Blogs and Christmas take the place of revision

I should be revising. I have been revising, quite a lot really, but yesterday I accidentally stepped into the blogosphere, where a world of blogs have trapped me ever since. I'm not joking - NINE blogs have captivated me, enthralled me, wouldn't let go of me until they had revealed their stories from start to finish. So I did no revision yesterday, and I risk the same fate today unless by force of will alone I abandon my new World of Blogs in favour of the task in hand - getting to grips with the World of Dietary Reference Values. I shall return to those blogs because I need to know how the story continues, and will link to them if such presumption is allowed.

I reached them via Stephen Fry's blog, where I was idly perusing the comments that readers had left. SF has also prompted me to swap from Internet Explorer to Firefox at last, helped by a web-borne threat that AVG anti-virus picked up. One of his commenters was called Richard Madeley, whom I have a soft spot for, so I followed the link and reached a place clearly not inhabited by the real Richard Madeley (but then I didn't expect it to). I have long been looking for some interesting blogs to read as recreation and to give me ideas, and now I have too many. But they are magnificent.

Christmas preparations are still almost non-existent, although Mr A persuaded me to accompany him on his traditional pre-Christmas alcohol and snack buying frenzy. The first time I saw it was an eye-opener, all those years ago. My conservative consumption habits allow a little luxury, especially in the form of quality rather than quantity, but this was one of those times when I simply hadn't realised how it could be done. A 'lightbulb moment', we call it.

Anyway, on Saturday we drove to Sainsburys, where we were surprised to see some chaps in the car park wearing reflective jackets labelled 'Marshal' holding signs saying 'Spaces here'. We ignored them, but it turned out that there were no parking spaces elsewhere, and rather than humble ourselves by going back, we decided that shopping within would be so very unpleasant that we would do it some other time. Mr A's since been into town on foot, which tends to curtail the frenzy somewhat, given he's got to carry it all back himself.

Having agreed to do the Christmas day cooking as well, and never one to go for tried and tested staples, he's bought two pheasants and a guinea fowl. This morning he was sifting through recipes and buying the last few essentials (no, I've never noticed juniper berries on sale anywhere). I know it will be wonderfully tasty, but my imagination shrinks from the vision of what the kitchen will look like after he's been in there for a day.