Winter

One of the bizarre things about sharing a house with a south African, apart from the fact that most South Africans I've met are madder than a bag of snakes and love to partay, is they love a barbecue. It's traditional at Christmas to have a barbecue. Rory phoned me up. "Get home, We're having a barbecue."
"What? It's minus two degrees and you want a barbecue?"
"Sure. It's traditional." So we had a barbecue out in the garden. Dontcha just love life? Can you fecking Adam and Eve it? Christmas Eve morning I'm dozing in bed after a skin full the night before at our barbecue and enjoying one of the few lie ins I can have in a year when I am brought to complete wakefulness by hammering on the door. In my dressing gown I go down stairs to see who it is. The bleeding police. The road outside is swarming with police cars and occifers. Now to the best of my knowledge I've never been to Ipswich, nor have I murdered anyone absent mindedly, so what gives?
"Is that your car Sir?"
"er yes."
"It's causing an obstruction."
My car is in the exact same place it's been for the last six months, no one has ever complained. Now it's Christmas Eve and the police have nothing better to do than hunt out soft targets to boost their coffers. I got a ticket. Which really started my Christmas off nicely. Ian and Rory both said "We'll fight them every inch of the way."
Boxing day I went walking in the woods to clear out the muzziness in my head that I've had ever since I started imbibing the ol' festive spirit. These are some of the images I captured.