A New York Family Christmas

The only thing that bothers me about christmas each year is not being able to spend it with family. Not that we really celebrated christmas as a 'family' event while I was growing up. It's just that - well, watching everyone else go home to their families always makes me sad and nostalgic.

So at this time of the year, when everyone disperses homeward-bound to their respective families, friends still left behind become family.

This year, Ilajna, Azdadoobie and I threw ourselves into arranging Christmas festivities. What with Caveboy and Adle visiting at the moment, the apartment was already feeling full and festive. An impulsive last-minute invitation to Seagull, and our party was ready to rock and roll. The couple of days preceding Christmas were spent in a flurry of culinary panic, baking ginger cookies, christmas cake, rumballs and mulled wine, so by the time Christmas day finally rolled round, the scene was set for a veritable gustatory orgy.

Over an extended lunch at La Mangeoire, the six of us toasted to pretty much anything and everything possibly toast-worthy, even at a stretch. And Seagull's sage warning proved prophetic - the toasts really do degenerate into the ridiculous as the meal (and vino) progresses.

"To a five-floor walkup and a table that tells you whether you've put on weight over Christmas," Seagull toasted. "To Ilajna finally having curtains up," Caveboy toasted. Yep, that's pretty much a succinct description of our apartment in a nutshell.

On returning to the apartment, we proceeded to spend the rest of the evening playing charades, drinking games, imbibing shamelessly copious amount of alcohol and laughing so hysterically I do believe I've pulled a stomach muscle. I wouldn't venture a guess over the number of beers that somehow managed to find their way into my system (no fault of mine, mum & dad), but suffice to say the mere thought of beer causes involuntary shudders even as I write this entry today.

'Charades' put a new definition on how "The Eighth Wonder of the World" can be a two-word movie; 'Asshole' suddenly gave us an (alarming) glimpse of what kind of president Azdadoobie would make (boy, power is a scary thing!); 'Kings' taught me that if you're ever doing an alcohol waterfall, the only trick to survival is to position yourself after a weak drinker; and '21' made us realise that saying 'bizzy bizzy buzz bizz buzz buzz five bizzy bizzy buzz' can be remarkably intellectually challenging at 2 am. You know, even if we all have college degrees and all.

The next morning, as we sat around the breakfast table re-hashing the events of the night before, we were all looking a bit shaky and worse for the wear. But all of us agreed it had been a great Christmas.

"So... what about New Years? Are we all going to Keats together?!!" asked Ilajna, as we all looked at eachother with ill-concealed excited anticipation.