There are not many things that will get me out of bed at 6am when I am on holidays but, on the morning of Christmas Eve that is exactly what Smelly and I did.  Up at 6am and on the road by 7am for a road trip down to the Pembrokeshire Coast where we had hired a cottage for the four days over Christmas along with Smelly’s brother (Peter) and his girlfriend (Erin)

And as far as Christmas breaks go, it was exactly what was needed.  Christmas Eve was very laid back and relaxed with Peter and Erin cooking up enough Pasta to satisfy even the hungriest of Seagulls – and all four of us managing to go through copious amounts of wine while we relaxed in front of the fire.

Christmas Day definitely started off far more energetically with Peter and Erin heading down to the beach so that Peter could catch a few waves (don’t ask, I don’t get the whole surfing in the friggin freezing either…) and Katie and I headed out for a quick walk before coming back so that I could get the Christmas dinner in the oven.  Of course halfway through preparing the Christmas turkey, I realised that the butcher had stuffed our turkey breast with some manky run of the mill stuffing and NOT the gourmet (pronounced gor-met of course) stuffing that I had spent half of Monday making.   Thankfully I had brought left over stuffing to roast – and so commenced operation re-stuff…  there were Katie and I, with our hands stuffed halfway up a turkey not only trying to pull out the manky commoners stuffing but also trying to get my Parma-ham-wrapped-gourmet stuffing back up the turkey’s clacker.  Thankfully this was not caught on film as I am sure if anyone had walked in the wrong impression definitely would have been given – although one of the toasts over Christmas dinner did end up  being “Up ya turkey, good stuffing” (Instead of the usual antipodean “Up ya bum, no babies”). And after a rather civilised dinner and present opening, I think it is fair to say that it all went downhill from there – in a very big way. As in two to three cases of wine big way…

The other main highlight was going out to explore the ruins of St. Davids.  Generally it is here that I would talk about the beauty and architecture of the place but that (un)fortunately was not the highlight of the trip.  The highlight was me deciding to get all religious and pay my respects and well, I suppose you could say “seeing the light”.  You see, when we were walking through the main cathedral, still all wrapped up in our winter coats, I decided to light a candle and say a parayer for a friend of mine, Kara, that passed away a few years ago.  Yep, not doing that again anytime soon…  Having lit the candle and sent  my thoughts heavenwards, I decided that the candle needed to be repositioned only to be greeted with an oddly smoky smell.  Yes kids, I had managed to set myself on fire.  There we were in the house of God, with me flapping my faux-fur covered arm around and blowing on my arm in between gasps of “shit shit shit”

And whilst there are (thankfully) not any photos of me trying to act as a human fire extinguisher, the rest of the photos from our Christmas road trip and overindulgence can be seen here – just click on one of the four galleries to see the mischief that we got up to

Anyway, I hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year