I looked at my watch. It couldn't only be 8.30pm. It must be at least midnight by now. But no, the evening was still reasonably young. My theory of relativity (that time moves more slowly when you spend it with your relatives) was once again proven right.

Not that I hadn't been having a good time. I had eaten and drunk until my skin started to burst at the seams and I had bantered with my nearest and dearest, helped with the washing up, played parlour games and even had a little sleep and yet still there was a good four hours until bed time. I wanted it to be over so that I could stop eating and drinking, but whilst there was still all that time to go I was going to have to have more beer, stuff more Quality Street into my mouth and pick at the crisps and nuts even though the idea of consuming any more was making me feel bilious.

I watched Love Actually which I have seen at least five times before and which I don't like, yet which seems to suck me in every time. I hate it and I love it. Or I love to hate it. I love to be emotionally manipulated by it and it always nearly makes me cry (and once a few years ago when I was a little emotionally vulnerable it made me weep so hard that I thought I may never stop crying - but I think that was more to do with me than the film). It went on forever and I watched every second and it made me feel dirty and wrong, but at least by the time it was over it was nearly bed time. Even though I had had two or three large gin and tonics in the mean time and the back of my throat was already burning from the alcohol.

I was very much looking forward to stopping eating and stopping drinking and losing some of the huge amount of weight I have put on during the last three months (and the huge extra amount I had put on today).

This festival of greed usually manages to send me back on to the path of abstinence for at least a few weeks afterwards (though that is slightly screwed up by the fact that I am going on holiday for a fortnight on Wednesday).

Tomorrow, I vowed, I would run round the resevoir, but would I?

God Bless Us Every One!

How Jesus must enjoy watching us stuff ourself to the point of sickness as he also watches half the world starving.

No wonder he doesn't intervene when people try to push over the Pope.

Though if the person had done that had any sense of cosmic balance they would have attacked him with a model of the Italian parliament.

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