Twixtmas and New Year’s Eve In Noddyland, 1 January 2017

Janie demonstrates the use of an infeasibly large tennis racket to defend an infeasibly small court

Where does a week like that go?

We had planned to go to the flickers on Boxing Day, but due to my self-inflicted bloating from the previous day in Paradise we decided to defer that visit until New Year’s Day – the next Ogblog piece will cover that visit – this one’s about Twixtmas.

Ah yes, Twixtmas. Everything has to have a name these days, or more accurately in this case, a marketing term.

Janie and I have long enjoyed Twixtmas, without knowing that the week between Christmas and New Year even had a name.

As long as the weather isn’t too cold/icy, we normally play tennis during that whole period; Christmas Day itself and Twixtmas, as indeed we did this year. Even my feeling of indisposition did not stop me from turning out (and competing) at the appointed hour on Boxing Day.

Bank Holiday Tuesday was a lot colder and too frosty to play; just as well, really, because Janie had got her dates a bit muddled and booked some work that day. I decided I might as well go back to the flat, exercise at the gym and do some work that day too. Janie hadn’t booked work for the Friday, so we decided simply to swap the Tuesday for the Friday.

We had a brace of titanic tennis battles Friday and Saturday; on both occasions we played for well over an hour and called it a draw at 6-6. But on Sunday Janie was unstoppable, making me fight and fight (often as not in vain) to hold my serve. Still, I kept the set going a full hour, we had fun and we got good exercise, which is mostly what it is about. Mostly.

What else did we do?

We both worked a bit.

We watched A Taste of Honey, the movie, which somehow Janie had never seen, then discussed teenage pregnancy for a while.

We had the next door neighbours, Joy and Barry (one side) plus Marcie (the other), in for drinks and “nibbles” (no-one wants dinner after Janie’s nibbles) on the Friday evening.

We watched a few episodes of the Attenborough Planet Earth II  over the week. We recorded the series when it was broadcast, but we normally make very little time for TV. These Planet Earth II programmes really are the bees knees. Indeed, if the programme makers wanted to show us close ups of bees knees, I’m sure they would.

We had a quiet evening in for New Year’s Eve, just as we like it. I think we watched one of those Attenboroughs and then both went to sleep an hour or so before midnight. Needless to say, we didn’t notice the leap second which added fractionally to the very end of 2016.

I Ogblogged a lot during Twixtmas, mostly working on my 2008 retrobogging. I did at one time consider writing Ogblog pieces describing the Ogblogging that I am doing, but came to the conclusion that even my loyalist readers (I include myself in that category) might draw the line at that degree of post-modern, geeky detail.

Janie can even hit the ball infeasibly well off the wrong foot, although only occasionally does so in the heat of battle.