Welcome to the new regime. It's kinda quiet here as no-one else is up yet. Today I return to work and part of me will embrace the old routine, but most of me will wish I was still off. That said, Sally and I had a flaming row on Saturday and there's still a bit of residual tension around, so maybe we could do with a break from each other.

I finished up the holiday season by going drinking on Saturday and it wasn't a very special night or anything, but enjoyable nonetheless. I ate the most delicious chicken kebab I've ever tasted, which is a sure sign that I'd had enough to drink.

My return home yesterday involved taking a bus -- something I haven't done for a long time -- and I was pleased that I had managed to get the express which got me home as fast as I would have driving myself; and given that I was tired and hungover, being driven was probably an excellent thing.

When I got home, there was no-one there and I set about making amends for the row by cleaning up. I took down one of the trees and vacuumed and tidied the toys and re-arranged some furniture and generally got our main living space back to normal. All that remains of christmas now is the other tree in the front room, but that's Anna's responsibilty and I was glad I left it as Paddy was very annoyed that the other tree had gone and was consoled by the continued presence of the remaining one.

And so to work. I'll have a fortnight's worth of email to plough through and I have a meeting on Thurday to prepare for (which requires another early morning trip to the airport -- when will they build an airport on the southside?). There'll be some christmas post mortems over breakfast in the canteen and a few 'Happy New Year's scattered around and that will be that. All done until October 20th or thereabouts, when we'll hear the first christmas advertisment.