Christmas comes but once a year - and that’s fine by me!

I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas; in fact, I find it overindulgent, over expensive, and overrated. More than anything though, it’s the sickly pretence of the day that always puzzled me – we shower or families in lavish gifts, hand out a few awkward thankyou’s, smiles and hugs, only to later argue with said family over something completely trivial, because deep down we feel bitter and bored by the whole charade! Even wrapped in tinsel, does our affection on the 25th make up for the other 364 days of neglect...

Having said that, this Christmas I returned home for the first time in 5 years, and I genuinely had a lovely time. My family were angels, I didn’t eat too much of the wonderful food, and was even lucky enough to climb my oldest hard grit project on a crisp, snowy Boxing Day. It was awelcome surprise to feel so solid and in control on something which had once felt so hard. Infact, the last time I tried the route in question, there was on move entirely that i could not do – so big big changes are happening!

5 days at home really did seem like too little time – all thanks to the magic of the man in red (or should that be Jesus, I never really know). Wow, those are unexpected words from a notorious scrooge ;)

I’ll do my best to write a detailed description at somepoint soon, but as you might have realised from reading past blogs, I am a little bit behind the times, so will first try to catch up with tales of an unexpected Moroccan adventure...

Stay Tuned...