worst. christmas. ever.

Back to work then, I guess.

As the title suggests it was a pretty rubbish Christmas period for me.

It started off poorly with a cold.  We had the company Christmas lunch quite late this year and unfortunately one of the work colleagues I sat next too brought a cold in.  It actually took me a couple of days for it to really kick in, so I guess there's the chance I got it from someone else, but if so, I don't know who that would be as I don't remember encountering anyone else with a cold then.

So the cold really kicked in on Friday, just in time for that first long weekend leading up into Christmas.  By Christmas day I was actually over the worst of it, but the weekend and the Monday I'd taken off weren't really all that fun, to be honest.

Although, as I say, I was over the worst of it fairly quickly, the tail end lasted ages and it was New Years day before I really felt it had started to clear up and the following week before it was properly gone, so that's three weeks total.

Christmas Day I went to my sisters.  This involved driving down on the day, which was rubbish for a couple of reasons.  Firstly it meant I had to get up early and couldn't really pootle - the journey was over 2 hours and I had to aim to get there a good while before lunch to be sure.  As you may remember the weather was pretty awful, with yet more flooding in the West Country and of course that's where I was heading.

I saw two accidents on the way down - it was pretty horrible weather for the first two thirds, but then weirdly (and I mean weirdly - it was like driving into another country) it suddenly brightened up and was actually fairly nice for the rest of the day.  As well as being poor weather it was also really busy - I mean, not rush hour stuff, but you wouldn't know it was Christmas Day.

The drive down was therefore quite tiring and I was already fairly knackered from the cold so I wasn't really very lively on the day itself.  My sister did a good job with the actual day itself - no complaints there - but next time we need to drive down the day before, though driving back on Boxing Day wasn't too bad, though I had to stop drinking quite early to make sure I'd be okay.

I saw about 5 accidents on the way back.  I'm assuming most were, if not caused by the weather, then it was a contributing factor.  This time of year some idiots drink and drive of course, so that may have been part of some of them.

The B&B was a bit naff - it clearly hadn't been decorated in decades (that or they're stuck in a 70s time warp) and the shower didn't work; she said they were getting the bathroom redone in a week.  It was well equipped, though - you could certainly use it as a base of operations if you were holidaying there, but it felt OTT for us just staying the night.

I was sharing with my Dad - something I'd rather have avoided and tried to do so, but as I think I've discussed the organisations side of it (or rather, the communication about the organisation) has not been great.  And it proved particularly problematic on this occasion, as my Dad was taken ill.

I won't go into too much detail, but essentially he was having some trouble and it meant he was constantly going to the toilet, which obviously didn't help with me getting to sleep (something I really struggle with anyway in unfamiliar surroundings).  At about 4AM I/we basically reached the conclusion he would need to go to hospital.  We're not talking life threatening, but medical assistance was needed as there was nothing we could do about the problem or the level of discomfort he was in without it.

Anyway, obviously neither of us know the local area, such as where hospitals are, so we tried NHS Direct.  They gave us the nearest one, but of course our cars were back at my sister, a good 20 minute walk away.  We therefore got dressed and headed off.

It became apparent during the journey that Dad would not be able to sit in my car (he couldn't sit at all, tbh) and also I pointed out Fay was still drinking quite late so she couldn't drive.  She could possibly direct me, but otherwise we would need to try to map read, which would likely make the journey longer than necessary.

Of course for my sister to direct we would need to wake her up, and with Dad not being able to sit we eventually decided to call an ambulance - I wanted to try directory enquiries and get the A&E but instead we used 999.

The ambulance actually arrived quite quickly and my sister went with him to hospital (I had a quiet word with her and explained I'd not slept at all and could barely see straight, let alone go to the hospital).  I therefore walked back to the B&B and tried to get some sleep.  Of course by then I was basically awake and only really had a small nap, which got me through the rest of the day as it was, but I felt awful.

Just to finish off - my Dad was essentially fine.  It wasn't really a life-threatening condition as such, it was just something he couldn't put up with and we had no way of sorting.