Christmas in the winter, in the UK, is spent quite differently to a Christmas spent in the summer, in Cape Town. It is not spent on the beach, coated in sun screen, eating cold turkey sandwiches from the Christmas eve supper party. It is spent indoors, with the central heating on, with lots of food and wine and family, all in one room.

Christmas lights coat just about every second house on every road, whilst the retail giants like Debenhams and Selfridges in Oxford Street compete to see how much energy they can suck out of their plug sockets through millions of Christmas lights.

My Christmas was spent with lots of family, and lots of food. Most enjoyable. Boxing Day was a continuation of that, except some exercise was taken in the afternoon. 13 of us trekked through Bushy Park, past the deer, to Hampton Court. At Hampton Court we put on our skates and took to the ice. At 4pm it was already dark, and the Hampton Court Castle changed from shades of red to blue as spot lights illuminated it. Quite spectacular.

My skating skills were a little rusty, but I only collided with two toddlers, both of which cushioned my fall quite perfectly. My rater brother on the other hand was showing off his “classy” sliding stop, only to come off second best to the barrier and landing on the ice with quite a thud.

All in all a magical winter Christmas was enjoyed by all.

P.S. I got the chance to play with my Canon 350D and have posted a few other pictures I took on Flickr.