Christmas Letter 2005

Have a Happy Christmas if you like.

I have a theory that my years alternate between Adventures and Educations. 2004 with its dramas was clearly an adventure (if you've just tuned in: living with an unstable person in London who trashed the flat; meeting lots of new people, including Tom; going to Edinburgh on my own for the festival, moving back to York to live with Sandy, going to Italy for Christmas). This year, on the other hand, has been relatively peaceful, and definitively educational.

In January I re-established contact with my primary school best friend, Christina. We have been reminiscing ever since. The more we talk, the more I remember - it's amazing. Like the woman who used to set her poodles on us when we trespassed on her field to see the horses, and the time Christina kicked one of them as we were cycling off. Or the time I drew a caricature of one of our teachers and one of our other teachers found it. Or the time my mum was supply teaching the infants, and we sneaked into her classroom and drew smiley faces in all the "o"s on the blackboard. Or what about all those breaktimes we broke into the school hall just so we could have it all to ourselves to run around in circles playing "traffic lights". Happy days.

In February my Dad and Tracy were married and I got to attend my first wedding. Alistair did a great job as Best Man, and Tracy's son gave her away. Tracy's daughter Laura was bridesmaid, leaving me with no clear role. I was asked to do a reading, scheduled straight after the vows. I stood up and said "well, that's a hard act to follow," which got a good laugh. No respect, that's my trouble.

The week after the wedding, Tom and I moved in together in Cambridge where we treasured our whitewashed flat as a minimalist masterpiece for a while before eventually giving in and ordering a sofa. In the Spring, while working for a local IT recruiters, I received the unlikely information that I'd been accepted into Cambridge to do my Masters degree, and in the summer attended "Punt Con", after an invitation from BBC technology writer Bill Thompson, who'd found some version of me on the internet the day before. Tom was in Copenhagen at a conference, so I was at a loose end and decided to go along to this annual punting picnic for Cambridge geeks. It was weird but good.

Then in August we went to the Puglia in southern Italy to stay with Tom's family. It was great: sunny, beautiful clear water, amazing fresh produce. We spent a lot of time in the sea, which was perfect for me with my weak bladder. I took loads of photos then, as would become traditional in this year of creative experiments, ruined them all in iphoto before uploading them to Flickr. Soon after, we went to Edinburgh, camping again, for the festival. The weather wasn't amazing but we saw a few people we know, including ben doing his Coelacanth show, so that was good. He put his eye-patch on upside down, but we turned a blind eye. I enjoyed not flyering this time.

I took an awful lot of photos this year, and I'm pleased about that because it means I have a record of the things we did, the fun we had, the people, the weather, the haircuts... Which brings me to October, when I started writing regularly about fashion for several Cambridge magazines. (I've just organised and, I guess "directed" my first fashion-shoot. It's something I've dreamed of doing for a long time and, without wishing to sound like a complete twat, it felt like finally coming home. I really hope to do more of this soon) In October I also began my MPhil here. It's hard hard work, and I'll have no idea how I'm getting on till my results in January. Your next bulletin might be from the Job Centre.

In November, Dad and his family came up to visit for my birthday. We had dinner in a theme restaurant, we went punting, Dad fell in the river and had to walk all the way back to the car-park completely drenched.

So that's it. A fun year taking photos, playing house, watching films of varying quality, learning about Criticism and Culture, learning my ibook, learning the University Library, learning fashion, making stupid webpages, writing generic articles, experimenting, multi-tasking, washing my carpets, not caring so much about stuff, visiting people sometimes, but mostly staying in. Maybe next year will be an Adventure year and my theory will be substantiated. But the way things are now, I won't really mind if it's not.

Thanks for reading, make 2006 a good one.