Tiramisu for Tomorrow

With New Year's Eve, Eve upon us, it was time to return home to Bristol. Tomorrow night we'll be off to a New Year party at Mark's place but we didn't want to come empty handed so I made a mammoth portion of tiramisu using my fool proof recipe... Only I learnt there's still some imporments to make on my method. I tried for nearly an hour to pull a good shot of espresso using my, somewhat alternative, coffee machine. In the end I sacked it off and used my trusty Aeropress for a strong brew to dunk sponge fingers into. It's always better the next day so I'll see how the pudding has set then, but if licking the spoon gives any indication of flavour, then we're in for a treat.

California Roll Christmas

 Despite being plyed with drinks while with Rebecca's relatives, I woke up feel fresh as a daisy. Perhaps the last week of merry-making has prepped my body for the worst, a fact I'm not actually proud of. I was pleased to have a sober day during Crimbo Limbo and what will likely be my final full day away for the holidays. I drove us back down to Newbury to sit around the fire in the living room once again and enjoy an idle our with my family. Rachel was with us too and since we were all craving something that didn't taste of gravy, stuffing or poultry we walked into town for sushi. It's been a hot minute since I've enjoyed some sit down California rolls so tonight was a real treat. Better yet, we all bundled back home afterwards to watch The Holdovers, a Christmas classic film in the making I'm sure.

Lamb Sagwala

I thought it would take ages to shake the habit of naturally waking up at 5am. But the Christmas hols and not having a hungry cat at the foot of the bed over the last few days has knocked my sleep pattern back into social hours. So I was plenty rested to catch a bus to Richmond to meet up with some of Rebecca's old school chums. After that was another check off the old 'post Christmas meetups' with a house visit to Rebecca's Aunt and Uncle. We had a fun debrief about the wedding we went to in June followed by chats about life, movies and Japanese fiction all around a classic Indian takeaway. It's nice that I've been so warmly received by Rebecca's extended family, they're all great people and good company as the nights get colder.

Family Hat Trick

Now that the relatively chill days of post Christmas our of the way, it's time to get out of the living room and go see family and relatives. I drove us all down to Orpington to spend a bit of time with my Grandma who is still smiling. Then we went off to my Aunt and Uncle's for dinner before I caught the train over to Rebecca's family. Throughout this hat trick of visitations I was just pleased to be able to spend some time with everybody. My availability is gradually becoming a premium and being able to slow down and see my family properly is something I value more and more as I get older.

Boxing Day 2025

Only a couple of days into the Christmas holidays and I've already forgotten what day of the week it is - that's sooooo Boxing Day. It was a day of rest in the most humble terms, I helped mum start her Christmas jigsaw puzzle and we ate up a bevvy of leftovers from the past few days. I finished up a game that I got hooked on recently and we watched two new-to-us films which is a hell of a feat on a slopey day. I did try to do a bit of 'work' this morning by prepping my annual top games of the year list, a task I semi enjoy doing every year. Right now it feels like a lot but I'll always be glad to have written it once it's done.

Christmas 2025

Grapefruit prep was my first job of the day, assembling it alongside the other usual breakfast suspects of gammon and fried eggs. From there the Christmas day rhythm fall into place, opening presents being next on the agenda. I unwrapped a very elegant ceramic coffee dripper alongside a lovely new jumper, no doubt I'll amass plenty of compliments for once I'm back at work. By far, the most surprising gift was from Louis in the form of a framed digital painting of our cat which Rebecca was truly bowled over by. We'll have to figure out a good place to hang it back at home because it is genuinely excellent.

Christmas dinner soon followed, which we shared alongside our Ukrainian Lodgers for the third year on the trot. All the trimmings, plus some bonafide pigs in blankets were dished, then snaffled up. Dad and I brought the Christmas pud in to ignite table side to the delight of everyone - no singed eyebrows either which is a big win. Full on gravy, turkey and two puddings we retired to the sofa, catching Some Like It Hot, a film so good we had to watch the whole thing. Then, the main attraction, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowel - the latest claymation escapade from Aardman which is just what Christmas Day called for - perhaps it was a bit too gentle for my tastes, but it was a fun ride.

Another Christmas down now, the boot of my car will be brimming with great gifts that'll ensure I start 2025 off in good stead. Once again, I hope everyone got the Christmas they deserve.

Christmas Eve 2024

For the first time in about a dozen years, (not including Covid), the Durrant's did not host a Christmas Eve party. That's not to say our day wasn't filled with food prep and house zchuzing because the event was simply downsized into a sit down meal affair. I was back at it chopping up the Persian 'micro salad' while Louis prepped puddings - we both somehow dodged putting up the outside Christmas lights which I'm very grateful for. In fact, overall it was a lot calmer Christmas Eve overall. There wasn't a cascade of hotplates being loaded into an oven as each and every dish was timed to the minute for when it needs to hit the table. Just low-key, chilling vibes which is exactly what the holidays are all about. A part of me misses the big parties, end of an era perhaps but only time will tell.

Hope everyone gets what they wished for from Santa tomorrow and that your Christmas day is filled with warmth and cheer. Indulge in tradition & bit too much food and drink, I'll be right there with the rest of you in the sofa watching Wallace & Gromit.

Love, The Cat

December 23rd. The day we ship out of Bristol and start our Christmas holidays proper. But before leaving, Rebecca and I had to exchange gifts under our Christmas tree. The past few months I had a great gift idea for her: whenever we go to our favourite brunch spot she comments on how much she loves the mugs there. So I found the brand and ordered a set of them online to be delivered. Tragically, the parcel arrived while I was just getting out of the shower so Rebecca received it... While reading all the branding on the outside of the cardboard, thus giving away the surprise of what's inside. I palmed it off jokingly at first but Rebecca knows exactly what she'd be getting from me this year... Or so she thought. A colleague at work gave me a great idea of not addressing the gift from me, so instead I wrote down that our cat had brought it for her. Yes I know, it's a very 'cat person' thing to do, but it saved a non-surpirise present and turned it into something a little bit cute. Rebecca loved it either way and I was lucky enough to get a bottle of bourbon to make dozens of Old Fashioned cocktails with, a tipple I enjoyed moments before seatbelting up on the road back to Newbury with a car boot full of presents. Let the holidays begin!

Present Wrapping Power Hour

I lied when I said that yesterday I had completed my Christmas shopping. An emergency final sweep into town to get the very last bit: a bottle of extra hot siracha sauce, the kind you can only get in Asian supermarkets. Hopefully Rebecca's Dad will be pretty pleased with it - feels like I get him a new hot sauce each year but this could be a good, repeatable gift if it takes his fancy.

We did the great present wrapping power hour in which Rebecca did all the actual wrapping while I cut off bits of tape and DJ'd festive music. We had a few less people to wrap gifts for this year round so it actually went by pretty swiftly. I secretly did Rebecca's presents and slid them under our tree with the promise to exchange them tomorrow morning. I don't know if I got any knock out successes for anyone this year, but Rebecca will no doubt like her little haul.

Bristol Ice Hockey

Returned to North Street for a final bout of Crimbo shopping, I think I've got a full house now. Only step left is to wrap it all up now which will be tomorrow's job but that's a gig Rebecca and I enjoy for the most part as it's become another part of the Christmas tradition. 

On the other hand, a new venture for Rebecca and me occured tonight, which is Christmas adjacent in temperature only: a trip to see an ice hockey match. The Bristol Pitbulls were playing in the city stadium so we went and cheered them on... Not that they were lacking in fans mind. It felt like we were stepped onto a foreign planet with all the new chants, in jokes and side activities - we parsed a lot of new information but had a blast the whole way through. Every goal Bristol scored came with the opening chant of Chelsea Dagger as the whole crowd did the monkey. Rebecca and I felt a bit embarrassed doing it at first, but by the 6th goal we were dancing our hearts out with the other fans. A different way to spend a Saturday night, but fun to commune with a big crowd this close to Christmas.

On Set Christmas

 The festive cheer rocked our crew to the very core. A Christmas jumper competition and fiver Friday were announced on the callsheet and we honoures those in full - someone came to work dressed as Joe Pesci's Wet Bandit from Home Alone which blew us all away and the fiver Friday was wonderful by the person who was gunning the hardest for it to be a thing. But my favourite part of the day was the Christmas music playing on set while we're were setting up for the day. Everyone was on board and ready for a  real, but we all wanted to show some love to each other. You spend months forging such intense working friendships and Christmas is the perfect opportunity to express that warmth. I've never fully experienced that in set and I'm so lucky to have that.

Striking off the Storyboards

The penultimate day before Christmas was ran like a well-oiled machine. We had a storyboard and we stuck to it like glue, there was even a big version of it on set which we ticked off together whenever we completed each set up. It was busy for sure but it felt organized and structured which makes a nice change of pace. I realized I actually worked fairly hard today, I should have really crashed out on the sofa when I got back but instead I made another two dozen mince pies. In bed now and it's the first time I've stopped all day, so the tiredness is hitting me all at once.

Who Wants a Mince Pie?

It's such a treat to be back in Bristol town center for filming - I get to walk to work and take my time in the mornings. We did our very last exterior scene of the year and the rain marked the occasion. In spite of that the crew were in good spirits, lots of Santa hats and Xmas jumpers already. I brought the cheer by sharing mince pies. I only had about 9 of them to go around about 50 people so I was super selective about who I offered them to. But I learnt that they're quite a marmite treat, most people I offered them to said a polite no. I literally couldn't give them away at one point! I cut my loses and hit the pub after work with a couple of very old work chums and friends of friends. It felt right to spend this time in the run up to Christmas bonding with total strangers, talking fondly about music, movies and the past.

Lo-Fi Christmas Jazz

My current favourite thing to listen to is an 8 hour video of lo-fi Christmas Jazz. It was a pleasure to bake to this weekend, but it turns out it is a little low energy for a car ride into work as my passenger was nodding off while listening to the twinkling piano and soothing woodwind. It was our final day in Brean thankfully and the weather looked just about kindly upon us with only freezing winds to contend with. The Christmas spirit is in full flow on set though, plenty of Santa hats and jumpers are already coming out. I'm saving my get up for the final Friday though I might bring some mince pies in tomorrow.

In the evenings Rebecca and I are working our way through a detective video game which ends up using the final two braincells I have left after a long day. I am already done in for the week but knowing a nice long break is in the horizon keeps me going.

Driving Home to Brean

Through gritted teeth I woke up at 5am to drive towards Brean, a location I've somehow avoided since Sanditon and The Last Bus. And yet, the roads there still felt familiar, not dissimilar to driving home for Christmas. Any joy evaporated once the day itself started as it was a busy old day for us all. But we're are all counting down the days til our next break.

Furthering my mini quest to watch a new Christmas Carol version every year Rebecca and I watch the first ever talkie retelling called Scrooge from 1935. The joy of seeing any adaptation of A Christmas Carol is how they present the three spirits, especially in these older iterations. This version's Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is so lo-fi but so effective that I'm shocked I haven't seen the trick repeated anywhere else. Otherwise this was a brisk and cosy retelling thanks to how legitimately 'Victorian' it still felt - a sooty, snowy postcard of a film.

Bake Off Bloke

Once every December I find myself shackled to the kitchen, doing a ton of baking... Guess what today was? Limonchello, cranberry sauce and a hefty batch of minced pies were all produced this afternoon, the latter being the most taxing. Every year I think I've cracked the recipe, and while I've certainly improved, I keep falling into the same pitfalls each and every time. Pastry too thick, pastry too thin, not enough flour in the work surface, overworking the dough, overbaking them, overfilling them - there's so many variables. Thankfully this lot came out pretty good, if I wasn't trucking up a mountain in the coastline tomorrow I would have brought them into work, guess I'll just have to have a few 'quality samples' until then.

The Train

Had a solid run into town with Rebecca grabbing a couple of extra presents for people. The Bristol Beacon has been a regular pit stop for us this season and now the venue has opened even more of it's rooms to accommodate even more market stalls. Plenty of ceramics and jewelry, but in the midst there were some legit fun and creative little bits. I locked in my secret Santa gift too and we even hit up a local gin distillery for some posh booze. The real highlight of my day was catching old movies on the telly. I'll always stick around when The Lavender Hill Mob is on and that rolled right into an oldie I'd never seen before - The Train. Because nothing says Christmas than outwitting the Nazis.

Mr Radio

 Committed the cardinal sin of not reading the callsheet properly so I ended up at the wrong unit base. Thankfully, it was still just a short walk over to location so no harm done but I felt like a prime Muppet. Once in set though I very quickly got roped into being the voice for a radio presenter in our scene, reading in for someone that'll be ADR'ed in later no doubt. The whole time though I kept getting pats on the back for doing it so consistently and with the diction of a typical radio guy. We had some fun today for sure but I had to leave my VO duties behind for my dentist appointment, which was really more of a war room chat. I got all the info I needed to learn what would happen with my braces etc, it's looking like it's gonna be pricey and it'll take close to a year of braces... So I drowned my sorrows in dim sum from a new restaurant on North Street. We took Louis and Rachel out for food as a way of saying 'thank you' for always looking after the cat, we are very, VERY lucky to have them around.

Comfort and Joy

Just as I started to learn every 6am curve in the road to my new route to work, we're on the move again. A lot of us are jolly glad to see the back of this particular location but we all know it's being replaced with a somewhere even worse. We are all gritting our teeth now til our Christmas break in just over a weeks time, I for one will be using that time wisely to catch up on all the hours that have slipped down the back of my mental refrigerator, never to be seen again.

Only other cool thing that happened to me was I hit 100 new films watched this year. Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy rung in the milestone, a Christmas adjacent flick that was calm in all the right ways.

Hand warmer Haven

Back during my days in Production I cursed having to buy crew hand warmers. 'Surely people can just wear gloves?!' I recall thinking, unempathetically. Well today I was eternally grateful there were a couple of boxes of them floating around because the cold was biting in the morning, I can barely operate my iPad when my fingers start to go numb so the hand warmers were a godsend. Because there was an awful lot of blocking going on today, I spent a good chunk of the day quite literally with my hands in my pockets, but that gave me a chance to shoot the breeze with the crew and chat about Christmas plans - I cannot wait for our break.

Stunts in Standby

Another day of stunts means another day with me on standby to a large degree. Thankfully I was plenty busy helping a mass reference footage for our double bank unit and inputting script amend info into our database. The crew is all a bit sick of this location now as it's all cold rain and chilly breezes... But then again that's just Winter really.

December Drain

Wake up at 5:30 to be at work for 7:00 to stand in a cold field til 18:00. There must be something more, but it's Monday so what should I expect. I actually entered the day with a fully recharged internal battery - I'm over my cold and had plenty of sleep, but right now I'm feeling pretty drained. Moreso when I consider all the Christmas shopping I've yet to do all while I'm just trying to get by at work. In short, I've already hit a December slump. Perhaps I need a steady diet of Christmas films and food to reinvigorate my spirits...

Despairing Departure

It was a little hard packing up our bags to leave London. We had such a terrific weekend with our chums that we frankly didn't want the good times to end. We took a stroll up their local high Street and played one more board game before we had to hit the road. Rebecca pulled a sad face for most of the drive home while I just thought about what next week will bring... A lot of early mornings and late finishes is the gist. Only 2 more weeks til the holidays though, I can grit my teeth til then.

A Cosy December Day

Storm Darragh brayed at the windows as Rebecca and I woke up, it was clearly a day best spent indoors. In fact, we only braved the outside briefly to go with our hosts to collect a Christmas tree. It's a hell of a thing to walk a pine tree through London in the middle of a national weather crisis... I'm not suggesting everyone should give it a go but we we saw the humour in it. Once home, it was all hands on deck to rig it with lights and guild its branches with delightfully ironic decorations. This marks the first Christmas our hosts have spent in their new home and once the tree was all in situ, I stood quietly to myself and hoped there'd be many more cosy Decembers with them to come.

That feeling continued as another old uni friend joined us as we hopped between board games and bottles of wine. Some carrot & marmite soup lined our stomachs for lunch and homemade turkey burgers and meringues joined the party for dinner. The food was so good in fact that we all begged for the recipes to be shared. Just as we collapsed onto the sofa, thinking the day couldn't get any better Die Hard was on Film4. A perfect Saturday.

Big Old Stunt

Big stunt day for us, which for the continuity team just means a lot of time waiting for all the rigging and safety checks to take place before we do anything. It took a good few hours but everything was conducted very safely and above board, but I couldn't help thinking how I could have spent another couple extra hours in bed. But it's the weekend now! Rebecca are 95% of the way to London to go have a super low key weekend with some chums. I was invited to go on a Park Run with them tomorrow but I'm a mite out of practice, which is a great excuse to stay in bed.

Ah Yes, 2nd Unit Shenanigans

Back to walking to work territory even if it's only for a day. We've entered that point in the job where 2nd Units and Double Banking is starting to manifest ever rapidly and since I have *most* of the show in my head, I come in handy when it comes to continuity. So I sat in today with the soon-to-be full time 2nd unit team to see if I can help out a lil bit, it was a pretty light day overall so we all had a bit of fun with it. Calm before the storm though, tomorrow I'm back with the main chaps and we'll be shooting on an astronomical amount of cameras. The final boss before the weekend.

No Go Low Load

A day with a low-loader typically means a day for me to catch up on my paperwork - there's seldom any video feed for me to monitor and seating on any type of follow vehicle is a premium. Instead they realized I'd be better off stationed with my favourite gang: the drone team. We're thick as thieves now having done many, many days together on this job and their material always manages to impress me. But no matter how good they are, when filming outside in December we're always going to be chasing sunlight and this evening we had to wrap a bit earlier due to the sunset. At least that meant I could get home quicker to do some Baulder's with the Boys after a long stint away. An activity worth running home for, I only wish I wasn't so tired from the week/illness so I could play for longer tonight.

Over Wrapped

After taking heed to the numerous words of warning about how chilly it was going to be today, I found myself BOILING in my big coat, gloves and scarf. I had to strip down to my fleece after the sun set because I was so warm in spite of being outdoors in a small tent all day. I did manage to make it through the whole day without any form of painkillers which must mean my cold is officially on its last legs - I honestly can't recall what feeling normal is like yet I still crave it. A two hour drive at the end of today managed to sap out the last of my strength though but a later get up time and an earlyish night should be just the ticket.

"Nice Haircut"

Got complimented on my new haircut a couple of times today. In reality I had just shaved my beard...

While the days in Cornwall were chilly, the frost is starting to set in on us now. Standing still is lethal and going out in the wrong gear will cost you... So it was a good thing I totally misjudged the weather and spent the next 10 hours cursing myself. Tomorrow is all about the bundles and layers, I gotta be the envy of the crew when I'm all bundled and toasty.

Taking Inspo

Still on the tail end of this cold, but that's a great excuse to stay indoors! I bought a hearty handful of games in the Black Friday sales and I've been slowly making my way through them. Once I had enough sofa time, Rebecca and I hit North Street for the Sunday shuffle, mostly to start gathering inspiration for Christmas gifts - a prospect that I've still yet to dedicate much mental bandwidth to. As the day went on, my symptoms softened (especially after my midday nap!) so begrudgingly, it seems like I'll be healthy enough to do Monday. One more early night and I'll be back to it all.