It's raining, it's pouring!

Well to cheer you folks in Blighty up, it has been absolutely peeing it down for the last twenty four hours and isn't forecast to stop for any length of time for a few days - so you may have a cold Christmas and we may be having a wet Christmas (safety tips on barbequing inside anyone? JOKE!)

We went to a carol concert on Sunday night which was just surreal - summer's evening sat on a rug in shorts and t-shirt singing carols - bizzare!

I keep playing carols at home to try and remind myself that it is less that a week 'til Christmas, but it's not sinking in yet.

The good news is that having had a couple of companies being interested, but not being quick off the mark with interviews, I was offered the job that I was interviewed for last week, to start in the New Year, which is good as there are still bills to pay in the UK as the house sale hasn't gone through yet - keep getting told that there are no problems, it's just the mortgage company for the purchasers has a backlog and only works two days a week, but it's still slightly disconcerting that things haven't completed yet. This will be the first time in my working life that I won't spend anything on commuting - it's ten mins walk down the road.

It's going to be strange not seeing everyone at Christmas this year, although we'll try and catch up with as many people as possible via email/messenger/skype/carrier pigeon as possible.

We went to Napier at the weekend and went to Marineland - which sounds impressive, but it's not, but I did get to hold a penguin and have my photo taken so that was quite groovy.

There is the option to swim with their one dolphin, but you're basically only allowed in their tank, you're not allowed to touch it, so I figured that I would rather wait and swim with them in the wild. That may be a late Christmas present with my first pay check.

We've been invited to a big Maori family gathering between Christmas and New Year, so I'm looking forward to that and intimidated by it in equal measures - there will be about 50 of one of Dave's colleagues family there - no pressure!

Hope that you're all keeping well and that the cold isn't causing too many problems.

Get emailing, people!!!!!!