When I arrived back for the holidays I wrote a long post with all of my news. It vanished into the ether of cyberspace when I tried to post it. I could not muster the will power to rewrite it and so this, my second attempt, is rather belated.

I was relieved to reach the end of my first term as I was sapped of spirit and slightly depressed. When I am tired I can become wistful and melancholic. I feel like reading poetry and listening to bands like Coldplay, which is hardly healthy. The dearth of theological reflection on this blog over the last few weeks can be attributed in part to this; the end of my term was hardly busy.

My parents and irritating youngest brother (I love him really!) travelled up in the car to pick me up from university, which was awfully good of them really. Peter and my mother had not seen St Andrews before, so I was pleased that they could have an opportunity to check out all of its majesty. On the way back we stopped off in Edinburgh to visit a relation of my father’s (don’t ask me how he was related to my father: the whole second cousin, once removed stuff ties my head in knots). His name is Alasdair and he is probably partly accountable for my receiving the same name, albeit with a different spelling (not that the proper spelling of my name makes that much difference for most people in practice…). My father hadn’t met him for decades and it was a blessing to find out that both he and his wife are committed Christians.

It’s easy to miss home when you been away from it for long enough. The memories that reside furthest in our past are the most likely to be idealized. I hadn’t been away from home anywhere near long enough to really miss it. I don’t find it easy to relax at home, there are always things happening, there are always people around. One of the things that I love about university is that I can indulge my love of being by myself. However, it was nice to be home again. As usual I came down with a cold within the first day or so of returning.

Within a few days of returning, I managed to watch both King Kong and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (incidentally, kudos to Disney for not including a comma after the ‘witch’ in the title as an accommodation to the excessive demands of American English grammar!). I enjoyed both immensely and will probably watch at least one of them again when I return to St Andrews. I was especially heartened that the Christian message of LWW was not lost.

I was relieved to finish my Christmas shopping relatively painlessly last Monday afternoon. Shopping is the worst thing about Christmas apart from Brussels sprouts. The rest of the week I went to work, although I had a half-day on Friday. The sheer soul-crushing boredom of work made me more thankful than ever that I am at university. Fortunately, my brother Jonathan was working there for most of the week too and we were able to keep up each other’s morale. I also was able to get more reading done on the bus to and from work (although I felt nauseous from tiredness for the first few days and didn’t feel safe reading on the bus). I finished the final book of the Cornish Trilogy and read much of Bruce Malina’s The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, all about honour (sorry, that link is utterly gratuitous) and stuff.

Joy of joys, my computer was fixed on Christmas Eve. Although Windows Media Player is being a bit temperamental at present, everything else seems to be in pretty good working order. Some time in the next few days I might even get around to catching up on some of my missed e-mails.

Christmas Day was very enjoyable. We had twenty of us for the Christmas meal: the family, Jonathan and Monika, Monika’s sister and brother-in-law (who had come over from Belgium), two ladies from our church, five Chinese students, a Malaysian friend, an Indian friend and a Taiwanese couple. It is always special celebrating Christmas with people of many different nationalities. The only blemish on the day was being soundly beaten at Settlers of Catan by Monika’s brother-in-law, Tim.

I am telling myself that all the food that I am eating at present is to compensate for the meals that I have to eat in halls over the next few months. It helps me to rationalize my current eating habits. I don’t comfort eat but I eat when I am bored, when I have a lot of time on my hands or when I have nothing else to do with my mouth. I probably eat twice as much during holidays than I do during terms.

Over the next week we have a number of visits to relatives planned, which should be enjoyable. I return to university next Thursday, after another couple of days at work (I will also be working for my father some of this week). Hopefully I will be able to relax a bit more then. My first exam is on the 11th, but I am not really that concerned about them. I have already passed all of my modules and there is only so much revision that you can do for an exam. I plan to take things as easy as possible and enjoy the exam period as much as I can.

I don’t usually think in terms of New Year’s resolutions. I make enough failed resolutions during the year without adding even more. However, I am planning to do a few more creative things next year. I am going to take up the guitar again and I may start working at my art. I also plan to knit a jumper. I have knitted three jumpers before, but they were all for young children. I will probably give myself a bit more of a challenge this time and knit an Arran sweater for my brother Mark. I might give a progress report from time to time (probably not, though). Most people are surprised when they hear that I am a knitter. I am unapologetic: it is very therapeutic, relaxing and enjoyable. It also keeps my hands busy whilst I listen to audio lectures, sermons and the Bible on cassette and trains me in the virtue of patience. Besides, if I wasn’t knitting I would be playing Tetris, which is hardly as productive.

Anyway, I must get to bed now. If I don’t I will be even more uncommunicative and irritating than I usually am tomorrow, hardly something that I want to inflict upon the relatives that we are going to visit.