Ian has been working hard to fix my post formatting after Sam's complaint, but sadly it looks as though I can't make my posts wide enough if I post from my phone. So you'll just have to put up with any variation.

I'm at home in Castleconnell now, resting after a busy week. We arrived in Llanfachraeth on Tuesday evening last week. On Wednesday we took a little trip to Bangor so I could try to buy Andy a present (to make up for most of his pressies now arriving) but couldn't find what I wanted. It was a little sad visiting Bangor - never much of a metropolis, there are a lot more boarded up shops now than when we left. It was cold and wet, too, with no students around. But the University was still there (although Merfyn is retiring soon). I visited a new bookshop, where I found a copy of David Roberts' book about the University (I'm afraid I was too cheap to buy it - it's £30) and, most bizarrely, a calendar with lots of members of Friends of Treborth posing naked in Treborth. I nearly bought a copy just because I didn't think people would believe me otherwise, but I didn't.

Andy joined me once he'd been to Tesco and Majestic. He asked where to park, and of course my natural reaction was to say 'under the Union' as that's where we always parked. Fully expecting it to be closed, I thought I'd just check while I was waiting for him to arrive, and lo! it wasn't going to close for Christmas for another half hour. So we got to see some sabbs and lots of staff, which was lovely. It was our first time back in that building since we left, and will probably be our last as it'll be knocked down soon. My office looks very different: Tom is much neater than me, and it is definitely a boy office now. It was lovely to see Pat, Teresa, Dawn and Alison too as we hadn't seen them last time we were in the area.

Andy's rellies mostly arrived that evening. Meals with 18 people are more like feasts, taking several hours by the time everyone has received their food, sat down at the table and actually eaten. It was good fun but very exhausting having that number of people around, particularly on Christmas Day. Andy and I did most of the cooking, which was fine; what was stressful was the fact that each person came in at least twice to offer to help! Very kind of them, but saying "No, we're fine" 32 times is a bit wearisome, so eventually we recruited Matt to ward off any further offers of help. But the meal turned out very well - the duck in a turkey, or durkey (apparently one doesn't call it a turdey or a turd) was delicious.

The weather in Wales was dramatically different to anywhere else: very clear blue skies and completely flat calm on the first two days. It was a bit cold, but at 6 degrees much warmer than Ireland or Yorkshire, and no snow or frost or ice at all. I was very keen to swim and the water looked very inviting on the 23rd and 24th, but it got windy on Christmas Day and there wasn't really an opportunity between all the Christmassy activities and the cooking. By Boxing Day lethargy had set in and anyway the weather was much worse.

On Sunday we got the ferry to Dun Laoghaire, where we met Mum, Dad, Ian, Pippa and Leavy. We headed to Rockspring to see Granny and Grandpa. Phelie, Brian and Jenny stopped by too which was lovely. Grandpa's second volume of memoirs has been printed and bound. I was fascinated to discover that Mum's year in Nigeria when she was little should have been two years, but Grandpa got caught up in a huge controversy over the appointment of a new vice-chancellor of the University of Lagos and was sent home. I'd link to articles about it, but it is all archived content in old newspapers which you have to pay for. There's a whole academic paper on the subject here. Mum was on the front page of The Times because of it.

After meeting Isolde and Tony for a quick drink at Lamb Doyle's, we headed home, where we opened lots of lovely presents, then ate delicious pie. We're due to have more pie (game, this time) on New Year's Day, yum.

It's wet and cold here at the moment so Mum, Ian, Andy and I are sitting in the big room in front of the fire, each of us with our own laptop. Ah, the modern world.