lifts back to mine for the semi-regular B5 session in the afternoon. After watching B5 I drove them back to the Gallery, and ate supper there (because it was where I happened to be) before bombing off down the M11 to go to the Crystal-and-Kent spodparty in the evening. Which was nice, at least until the hecticness caught up with me around half past eleven and I found myself lacking the energy to start conversations any more. Fortunately I had presciently stayed sober, in order to be able to drive home immediately for what turned out to be an outstandingly good night's sleep.

Today the Gallery and friends have celebrated Christmas, on the grounds that the 25th is such an inconvenient time to do so because everyone's off visiting their families; so that was good too (and the Gallery's Christmas dinner is still second to none). My social calendar has now run out, but tomorrow I have to make my way back to the Gallery to rescue the car (since I was way too drunk to even think about driving it home), so it's not quite over yet.

I think perhaps I'll spend the rest of tomorrow in serious sofa therapy. The need is beginning to become urgent...