Thanks for all the emails and e cards. The Christmas-eve Yottie BYO went well. Much home-brew was drunk! Christmas day started with an 'English Breakfast' at the Chamek Kopitiam, hereafter referred to as the JB Hop-Hing. Obviously I don't usually have 'English Breakfasts' but their version of it was scrambled eggs (good) garlic toast (umm, keeps the vampire mosquitoes away I suppose) cold baked beans and chicken sausages. Good effort, 10/10 for lateral thinking but don't change the menu! A bit of writing then after various phone calls a bottle of Merlot (oh the expense but I suppose £9 once a year isn't exactly excessive) and a slow-cooked steak. A good day if a bit of a solitary one. Like last year now I come to think of it.

Right then. I had an email that said basically glad to hear that life had got onto a bit of an even-keel but the regular rants were missed. There now  followeth a Crimbo Rant: Enjoy Andy.

I just priced a haul-out here in JB, although not at Danga Bay Marina. They were having a laugh! Lift-out and splash back was £614 and on the hard was basically £14 per day. Oh, if you were out for three months you got a 20% discount! That comes to roughly £345 per month to be on the hard for three months. £30 a day (!) for labour....that's per man) if they supply the labour and if you hire somebody independently they charge £19.80 per day per man. Yard facilities were a hosepipe for a shower and a tiled hole in the ground for a toilet. If you add on the price of electricity for power tools the whole exercise comes to just under £2000 for the three months. That's without actually doing any repairs. It was a 30 min walk to a bus-stop and a taxi-fare back from the nearest supermarket would be about £4!