Merry Christmas, Abba

Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting in the Tabard Pub in Chiswick waiting for Nathan to emerge from his show. The car is crammed full of Christmas presents and we’ll soon be leaving for my parent's house in Thaxted. I’m excited about Christmas this year. Bizarrely it’s going to be the first time in our 8 ½ year relationship that Nathan and I will have been together on the big day. I’m looking forward to stuffing my gills with good food and playing some legendary games.


The Tyndarids are currently sitting in Nathan’s dressing room. I hope they’re not scaring any of the cast. I’m never quite sure why people have issues with rats, but at the same time I’d hate to think the boys were frightening someone. As we carried them in their cage through Chiswick to the theatre, people were literally stopping in their tracks. I thought one guy was actually going to fall off his bicycle! Surely two rats in a cage are not that strage or terrifying a sight?

I ensconced myself in a corner in the pub, opposite a lovely group of Anglo-Swedes, who were buying scratch cards from the Newsagents opposite, and strangely, winning every time! Initially, they won two pounds, which they spent on two more cards, and won £10 on them, so off they went to buy another 10 cards. By the time I was forced to leave my cosy corner in the search of a power supply, they’d won £17! Merry Christmas, ABBA!

Sadly, the only power source I could find was in a much draughtier place where a deeply neurotic woman, who works in “media, dahhling” was talking far too loudly. She was so far away from me that I actually started to wonder if she'd been amplified somehow. She seemed to be a deeply bitter woman and did nothing but spread poisonous gossip whilst slagging her work colleagues off. All at the top of her voice. I now know everything about a “dreadful bitch” in her office who spends all her time, either at work, or training for marathons. Men apparently love her, but the shouter, whom I know to be 35, and already considering herself to be a spinster, wonders why on earth men would find a woman attractive who spends all her spare-time keeping fit. She had one of those ghastly Australian accents which had slid towards Sloane to mark her status as an honourary Brit. She talked a lot about Bovril and was telling the guys she was sitting with that they had to set her up with all their friends. Her list of requirements for men, however, were so ludicrous that I doubt she’ll ever be more than a self-confessed spinster. At least until she learns to talk more quietly.


I wished that I was still sitting opposite the Anglo-Swedes to find out how much money they’d made on the scratch cards, but by the time I returned, they'd gone. Maybe they'd won the jack pot!
Christmas Eve 1660, and it was announced that the Princess Royal had died at Whitehall. Pepys had some workmen in (again) and spent the afternoon watching them painting the arch around his front door. Once they’d gone, he started to decorate his house, in preparation for Christmas Day. Just as I’d hoped! The Puritans had gone, and Christmas was back!!