Another Christmas is over. Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I hate the marketing side of things. But fortunately we very rarely have a television on in this house and when we do, we tend to stick to streaming services such as Netflix so advertisements have minimal impact on our household. The reason I enjoy Christmas is it’s always a great opportunity to spend far too much time with family and friends. I say far too much time because invariably we gravitate to a particular house each year. Recently it’s because Méabh and Rían are getting enjoyment from the other children in that house. I hear some people say that after the hype leading up to Christmas they are just tired of it and within a few days they don’t know what to do. I’ve never found that. I managed to take just over two weeks off this year. I spent a lot of time with the children, the dogs and my wife. I also got to spend about two days working on things that I wanted to spend time on. I could easily spend another two weeks doing the same. No day is boring. There’s always something to be done, someone to visit or somewhere interesting to travel to. IT’s the lack of defined things to do that makes Christmas so enjoyable for me.

Tomorrow, I’m back to work, the children are back to school and life will return to normal. I’m reasonably okay with that. There are a few things that I want to get stuck into in work and I’m looking forward to ramping up the music side of things in anticipation of the Fleadh in Drogheda in August. It’s going to be a busy 8 months until the next decent block of time off. It’s an eight months where I’ll have a lot to do but if I play my cards right, the hard work will be rewarding and the commitment will pay off.

I hope that what ever you did, you had a very enjoyable Christmas break.