Suddenly it's Christmas, right after Hallowe'en
Well, here we all are again, then.
Just about.
I think it's fair to say that this year [*] has not quite gone to plan. I mean, we're nowhere near 2020 levels of off-the-rails, but it's all been a bit disorganised.
Firstly, the usual problem: my rapper team organises a big event in Oxford on the first Sunday of December. Accordingly, I can't think about Christmas until after Mabel Day. So I concentrate on Mabel Day, and get over that, and then think aaaaaargh, it is nearly Christmas and I'm not ready. Anyway, that's normal.
Then I realised I actually had a couple of weekends free in December, and had plenty of time to sort my Christmas shopping out, so relaxed a bit. I could afford to wallow around having a lazy weekend to get over two rather over-busy months, and some mild workplace conflagrations, and put my feet up. Loads of time.
So I did that, and had a lovely weekend flopping about on the sofa, not doing very much.
Then I got ill. When I went all coldy, and sore-throaty-and brain-stopped-working-y, I figured it was probably Covid again. But no, LFTs said otherwise, so it was just an old-fashioned own-brand cold. I had to take some time off work, and spent another weekend (rather less willingly and rather more whinily) flopping about on the sofa. To add insult to injury, at this point our kettle developed some form of fault which tripped the flat's circuit breaker whenever it was turned on, and I had to boil water in a saucepan like our primitive ancestors. While having a cold. And sulking quite a lot.
So then it was almost time to start thinking about heading north, and I did some rather panicky shopping and scribbled cards to be thrown into a pillar box. And figured well, hey, if most of these Christmas things don't actually get done, It Is Not The End Of The World. I have put up no Christmas decorations in the flat (meh). I got very behind with my folk-horror journalling RPG Advent calendar, which was a shame because I'd been rather enjoying it (I'm catching up). I contacted various friends to explain that Christmas presents would arrive at a somewhat leisurely pace this year (they were all fine with that). Christmas necessities are on average 80% completely made up and self-inflicted, and if you don't do them it is all actually just fine.
On Tuesday (19th), I was involved in a somewhat complicated plan whereby I would scoop up a friend from Ealing Broadway station at 18:30, and drive her to rapper practice (and an equally complicated plan at the other end would get her home again). So 18:27 (already running a bit late) was not really an ideal time to discover that the car had a catastrophically flat tyre. So flat it was even flat at the sides, as well as the bottom. There was some undignified haste, and some equally undignified drinking of tinned G&T on the series of trains we ended up catching instead.
Wednesday morning began with getting up early to dig out the spacesaver tyre and get it on the car. Which operation was somewhat hampered by the alloy wheel having corroded itself immovably onto the axel. And somewhat unhampered by a small flat-bed truck with an unspecified bit of heavy machinery parking itself about 4 yards away at the key moment. "That," I said, "looks like the sort of truck driven by the sort of man who will be carrying a sledgehammer." And lo, it was, and the nice man came and administered a couple of judicious whacks, and the wheel came off, and ChrisC fled triumphantly into the distance to get our car re-shod with new back tyres. (Because I'm curious, I asked, and can now specify that the bit of heavy machinery was in fact a concrete muncher - his words, not mine - which crushes up concrete when buildings are demolished.)
And we packed ourselves up, and I made a shepherds pie to take to the outlaws, and we were just about to start thinking about departure, when I did the sort of just-in-case due-diligence Covid test one does before going to visit older relations with slightly shaky health.
And it was positive.
Not very positive. Just a very faint line. But was that the tail-end of the filthy cold I thought had gone? Something new arriving? A false positive?
Spoilers: I don't know. But the next two days were negative, so I'm presumably safe in society. And I'm up in Darlington, having arrived yesterday after (thanks to a pernicious Sundayness in the Christmas Eve region) the butcher's order had already been retrieved.
I went to church with my parents this morning (see above: pernicious Sundayness) and got accidentally pressed into service after service, making props for the afternoon kids' Christingle do. (To which I had no intention of going, because I flatly refuse to do anything that involves me having to sing or listen to Little Donkey or Away in a Manger.)
If you've ever been to such a service, you will have been issued with a Christingle. That is: an orange, with a red ribbon round it, a candle stuck into it, pierced with cocktail sticks with sweets (or, if you're born before 1980, sultanas) on them. Have you ever wondered who makes these things?
No, neither had I. But the answer this year, in at least one church, was me. Not alone, since there were about 120 of the blasted things to make and it turns out that making a hole in an orange is not actually that easy an exercise. Things I have learned: scissors are actually the weapons you want, and oranges are very juicy, and the juice will go in extremely unexpected directions.
There is, by the way, a Christian justification for all the elements. The orange is the world, the candle is the light of the world, etc. These days, there is tinfoil wrapped around the candle-end before it gets rammed in the orange. Opinion was divided among the Christingle production-line this morning as to whether this represents us reflecting the light of the world, or us attempting to prevent the candle wax of God from getting all over the world. Regardless, I am going to smell faintly of oranges for some time.
Did I mention that I don't like oranges?
This afternoon has been putting baubles on the tree, putting cards up, wondering where on earth all the little wooden people who hang on the silver twig have got to, blaming each other for hiding the drawing pins, that sort of thing. All soundtracked to Carols from Kings, a bit of Johnny Cash to explain a joke ChrisC and I made, and a rather aseasonal few half-verses of The Wild West Show from the mother. We've decided to be slack and make the pigs-in-blankets tomorrow morning.
We're ready enough :)
[*] OK, so I was about to say "we've put the decorations up, we've got the fire in, but my Dad has not yet offered me a pint". Which is basically an outrage, excepting the fact that we've only just finished the bottle of wine from dinner. Anyway, I'd got the laptop out and got as far as the asterisk when Dad bestirred from under his newspaper and proffered a beer.
I've now got a nice pint of Boondoggle, and Dad's got an Evil Elf and, due to a mild and unspecified mishap, the kitchen rug has had a pint of Two Hoots.
Cheers all around.
Just about.
I think it's fair to say that this year [*] has not quite gone to plan. I mean, we're nowhere near 2020 levels of off-the-rails, but it's all been a bit disorganised.
Firstly, the usual problem: my rapper team organises a big event in Oxford on the first Sunday of December. Accordingly, I can't think about Christmas until after Mabel Day. So I concentrate on Mabel Day, and get over that, and then think aaaaaargh, it is nearly Christmas and I'm not ready. Anyway, that's normal.
Then I realised I actually had a couple of weekends free in December, and had plenty of time to sort my Christmas shopping out, so relaxed a bit. I could afford to wallow around having a lazy weekend to get over two rather over-busy months, and some mild workplace conflagrations, and put my feet up. Loads of time.
So I did that, and had a lovely weekend flopping about on the sofa, not doing very much.
Then I got ill. When I went all coldy, and sore-throaty-and brain-stopped-working-y, I figured it was probably Covid again. But no, LFTs said otherwise, so it was just an old-fashioned own-brand cold. I had to take some time off work, and spent another weekend (rather less willingly and rather more whinily) flopping about on the sofa. To add insult to injury, at this point our kettle developed some form of fault which tripped the flat's circuit breaker whenever it was turned on, and I had to boil water in a saucepan like our primitive ancestors. While having a cold. And sulking quite a lot.
So then it was almost time to start thinking about heading north, and I did some rather panicky shopping and scribbled cards to be thrown into a pillar box. And figured well, hey, if most of these Christmas things don't actually get done, It Is Not The End Of The World. I have put up no Christmas decorations in the flat (meh). I got very behind with my folk-horror journalling RPG Advent calendar, which was a shame because I'd been rather enjoying it (I'm catching up). I contacted various friends to explain that Christmas presents would arrive at a somewhat leisurely pace this year (they were all fine with that). Christmas necessities are on average 80% completely made up and self-inflicted, and if you don't do them it is all actually just fine.
On Tuesday (19th), I was involved in a somewhat complicated plan whereby I would scoop up a friend from Ealing Broadway station at 18:30, and drive her to rapper practice (and an equally complicated plan at the other end would get her home again). So 18:27 (already running a bit late) was not really an ideal time to discover that the car had a catastrophically flat tyre. So flat it was even flat at the sides, as well as the bottom. There was some undignified haste, and some equally undignified drinking of tinned G&T on the series of trains we ended up catching instead.
Wednesday morning began with getting up early to dig out the spacesaver tyre and get it on the car. Which operation was somewhat hampered by the alloy wheel having corroded itself immovably onto the axel. And somewhat unhampered by a small flat-bed truck with an unspecified bit of heavy machinery parking itself about 4 yards away at the key moment. "That," I said, "looks like the sort of truck driven by the sort of man who will be carrying a sledgehammer." And lo, it was, and the nice man came and administered a couple of judicious whacks, and the wheel came off, and ChrisC fled triumphantly into the distance to get our car re-shod with new back tyres. (Because I'm curious, I asked, and can now specify that the bit of heavy machinery was in fact a concrete muncher - his words, not mine - which crushes up concrete when buildings are demolished.)
And we packed ourselves up, and I made a shepherds pie to take to the outlaws, and we were just about to start thinking about departure, when I did the sort of just-in-case due-diligence Covid test one does before going to visit older relations with slightly shaky health.
And it was positive.
Not very positive. Just a very faint line. But was that the tail-end of the filthy cold I thought had gone? Something new arriving? A false positive?
Spoilers: I don't know. But the next two days were negative, so I'm presumably safe in society. And I'm up in Darlington, having arrived yesterday after (thanks to a pernicious Sundayness in the Christmas Eve region) the butcher's order had already been retrieved.
I went to church with my parents this morning (see above: pernicious Sundayness) and got accidentally pressed into service after service, making props for the afternoon kids' Christingle do. (To which I had no intention of going, because I flatly refuse to do anything that involves me having to sing or listen to Little Donkey or Away in a Manger.)
If you've ever been to such a service, you will have been issued with a Christingle. That is: an orange, with a red ribbon round it, a candle stuck into it, pierced with cocktail sticks with sweets (or, if you're born before 1980, sultanas) on them. Have you ever wondered who makes these things?
No, neither had I. But the answer this year, in at least one church, was me. Not alone, since there were about 120 of the blasted things to make and it turns out that making a hole in an orange is not actually that easy an exercise. Things I have learned: scissors are actually the weapons you want, and oranges are very juicy, and the juice will go in extremely unexpected directions.
There is, by the way, a Christian justification for all the elements. The orange is the world, the candle is the light of the world, etc. These days, there is tinfoil wrapped around the candle-end before it gets rammed in the orange. Opinion was divided among the Christingle production-line this morning as to whether this represents us reflecting the light of the world, or us attempting to prevent the candle wax of God from getting all over the world. Regardless, I am going to smell faintly of oranges for some time.
Did I mention that I don't like oranges?
This afternoon has been putting baubles on the tree, putting cards up, wondering where on earth all the little wooden people who hang on the silver twig have got to, blaming each other for hiding the drawing pins, that sort of thing. All soundtracked to Carols from Kings, a bit of Johnny Cash to explain a joke ChrisC and I made, and a rather aseasonal few half-verses of The Wild West Show from the mother. We've decided to be slack and make the pigs-in-blankets tomorrow morning.
We're ready enough :)
[*] OK, so I was about to say "we've put the decorations up, we've got the fire in, but my Dad has not yet offered me a pint". Which is basically an outrage, excepting the fact that we've only just finished the bottle of wine from dinner. Anyway, I'd got the laptop out and got as far as the asterisk when Dad bestirred from under his newspaper and proffered a beer.
I've now got a nice pint of Boondoggle, and Dad's got an Evil Elf and, due to a mild and unspecified mishap, the kitchen rug has had a pint of Two Hoots.
Cheers all around.