Sunday 23 December 2012

Festive run-up

The final week at school is generally a write-off. Not that work is much different: productivity takes a dip. There was a review of our function of late but fortunately there appears to be no redundancies amongst my peers. There are a few IT roles going though, almost entirely through voluntary redundancy. As ever it is unsettling, especially as more and more well-kent faces with Standard Life experience leave the building.

The schools broke up on Thursday lunchtime. A few mums and a good few kids went to the cinema to see the Rise of the Guardians. It was Angus's first trip to the cinema. Unlike his brothers who did not distinguish themselves on their cinematic debuts, Angus sat happily in the dark and the noise and munched on his sweeties. That made up for him missing out on his concert and nursery parties as his cough and cold kept him at home all week.

Stuart and Lesley came over for tea and an exchange of gifts on the Friday evening then I went out to them on the Sunday afternoon as Angus had fallen asleep in the car and we decided to give him a decent nap.

Earlier on the Sunday we had headed into the city centre for a brunch at the Edinburgh Larder deli in Blackfriars St (Black Bo's in days gone by). I enjoyed my GF bacon sandwich and celeriac soup and the boys ate up too. We walked from there to the Festival Theatre to see The Snowman, the boys' present courtesy of their Irish aunties and Nana and Papa. There is so much stuff in the house these days that these sorts of presents are appreciated by us, if not necessarily by the boys. They were attentive enough, although seemed to enjoy running around the upper cirle during the interval more, Angus flipping seats up and down everywhere he went, running into boxes and generally giving Sharon heart failure every time he went near the edge of the balcony. It was his theatre debut, following on from the cinematic experience two days' previously. Finn preferred the talking of the panto to the mime and music of The Snowman but Sean had keen eyes for the dancing, of which there was plenty. Rowan and Sean liked trying to spot the set changes whenever it went dark. Overall it was very well done, with the snow cascading from the roof at the end a fitting finale to set us up for Christmas.

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