Newstead Abbey at Christmas

Was out with the family tonight at an event at Newstead Abbey, which I've never been to since I came to Nottingham. But this was quite a nice introduction. Essentially they'd dressed the place up in lots of traditional/unusual Christmas decorations and filled it with harpists and Santa Claus, and you could wander around for about £8 each, although there was a set path and lots of it was cordoned off. Also there was a craft/fine food fair in the grounds, grouped into two tents because of the rain, I think. The family consisted of me, mum and dad, Katie and Jack. But it was lovely, we bought some toys for Jack and some Christmassy suncatchers, and had some roast potatoes and pancakes with syrup that mostly collected down to the bottom of the packaging. Jack spent rather a lot of time being excited about going to see Santa, and then when he actually met the big man with the giant white beard ran away and hid behind my sister. I think Father Christmas forgave him though.

It's really quite a lovely house. Mostly I only know that Byron lived there, but some of the rooms and portraits are lovely. Byron had a wolf-dog that he is thought to have inherited with the house. I didn't know that. There is also a couple of jackets of his in the house. Which seems a bit strange, but whatever. I was vaguely tempted by a book of his poems in the gift shop, but resisted. Anyway, after the house we had a little walk around the grounds, then went to the gift shop and almost went a bit mad trying to cope with Jack, and then it was only about half past seven so we ended up going to Pizza Hut for dinner. There were a few of our patented family arguments, but mostly it was very good, and Jack sat on my knee quite a lot. Also we made friends with a waitress called Harriet. She ended up being sort of used as a threat against Jack, that if he didn't behave she would be angry, but oh well. My parents had also brought up some old Christmas decorations I had in my room last year, although in all the messing around Katie unfortunately left her and Jack's scarves and gloves here. I'll have to take them back in a few weeks time.

Tomorrow I have to get up, do the washing and possibly the recycling, go into town and buy food for the week, then come back, possibly do the washing up, get ready for work, and possibly decorate my flat for Christmas. Then another 37.5 hour week of work. I'm meant to be going out with K and J (who's up for the night) on Monday, although I'm not sure I can afford it, and K and I have arranged to go see The Golden Compass on Wednesday. Next weekend I have to do more washing, some possibly more in-depth recycling, the food shopping, and the rest of my Christmas shopping. Then next week it's more work, before going back to my parents' for Christmas. I'm not entirely sure it's going to work, but that's the plan. Thankfully, I have most of my Christmas shopping done. There's only really dad and grandma to buy for, and I'm limiting myself to £5-ish. It's still not particularly pleasant, especially in Nottingham town centre on a weekend. But there you go. I also have to renew my Young Person's Railcard before getting the tickets for the trip home. Hmm.

Livejournal was a lot more fun when I had 100 icons to play with.

TV is great

I think the UK wins a bit at adverts for crazy American shows. I haven't seen the other countries' entries, of course. But between the crazy Lost dancing advert and the new BBC 2Dimensions Heroes ads, we must be winning some kind of prize. Now they just need to make a crazy Heroes dancing advert. Then we could all be happy.

I don't think it's very fair when Heroes is a bit rubbish at the moment, for them to be making ads where the cast walk a bit sexily down hallways. I really don't.

This is also a bit brilliant.

I watched a programme by Alan Titchmarsh today about how we've dug up the English countryside a bit but the wildlife actually seems to be doing alright with it. There was a bit about how Salisbury Plain, the biggest army training site in the country, was actually the perfect breeding ground for a certain plant which allows a rare breed of butterfly to live there. This pleases me, if only because of imagining meetings where they consider changing the training ground to somewhere else, and someone says "But sir, the butterflies".

The quest for Christmas shopping continues unabated. It might end up having to be a late-night shopping sort of job.