Slight concern over the weather, but the snow that fell this morning is melting nicely (well, it was while it was light and the warm(ish) - not sure what will happen now it is dark and cold), so I am hoping that this will continue. Current airport information is "do not travel to the airport unless you know that your flight is operating". That's all very well, but if it's going to take me at least 2 hours to get to the airport and I need to check in three hours before the flight, I really need to have six hours notice of whether the flight is going to operate.

I've got an extra day's holiday next year whoop whoop! When I booked my leave for the first week next year, I overlooked that 3 Jan is a bank holiday and booked annual leave for it.

The Aged took all my cheese away with him. Bloody cheek. I said that they could take most but to leave me the half-used pack of cheddar. I went to make myself a cheese roll on Wednesday and found that he had taken it all.

He also tuned my radio to Classic FM, so I spent an afternoon and evening listening to that. It was quite pleasant and I don't know why I don't listen to it more often. One of the pieces was a version of "a partridge in a pear tree" sung by Tenabrae. It was rather good (to my untrained ear). Generally it's not one of my favourite carols (probably because it is generally sung by drunks who forget half the words and end up in a fight over whether it is six geese a-swimming or six swans a-laying*). But this version is sung properly, with different parts of the carol sung by different parts of the choir etc. which is what the carol cries out for. So I've iTuned it and added to my Christmas play list - an eclectic mix of carols, classical and pop/rock, and some brass bands (because you can't have Christmas without a brass band). It doesn't appear to be on YouTube, so you'll have to trust my recommendation and download it yourself - 79p well spent. It was arranged by Rutter, which surprised me as it didn't sound like Rutter.

*Of course it is neither - it is six geese a-laying.

Still on the Christmas music theme, I went to a carol service last night. Yes it did have a band - though not a brass one. They played Pachelbel's Canon into which they had sneaked a bit of Jingle Bells (at least, I think they had sneaked it - will have to listen to it to make sure that it isn't there all along). An organ solo was Wachet Auf which (to my untrained ear), sounded a little rough at the edges. But it struck me that it can't be easy to play. Normally (to my untrained whatever) when playing a keyboard you hands either move more or less in the same direction and to the same time, or your left hand hits a few chords while your right hand plays the melody. But in Wachet Auf your hands play a different melody and in different time (or they may be the same time but the left hand plays notes for longer so it sounds to be slower). While your right hand plays dee-diddldee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-diddldee-dee-dee-dah-dah your left hand plays daaah-daaah-daaah-daaah-daaah-daaah-doooo-daaah. You'd have to have two brains to cope with that.

SJA Christmas party on Tuesday. It went well - no one stormed off in a huff, no one tried to remove clothing in public, no one had to be carried home, no one tried to destroy a mobile phone, and no one got injured. Yes, all these things have happened on previous drinking expeditions.

The deal was three drinks plus food for £10. But as some people didn't want three drinks, other people had more. Then the landlord found some promotional campaign that entitled us to another free drink (again, some people didn't want this and so passed their vouchers to those who did). We think we'll be allowed back into the pub next year. I'm glad I'd had the foresight to have a day off work on Wednesday.

Right, food time.