Hyper efficient post Christmas clean up this year. Despite a funfilled and very late New Year's eve -- reading with The Boy at 1:15am -- January 1st was spent de-decorating and felling trees. Not the fake one, the real McCoy. Out the front door, through the side passage and round the back by early afternoon. Much lopping ensued. Even managed to drag whole family out of the house for a runaround at the well-furnished Kingston fields of Woodbridge. Shame that Costa was just closing its doors at 4:10pm. Oh well, here's last month's Dolmio (Doings Of Last Month Innoparticular Order).

That is to say, an attempt to capture past(a) events before they slip... my... mind. December 2007 was spent:

• chortling to the really rather funny Bugle podcast with New York's John Oliver and London's Andy Zaltzman
• admiring the women of BBC's Cranford
• gawping at the (a) fake tree in the back room and the (b) real tree in the front
• wrapping late night presents watching Steve Coogan as Anthony H Wilson in 24 Hour Party People
• spending a fab Christmas at Onehouse playing games:
  • gripped by Blokus
  • tormented by The aMAZEing Labyrinth
  • engrossed by Ticket To Ride
• digging up photos of birthday cakes from the past 10 years
• replaying Randy Newman's Songbook
• putting the lights out at home for a creepy Murder In The Dark
• discovering how my imagination plays tricks in Stumbling On Happiness

And that was December 2007.