Trying too hard

I spent Christmas Eve with Lee, Jeremy, Gillian Wade, Tommy, and Richard Houlding. The latter is working in the tax office and hasn’t changed much except for a new, up-market soul-boy look. Tommy still walks the streets in dainty white shoes and baggy black trousers. He’s moved to Brynmor.

Gillian seemed to feel the need to come out with ‘funny’ stories and the silly voices to go with them and she got a little over-bearing at times. She was, she herself admitted, “trying too hard.” Lee left us after we’d trailed round a few pubs, mingling with the joyous throng and feeling particularly un-festive. Going through the motions.

I curbed the impulse to set off to Easterby for a night of depressing frivolity and we rounded the evening off with a curry in Farnshaw, which was crap.