Family have retreated out of the house to go for a drive/walk/whatever. I haven't come partly because I didn't want to, partly because my father somehow managed to throw out my walking boots. I do not, to be fair, use my walking boots much but I double damn sure am not going walking in darkest mud-ridden Kent without them. I borrowed a pair of my mother's slip-on ankle boots yesterday on the annual pre-lunch walk round the Faversham marshes and... well, no. Not going to do that again, thanks.

So, here I am home alone and making the most of it to go online for a bit without someone walking in/demanding to use the computer/wanting something looked up/etc.

It seems to me like a week was a good length of time. I've had my share of supplementary annoyances but am still actually largely enjoying being here right now. Give it another four days, though, and I'd probably be climbing the damn walls... exactly what happened last year. First week was mostly good, the second was mostly not. I need to get out while the mostly-good outweighs the mostly-bad and I still consider the holiday to have been Worth It, Overall. Hence the reason that I'm very glad I'll be heading home tomorrow, even if right now it looks as if it may be by a rather circuitous route.

Anyway, Christmas day was mostly just fine, in a sort of mildly-boring-but-generally-pleasant kind of way. Food, aimless meanders across Faversham marshes and gift exchanging in between which I managed to finish The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher which I enjoyed a great deal, though more for the stuff on Victorian policing and the craze for detective novels than the actual case itself.

Next up is either Tales of the Elders of Ireland or The Tain.

Stuff I gave:

• To my dad: Hardback copy of London's Docklands: A History of the Lost Quarter.
  
• To my mum: Copy of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and a DVD of Pleasantville
  
• To my brother: Copy of Bad Science and a DVD of In Bruges

... yes, mainly books.

The Docklands book seemed to go down well. I was worried it might be a bit boring at first but then I remembered this is my dad, a guy who took my brother and me on the Docklands Light Railway pretty much as soon as it opened, pointing out what could still be seen of said docks and telling us what they all were called. Besides, one of the surefire ways of getting books for my dad now is working out what I'd like to read and then working from there, as we both share the same obsession for Victorian London. After many years of relatives who just largely tolerate his enthusiasms, I think my dad's just pleased to have someone to talk to these things about who'll actually listen.

Stuff I got:

• Scarf and gloves set
  
• Large black cardigan thing
  
• Three pairs of earrings - two long, one set of studs
  
• Secondhand hardback of The London Encyclopedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert
  
• A teal-blue vaguely miltary-style coat
  
• Makeup bag with bath stuff in
  
• DVD of the BBC version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  
• Copy of The Victorians by A. N. Wilson
  
• Spike Milligan wall calendar
  
• CD by a group called Collide
  
• Copy of Me Cheeta by James Lever
  
• Postcard book called Thrill-Mad Pussycats
  
• Hot-water bottle
  
• Basket of biscuits and jam and things
  
• Cash - £60 from my parents, £20 from my grandparents
  

No, I don't know why the fuck a hot water bottle either. My grandmother is apparently under the illusion that once someone hits their late twenties they can safely be given the kind of gift a sixty-five year old would be quite happy with. Sure, about twice a year a hot water bottle is a vaguely useful thing to have... but it's still a pretty weird thing to buy for a twenty-seven year old. Then again, ever since I hit my teens my grandparents just haven't quite known what to do about me - at first they weren't sure if I was five or forty-five (one year they bought me a handbag for Christmas that even my mother thought too old for her, then on my next birthday gave me a stuffed rabbit); now they seem to have decided that forty-five it is. One year they got me a pair of rather nice glass earrings, but after that it was right back to the vaguely insane middle-aged stuff again. Still, they also gave me £20, which I am probably going to use to buy a historic map.

The stuff I got also contains things I just managed to illicitly acquire while going round Canterbury with my parents, both of whom took the opportunity to buy me things - clothing in my mother's case, two books on Victorian London in my dad's, though I also managed to talk my mother into buying me The Victorians because I am, as I mentioned, obsessed.

Incidentally, I'm borrowing a box set of Jeremey Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes. Like I said: obsessed.