Dave's annual madness

It was 4.30 am by the time we called it a night, after the traditional session of charades.

All too soon it was time to get up again and join our friend Dave for his annual New Year's Day swim. After the freezing days of December, it wasn't all that bad walking down to the beach in Bray, but Dave assured us that the water was really, really cold. He's great to do this each year, and raises lots of money for charity. Farewells exchanged back at the house afterwards, Carl and I continued on to the Old russian Village in Kilquade in Co. Wicklow to call in on other friends for chat and Irish Coffee and Christmas cake, after which it was back to Carl's place for a bite to eat and a bit of a TV session which included a wondeerful episode of Ballykissangel.

Back at my place it suddenly hit me that this was it – the end of the holiday season. The start of a new year too, of course, even if one which hasn't got off to the most auspicious of starts when it comes to Blipfoto dedication. Despite all my best intentions to catch up over Christmas and do some serious back-blipping to fill the disfiguring gap which has built up, all I've done is take a few shots each day, let them pile up in the camera, desultorily transfer them in batches to the computer and fail utterly to sort them, make selections and actually do any uploads. I'm only posting this on 5th January, and I still have quite a bit of work to do before anything else makes it into my poor neglected journal. The intention is to tackle the situation seriously without any further delay and return to a normal shoot-and-upload routine.