Swiftie Heaven, Comedy and Festivities: A Review of October, November and December

As promised, better late than never, here is my final quarterly round-up of 2019. It feels weird to be writing it even though we’re in January, but it’s finally here. Anyway, not only is this my final quarterly round-up of 2019, it’s actually my final one full stop. Mainly because, I’m switching to monthly ones. That seems a bit weird given that this post will actually be published towards the end of January, but as I mentioned before, I couldn’t not finish the little series I’d set myself without tying things up in a nice bow. I also decided to switch to monthly ones as I thought it would hopefully motivate me to do more stuff, but we’ll see. Anyway, apologies for the late arrival of this quarterly review, here’s what I got up to in the final quarter of 2019.

4 Years

October is always a busy month for us as there’s a fair few birthdays in there, along with our wedding anniversary. This year, we hit the big four. Go us! To celebrate, I wrote a post that looked back over my wedding day, which you can read here. We went out for dinner at The Botanist in Bath to celebrate, where the cocktails were delightful. I also had a lemon panna cotta for dessert which was LIFE.

Comedy

It was certainly a busy three months in our comedy gig line up. In October we saw both Ellie Taylor and Ed Gamble in Bath, who were both brilliant. November was a visit to the Bristol Hippodrome where we saw Rhod Gilbert for the first time, and he was fantastic and it was just what I needed to cheer up after 2 weeks of being poorly (more on that later). Finally, our last show of the year was Suzi Ruffell, with Rosie Jones as her support act, and it was one of my favourites of the year. I wrote a recent post about all of our comedy jaunts for 2019, which you can read here.

Butt Stuff 2: Electric Boogaloo

After over a 6 month wait (when I was initially told 4-6 weeks) I finally got my consultant appointment with gastroenterology. The good news is that they don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with me, but they’ve still got me on a list for a colonoscopy to rule stuff out. Unfortunately, I’m now on another bloody waiting list. Again, I was told 4-6 weeks. This is now the 12th week.

Swiftogeddon

Oh my god. This was one of my top highlights of 2019. Lillie and I found out a Taylor Swift club night, aka ‘Swiftogeddon’ was coming to Thekla in Bristol, and within minutes I had booked us tickets. The night itself didn’t get off to the best start, after a train delay and 45 minutes waiting for an Uber to show up, but once we arrived at the club we got a couple of tequilas down us and within minutes we were busting some shapes to Paper Rings. It was a night full of Taytay. One room was just anything goes Taytay, playing any and all songs from her albums, while the other was her biggest hits with a few remixes thrown in. If you caught my Instagram stories that night, you will be well aware that we got very drunk and had an amazing night. I have some amazing memories with Lillie, and this night is definitely high up on the list, especially at the end when we sat drunkenly singing Lover with hundreds of fellow Swifties. Also, I totally channelled my inner Taytay with these sequin shorts…

• 

• 

Lurgytown

Unfortunately, a few days after Swiftogeddon I came down with the lurgy. I felt horrendous but I was genuinely relieved that it had held off until after the night of back to back Taytay. While it wasn’t the flu I was incredibly poorly for over two weeks with a disgustingly gross cold and cough, which started to get better and then seemed to come back with a vengeance. To add insult to injury, during the second week I ended up looking extra glamorous after coming down with conjunctivitis. It was not my best look of the year, and honestly the worst thing was not being able to wear makeup for a whole week. Thankfully, the drops I got from the pharmacy cleared it all up, and I treated myself to some new mascara to celebrate.

Halloween

While last year’s Halloween didn’t go down too well (I got very drunk and had my phone, debit card and driving licence stolen), this one was actually pretty good. One of Liam’s friends from work had a murder mystery party with a fairy-tale theme, and we all had characters assigned to us – Liam was a blind mouse and I was Bo Peep. It was great fun and it was nice to have a chance to dress up properly for Halloween in something other than cat ears (my go to). I’ll tell you now though, it’s bloody difficult finding a Bo Peep costume that isn’t stupidly revealing.

• 

• 

Christmas

December generally was a bit of a quiet month, and to be honest my anxiety is always on high alert because I’m always worried about being ill for the festivities, especially seeing as I’d only just recovered from one bought of the lurgy. However, we still did a couple of festive bits. Lillie and I had our annual trip to Bath Christmas Market, which always gets me feeling festive – although we both spent more money in Lush than we did in the market itself!

December as a whole really flew by, as did Christmas Day itself. Our Christmas Day is usually batshit crazy as we spread it between three families – at one point we even did a Vicar of Dibley with the three lunches! For the last couple of years though we’ve had a good system going where we do breakfast at my father-in-law’s, lunch/nibbles at my Mum’s, and then the main Christmas dinner at my mother-in-law’s. It’s all such a busy day and it goes by so quickly, but the main thing is we keep everyone happy. Unfortunately, I ended up fighting off a panic attack at my Mum’s this year, so most of our time there was spent watching old episodes of Gavin and Stacey (oh my god I’m still not over the Christmas special). Thankfully I felt better before we left and I was able to demolish the amazing Christmas dinner my mother-in-law made for us. I had some lovely presents too, mainly a shit-ton of books from my Amazon wish list, and Liam got me this adorable Tatty Devine necklace that I wanted!

• 

• 

New Year’s Eve was spent at our friend Josh’s house party, and it was a great laugh – as you can see from the picture, I went a bit extra with the outfit. I always like dressing up on New Year’s, even if it’s just a house party, and to be fair if I’m feeling good about how I look it usually means it’ll be a good night. I must be getting old though, as once it hit midnight I got rather sleepy. I don’t think I even made it to 1am!

• 

• 

To be honest, it’s quite nice to be back into a routine now. While I love Christmas, especially the time off work, sleeping in, getting up late and just sitting around doing nothing really messes with you. Obviously no one forces you to do it, but I think you just fall into that habit, especially during those days between Christmas and New Year. Like what the actual F happens during those days? Anyway, that rounds up my fourth and final quarterly review of 2019, and I’m looking forward to sharing more bits with you a bit more frequently in 2020!