The wall, the wainscot, and the mouse

Well, the big highlight of the Christmas break was The Mouse. We have named him "Titus Pullo" for reasons that any afficionado of BBC2's "Rome" will probably understand. My mother swore she saw him in the kitchen, scuttling behind the worksurfaces, and so all-out war was declared. The kitchen door was fortified with draft excluders to stop Titus escaping and carrying out a marauding mission into the rest of the house; all edible items were placed on top of the refrigerator (for fear a mouse can walk off with an entire banana); the kitchen floor was swept at least three times a day in case of stray crumbs. This being my mother's house, of course, stray crumbs were not much in evidence. But you can never be too careful, especially when you have a messy student living with you. So, anyway, the Council Ratcatcher came out to visit and, thankfully, found no trace of Titus Pullo's existence. Likelihood is, he says, that Titus was merely an advance scout and, finding no free food for the taking, informed his raiding party not to bother with us. The kitchen is now equipped with a sonic mouse-repellant, which should keep us safe from any further attacks. Let us hope.

Otherwise, the holiday was pretty quiet. I managed to catch up with some reading for the course I'm teaching this term, as well as watching some of the classic films which graced our TV screens this holiday - Jaws is still great, but can anything surpass Spartacus?

My friend R was home from London for the holiday, and we went for a lovely walk by the sea, whence the photographs - Swansea is actually quite beautiful from the right angle.

Christmas day was good fun (though I did sleep for a lot of it) - my favourite moment was being swung by the vicar in church - nobody's done that to me since I was about 5! My second favourite was when a nameless person exclaimed at me and my godfather "That's enough theology - it is Christmas Day!"