We are starting to feel very festive here at VICTA! The season was kicked off by our VICTA Christmas party which was hosted for our 18+ young people and volunteers. This year the festivities were held at Bistro Live in Milton Keynes and it proved extremely popular – we were quite quickly fully booked. It was a lovely chance for all the young people who had met on our 2014 activities to reunite and do what most like to do at this time of year – have a fun night out with friends!

There was a big group of us – perhaps the noisiest tables in the venue – the atmosphere was fantastic from the outset. We had some fun finding everybody’s places, especially as some of the names seemed to have got lost in translation. After spending a long time looking for Leo’s name we finally discovered he had been renamed ‘Lea’! Once all sat down we enjoyed our cocktails and ordered our food. The staff and the meal was excellent, they had a lot of people to cater for but were very attentive and all ran smoothly. One of the highlights of the meal was the trio of puddings, including a very sweet meringue snowman.

Once the meals were cleared away the fun really began. There was a fantastic live band who played all the hits, making it hard for anyone to resist having a boogie. There was a lot of dancing on the tables (some even with high heels) and spirits were high. Many of our fabulous volunteers came along, and it was a really lovely chance to catch up with them and say thank you for all their hard work. It was also nice to see our Sicily trip organisers Seable who we will be travelling with again next year. For those of the group who were staying it was only a short walk back to the hotel where the staff were also fantastic. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along – a truly wonderful group of people. It was a treat to spend time with such a confident group of young people, and see them happy in their friendships and just having a great time.