It’s been a week since my Christmas party, and I must admit I haven’t had much free time to update this website. Like everyone else, I find myself inundated with things to do this time of year, and not enough hours in the day to get them all done.

We’ve finally finalised our plans for the Christmas holidays. Aude’s parents and brother will come here for Christmas, then we’ll all head to the south of France for the New Year’s celebrations. While we’re in France, we’ve arranged to spend some time at a spa.

Which has become the subject of much ridicule. Aude and I were looking through the list of treatments available. With her help and translation, I booked what we both thought was a unisex massage. Except it wasn’t. Apparently, the massage that I thought I wanted turns out to be a ‘draining massage designed for overweight women’. See, you never realised what dangerous territory these international relationships could be!

I’m afraid I haven’t got much exciting to report over the past week. Last weekend was mainly filled with running errands and doing last-minute Christmas shopping. Aude and I went out for tapas on Saturday night and brunch on Sunday morning, but that’s about as wild as our weekend got. Oh, and I got most of my Christmas cards sent…

The rest of my week has been extremely busy at the office. I managed to make it back to Canterbury on Wednesday night for a Christmas celebration with several of my old colleagues from Pfizer, and was rewarded by catching an eye infection (diagnosis to follow – I’m off to the doctor this afternoon to have it checked out).

Still, it’s nearly Christmas, and I guess I should consider myself lucky to have been chosen as Rudolph’s trusty sidekick. He’s the red-nosed reindeer, and I’m the red-eyed consultant. It’s just a damned shame that the fluffy animals get all the credit.