Noe

The past couple of days have been something of a blur as I have prepared the house for the arrival of 8 Christmas Day revellers. A mad dash to the shops on Wednesday morning to pick up and some last minute gifts, and most importantly the turkey. I arrived at the butchers to discover that they had one or two left.

Most of the rest of yesterday was spent cleaning, vacuuming, setting the table and otherwise following the words of the Saintly Delia to prepare much of the yuletide feast in advance of the actual day.

I finished preparations at about 10pm last night which just gave me time to change and pop out for Midnight Eucharist. I am not deeply observant, but I do like to remember the true meaning of Christmas in amongst the rest of Commercemas.

This morning I arose at 07:45 to turn on the oven, stuff the turkey and set it off on its cooking process. I had never before appreciated how complex a matter the cooking of the turkey can be. In my younger days a full Christmas lunch appeared magically from the kitchen just as we had finished opening the last of the presents. Now I realise that the chefs of the country (usually mums) work harder on this day than on any other. So when you are sitting down to your lunch or dinner today - remember to congratulate the cook on a job well done. I can tell you from personal experience of the work it has meant so far. It will mean more to them that all the gifts and other Christmas greetings with which you may shower them today.

Right now I am on a rest break. I don't need to adjust the cooking temperature of the turkey for another 45 minutes, and the veg doesn't need to start cooking for another hour. The Plum Pudding will begin to steam at mid-day precisely.

The guests have been told to arrive at 12:30 and they will be served with champagne and nibbles - we are not eating till 2pm and so we will open the presents around about 1pm.

Come Fly With Me!

Ok, this might be an extremely long shot, but here goes.

Close readers of this blog will have worked out that one of my hobbies is flying hot air balloons. I am currently preparing for an expedition to the alps in early January.

If one of your New Year Resolutions was going to be to fly in a hot air balloon, this could be a golden opportunity for you.

Owing to one of my crew members suddenly coming to the top of an NHS waiting for list surgery just a couple of days before we are due to head off to Austria, I suddenly have one (maybe two) crew place(s) available to come with us.

Full details are here. But please note date adjustments. We leave on 8th and get back to the UK on the 18th January 2004.

Anyone interested in joining us for 10 days of ballooning and skiing is invited to contact me urgently in the comments box below.

I have a number of feelers out, and am anticipating a quick response to this placement so first person to commit with a signed cheque gets the place.

Oh - one footnote - owing to the short notice of this vacancy, and the accommodation arrangements which are already in place for the rest of the crew, applicants must either be male, or an extremely broad-minded female!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

It has been a busy afternoon at Chez Sapientum as the momentum picks up towards Christmas Day.

First some friends of mine dropped in to leave their car in my drive as they head off home to Trinidad till New Year. My reward for guarding their car for 10 days is a yummy rum cake which smells fabulous. I shall tuck into that tomorrow with a cuppa tea! They have also left a whole stack of CDs in their car, so lots of new music for me to "listen to" while they are away - hehe.

Then my sister popped round with a Christmas pudding. I am having the entire family here for Christmas day and so she has offered to provide the sweet course since I am taking care of everything else. I have this suspicious package wrapped in foil and sitting in a huge steaming pot - along with strict instructions as to when I must put it on the heat.

The tree is hung, the halls are decked and a stream of seemingly unending Christmas music is being piped into the house from planet Musicmatch filling the place with festive cheer.

Tomorrow I have to pick up a 12lb turkey along with the rest of the fresh food, flowers, and a couple of last minute presents.

I know I am going to forget something, I just know it.

So I am off now to write a list.

iPod's Dirty Secret

I was really, seriously thinking of buying myself an iPod in the new year. That is until I saw this.

Has anyone out there, that has owned an iPod for more than 18 months, any experience of this? Or do you all have this nasty little surprise waiting for you?

I have to admit that until this is disproved I will not be parting with my hard earned cash. I already have enough useless, outdated technology lying around the place without adding to the pile.

Parliamentary Calendar

2004 is fast approaching. It will soon be time to take down that tired old calendar and replace it with a new one full of 365 new and unspoiled days.

If you are interested in British Politics, you might be like a calendar which exposes the bare truth on the body politic. But then again maybe not. Nude pictures of Tony Blair, and his cabinet, as well as cheeky photos of prominent members of the opposition are not to everyone's taste!

(via Terreus)

Christmas Number One

Brits (well, those that listen to Radio 1) have just learned which is the latest single to earn that coveted position as the nation's favourite at Christmas.

Of those considered likely to achieve success, here is how they fared...

38 - Noddy - Make Way For Noddy
26 - Bill Nighy - Christmas Is All Around
25 - Fast Food Rockers - I Love Christmas
17 - Katie Melua - The Closest Thing to Crazy
15 - Cheeky Girls - Have a Cheeky Christmas
13 - Sir Cliff Richard - Santa's List
9 - Shane Richie - I'm Your Man
5 - The Idols - Happy Xmas (War is Over)
4 - Avid Merrion - Proper Chrimbo!
3 - The Osbournes - Changes
2 - The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)

Which means that the Christmas Number 1 for 2003 is

Gary Jules - Mad World

What a result for lovers of good music.

History Repeating?

Much fuss and bother in the entertainment news media today about the winner of Pop Idol last night.

Its not the first time an unconventionally shaped female Glaswegian songstress has come from nowhere to take the limelight now is it? At least Michelle has got a great voice.

At one point last week Judge Pete Waterman was reported to have said ""Obviously, this show is not about talent or singing any more." Well, I would say that just about sums up the current pop industry, a situation which was nurtured in no small way by Stock Aitkin and Waterman starting with their chart domination by singing soap stars, teaboys and secretaries in the late 80s.

Hopefully now we can all get back to the business of listening to some real music and keeping our fingers crossed that the Christmas Number One will be something of which our nation can be proud. Or maybe not!

My Neighbours

I have recently discovered a useful site called LocalFeeds. It provides a geographically based summary of all the XML/RSS feeds which are published from a declared location. With a bit of tuning I have been able to build a page which displays all the news which eminates from blogs written and published within 5 miles of Oxford city centre.

I will be adding the LocalFeeds link to my template in the next day or two. In the mean time have a click and see whats hot in Oxford.

Presents You Don't Want This Christmas

Christmas is a time for giving. However, as this film shows, being a recipient is not always a good thing.

I am trying not to take personally the fact that one of my supposed friends saw fit to bring this to my attention. What type of person do they think I am?

(Probably work-safe, but do turn down your volume control.)

The Best Christmas Decoration Ever™?

Over on Diamond Geezer there is some discussion about Blue Peter and the things they do at Christmas, especially the lighting of the candles on their Advent Crown.

My Mum wouldn't let my sister and I build an Advent Crown when we were little because there was "nowhere to hang it in our house". Secretly I think she feared the candles would leave sooty marks on the ceiling. As much as we begged, the parental withholding of coat hangers and wire put paid to any plans we may have had for a covert operation.

Eventually a couple of days before Christmas we were allowed to set about making a candle arrangement which could be put safely on a table or sideboard and admired by friends and relatives who would be arriving the next day to spend Christmas with us. At the time I thought the results of my labours were the most fantastic decoration imaginable, and certainly outshone anything Val and her pals could cobble together. In reality I used modelling dough to plonk a candle on a polystyrene tray - the sort you get meat in from supermarkets. Then I covered the tray with tinsel and some holly leaves from the bush in our garden.

Once my creative labours were done, the Best Christmas Decoration Ever™ was placed "out of harm's way" on the sideboard in the dining room with the promise that we could light the candle when Daddy came home. Eventually the light faded outside the window and Daddy's car was indeed heard in the drive so there was much frenzied activity by Mum to find the matches and light the candle so he could see the meisterwork in its full glory and gaze on it with understandable paternal pride. The wick was lit just as the key turned in the lock and we were to go and meet the returning worker in the hall. My mum and my sister filed out into the hall, and just as I was supposed to be following them I had a brilliant idea. "Wouldn't the Best Christmas Decoration Ever™ look fabulous if it was viewed in the lounge, better still, set in front of the Christmas Tree?"

Having made the appropriate adjustments I joined the others in the hall and I am not sure what happened, but something must have distracted us. For some reason we all went through to the kitchen, where we stayed for some considerable time. Long enough for the small candle to burn quite a way down. You would be amazed quite how quickly a small candle can burn, also how effective it is at setting light to holly leaves. You might already know how fiercely holly can burn once it gets going and that a polystyrene tray can be almost unstoppable once alight.

When I had finally dragged my parents into the lounge to jointly admire a busy afternoon's work the sight which greeted us was not the sort of open fire around which which one would gather to roast chestnuts!

Luckily disaster was averted, the licking flames had not yet reached the lower branches of a real, and thus extremely flammable, tree. The conflagration was doused with a pail of water and the house went very, very quiet. I am sure tea was eaten in silence too. I was not to know, I was banished to my bedroom to "have a think about what could have happened" and "how I should never play with matches or fire". There was also talk about Santa cancelling his visit to our house.

I can understand my parent's concern about the incident. I think what really upset mum was the two foot diameter burned patch in a recently laid carpet right in front of the tree, and no chance of removal or replacement before the guests arrived for Christmas the next day.

Needless to say I was named and shamed to the visitors and my career as a Christmas Decorator came to an abrupt and permanent halt.

Wot, no party?

There are many advantages to being an independent worker. I am sure I have blogged on these benefits before, but if I haven't, now is not the time. This post is about a distinct disadvantage of not working in a traditional team environment.

For the many years I was an employee one of the auguries of Christmas was the work's Christmas party. Be they a lunch, dinner, or disco they were normally alcohol soaked sessions of enforced corporate bonhomie during which people, who spend a whole year suppressing urges about their married colleagues, give vent to their true feelings in a mist of Christmas cheer.

I can't say that at the time I really enjoyed any of these employer organised parties. However, in the words of the song which Joni Mitchell made famous; "you don't know what you got till its gone" I now really miss that sense of expectation that used to precede those events - and the gales of gossip which followed in their wake.

Now, I read daily in blogs accounts of the "works do", the aftermath of which is often used as an excuse for missing a blog entry.

I will have my lonely Christmas festivities tomorrow. They will consist of a Waitrose mince pie and a glass of mulled wine consumed mid-afternoon with no chance of exchanging body fluids with anyone in the stationery cupboard.

For those of you still looking forward to a night of company funded, beer fuelled revelry, here is a cautionary public information film supplied by the ever brilliant Matt999.

Mind how you go!

Born. Eat. Shag. Die.

Thanks to Lyle, who put me onto it, I have submitted my entry to the 2003 Mayfly Project. I was planning to write a much longer review of my 2003, based on a review of my blog, but somehow, after much consideration, and careful selection of those precious few words, the pithy Mayfly version of my year tends to highlight the significant events.

My Mayfly contribution reads as follows:

Lost love, flew supersonic, new friends, turned forty, car died, moved house, new car, new love, new job, blogged earnestly.

Whilst completing my entry, I noticed one from fellow Oxfordian, Chris, who, judging by the average length of entries on his blog, must have agonised for hours over the strict 20 word maximum submission.

How was your year?

London Murdered

Yesterday lunchtime - while snacking on a sandwich - I watched an episode of the Angela Lansbury series "Murder She Wrote".

The episode, called Sing a Song of Murder was first broadcast on 27th October 1985 and was about Jessica's cousin, a famous actress in England, who calls for help when she is a target for murder. As a result the episode was apparently set in somewhere called London. However, it must have been a London in a parallel universe which is trapped in the mid-1950's.

In the London portrayed in the episode, St Paul's Cathedral is visible from every window and at the end of every street in the city. Policemen all walk around in their shirtsleeves. Working class people talk in a flattened cockernee accent which has not been in use for over thirty years. They include the words perishin', bloomin' and guvnor in every sentence. Many of the actors desperately trying to mask their own Australian accents and as a result doing a worse Cockney than Dick Van Dyke's famous atrocity committed in "May-er-ree Poppins" Meanwhile, anyone of any other class (including Hollywoods favourite "English" actor Patrick McNee) talks as if they have been voice trained at RADA and live in houses cluttered with Edwardian chintz and lit by gaslamps.

A "busy" London street showed three cars - two timber framed Morris Mini Travellers and an E-Type Jaguar. Other landmark shots looked like they had been originally filmed as part of a 1950's travelogue. The only realistic image from the whole depiction was of the New Scotland Yard sign rotating, and this could easily have been taken from the introduction to any episode of The Sweeney.

In that curious way that Hollywood scriptwriters have of depicting a foreign country in a way which they think will be acceptable to their primarly audience, much of the "English" language was corrupted. One working lad was heard telling the other party in a traffic accident that he "needed a seeing-eye dog" instead of a guide-dog. An answering machine on a telephone was referred to as an "answering device" and a page boy in a top london hotel was referred to as a "bell hop".

If this is the type of picture which TV watching Americans get of us Brits, it is no wonder that they are more than a little surprised when they get here to find that London isn't a quaint little village where everyone knows each other, where we do speak a different language and, most shocking of all, that we no longer suddenly stop everything for tea at Four O'Clock.

Phew, That's Better

Things have been just hectic for me for a while now and so I decided to take some time off from blogging.

Did you miss me?

Sadly, not much of what I have done would make terribly interesting reading. However there have been a few things which I will attempt to blog over the coming few days. As a result there will be a little timeshifting going on.