Christmas with the Craigs.

First off - Merry Christmas to all!

I don’t know about you, but for me the meaning of Christmas has been dumbed down year on year. When I was young all I could think about what Santa was going to be bring me. But as year has gone by, Christmas has come to mean more and more to me.

For the first time in my life I didn’t spend Christmas in Edinburgh. I must say, it was slightly strange not being in my usual surroundings, but it didn’t really matter. It was about the journey that we had gone through in order to have our Christmas.

All over the UK, the run up to December 25th was one of epic weather proportions. There was more sleet and snow over the UK than I can ever remember, and it arrived just as everyone was trying to move off. Our journey was to take us over 400 miles from Edinburgh Scotland, to Surrey England. Now, if you had looked out our window, or on BBC News for that matter, you would have decided that on any other day traveling over 400 miles in these ridiculous weather conditions was just bonkers. But because it was Christmas we knew we had no choice.

The journey didn’t begin well. We took the main road from Edinburgh, which is embarrassingly weary for the Capital of a county of the Commonwealth, and headed South. The road was unbearably slow, and the queues were endless. We could however rejoice in the fact that we would reach the motorway soon. But when we did, things didn’t go quite so smoothly.

It turned our cars Air Suspension decided December 22rd was a good day to curl up and die. This meant we had to drive very slow! (It also meant we looked like we were driving a low-rider, but with my Mum and Dad upfront, I don’t think we were at risk of any mistaken identity!) After what seemed like lightyears we reached Carlisle. With weary eyes, and frozen fingers, I managed to guide us to a garage using my iPhone, and we found some brave soles willing to tackle our car!

One night in a Travel Lodge and one Chinese Take-Away later, we were on the road. The next bit was kind of boring. We essentially drove for many hours and nothing much happened.

That was until we hit London! Being the clever/nerdy people that we are, we always carry multiple smart phones/mobile broadband dongles. So naturally it was my job to connect to http://route.tomtom.com (which is actually quite good by the way!) and find our way around the M25 nightmare traffic jams. And amazingly I did! Until a lorry burst into flames during the heaviest rainstorm known to man. Because of this, the Wombles closed the M25 and we got stuck for another 45 minutes!

Anyway, we got there in the end. That’s what is important. So it may have taken us two days, and few springs here and there, but the fact remains that we soldiered on through and made it to London for Christmas. If anything I just wrote made any sense, and you are able to take anything from it, I hope you take from it the fact that fighting against adversity is worth it when you have a reason. The goal becomes so much more, and something you simply cannot, not achieve.

Well have a wonderful rest of 2009, and I’ll see you on the other side!

Finlay