New Year's Day

By the time I got home last night, around 4am, I was starting with a headache and it’s not gone when I awake this morning. How’s that for irony eh? You spend New Year’s Eve stone cold sober and yet still manage both a headache and to fall on your arse.

The nagging head refuses to lift and so I cancel on my plans to join the non-football going element of the Rabbit Corpses and Dog Collars household for an afternoon walk and only just recover sufficiently in time to decide for the evening curry for 16 at Fusion in Chorlton.

The food varies from the absolutely excellent to the rather disappointing, but with time we reckon you’d learn which dishes to avoid and I suspect this won’t be our last visit. Stuart’s fish starter is particularly wonderful, not to mention large enough for a main.

There’s also nothing like the behaviour of other families’ children and lack of intervention from the respective parents within your party to both cause you intense embarrassment as the waiting staff struggle not to drop sizzling hot plates on their marauding heads and realise how well behaved your adopted nieces are.

Such thoughts continue as we head back to the Rabbit Corpses and Dog Collars household and Singstar is put onto the Playstation. Some kids play nicely with each other and some sulk and refuse to participate when they don’t do well – I guess it was ever thus and it’s easy to stand on the outside and observe which appear to be happiest as a result.

Next it’s Buzz, where a new general knowledge version replaces the music quiz of the past and general frivolity ensues (I may yet forgive K for the ruthless stealing of R and I’s points in the round designed to create maximum rivalry and threats of revenge).

A top night and in the stakes for best hospitality of 2007, Stuart and Karen have entered a strong early bid.