Did you have a good Christmas and New Year Mr Hall???...

... Is a question I get asked regularly at this time of year in polite conversation.

Usually I hone a little set routine which succinctly sums up my Yule Tide shenanigans in a sentence designed not to tax too much time from the person who asked- I'm self depracating enough to realise that the question is merely intended as clumsy conversational foreplay.

This year, however, I balked a little more than usual when asked this question. To be specific, the word 'Christmas' is now accompanied by an image of the woman who birthed me in agony on the living room floor whilst the phrase 'New Year' conjures a macabre flashback of my cupboard filled with human sick.

You see, over Christmas, my mum was taken ill with stones in the gall bladder- which is pretty much a world of pain as I understand it- and a fate that may well await me if I have the same hereditary condition, the otherwise uneventful Gilberts disease. Gulp.

The ordeal was heightened by a 45 minute wait for an ambulance and further complications which I'll quickly bore you with- the rather serious Pancreatitis and pseudocysts on the pancreas.

Pseudocysts, I can only assume, are bits of debris pretending to be cysts. Pretty low aspirations in life, even for debris.

Mrs Hall is now making a valiant recovery- you'll be glad to hear.

But what about the cupboard full of sick? You ask, because I just wrote that you did.

Well, this was a separate incident. New Years Eve started off well in a pleasant bar in Queenstown Road, Battersea. A quick montage of booze, laughter and mayhem later and it was morning.

I awake on my sofa- leg propped out, sort of toeing my coffee table seductively- to a phone call which was lost due to the perennial signal problems that beseech my basement flat.

I then stagger into my bedroom, which I had dutifully given up for my sister and her two friends. I'll grab a jumper and make the call outside, I reason.

To retrieve said garment, I walk towards my cupboard and... I'm hardly the master of Hitchcockian suspense here as I'm sure you know what's coming... essentially, my finest garments or yarn were coated in a thick layer of human bile mixed with stagnated booze and the obligatory pieces of carrot.

It was my sister's friend whodunnit. Sigh, it usually is.

Queue montage of said companion holding mop, me suppressing rage with a much-practiced look of sincerity, her reaching for the relevant cleaning utensils, looking green, leaving my house apologetically and then screeching off in her car- no doubt to reassess her life choices and perhaps embrace one of the five major world religions.

Queue second montage of me grabbing mop, finishing the job properly, then cleaning the rest of my flat in a OCD-like attempt to restore order and decency to this particular boxed unit in sleepy North Putney.

... So, enough about me. Did you have a good Christmas and New Year???? :-)