Christmas memories

I got home about 01:00 this morning so thanks all for your comments and well wishes :-)

We went Christmas shopping to Cardiff today with lunch and cocktails in Jamie's, my son met us down there and we had a great day, it was like Christmas had started properly :-)

I was wondering what to Blip when I saw a good Blips friend comments on Facebook the same time I was looking at Jerry WSL's excellent blip, it made me remember this bauble on the tree.

Now I love tree's that are beautifully dressed and all in one colour, but we could never have one of them as the tree is full of baubles bought in different places around the world and each is a memory.

The snowman was given to me by a friend who is no longer with us, strange thing to give but this is the story in short behind it. It's probably one of those you need alcohol and had to be there stories but here goes.

It was a work workshop/meeting/party close to Christmas in the Black forest Germany, there was lots of snow. We'd done some skiing and was having dinner, the wine was flowing and the old war/work stories and banter were flying around, after several bottles of wine my friend, who bought me the bauble, bet that he could balance 10 coins on his elbow and catch them in his hand, if he didn't catch them all he'd run around the hotel in the snow naked, if he did we had to buy him a very expensive bottle of wine. I'd seen him do it before (sober) successfully, he tried and failed, and carried out the forfeit just keeping his boots on :-)
The next day he bought everyone on the table one of these baubles, the following Christmas he wasn't with us anymore.
So i look at the bauble remember that time with my friend and many others it still makes me smile seeing his face when he batted the coins across the room :-)