Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 3)

Call it Winter Blues. Call it SAD. Call it vitamin D deficiency. Call it what you like (being “misog” in Blake household parlance) but I’ve been feeling down and out for the last week or so. I’m not the only one. I know my good lady wife is too.

Suddenly it all seems... not exactly too much, just not enough. We’re both sick of chasing our own coat-tails financially. There can be nothing more galling than turning up to a job (that makes you sigh) every day to earn not enough money to cover all the bills. It is truly demoralizing.

And we feel tired. Deep winter tired. I suspect we should be hibernating. Curled up in a warm cave stocked with hot chocolate, sausages & mash and a host of other tasty comfort foods. My DVD collection wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

The winter is just not a great place to be.

But I’m trying to be cheerful.

Well, if not exactly cheerful (this is me we’re talking about after all) then I’m at least I’m trying to count my blessings.

I have a wonderful wife. Too wonderful rumbustious boys. A roof over our heads. Karen and I have both completed an accountancy course (ACCA) and a degree course respectively over the last few months – Karen is merely awaiting her final results (out in Feb). I’ve nearly completed the first rewrite of my novel – next step will be sourcing an agent. It’s very early days yet but we calculated than we’ve paid off about £9k from our mortgage.

So if we’re not rich in money we’re at least rich in assets and home comforts. And we’re not going to starve.

But a bit of elasticity would be nice. A holiday would be nice (I’m not even thinking “abroad”). To be able to buy a luxury item once in a while without feeling guilty would be nice.

*Sigh*

Although I’m not sure if it will help we have a financial advisor coming round to visit us this evening. Somebody independent and professional to take on board our haemorrhaging fortunes to see if they can apply a tourniquet. If nothing else she might be able to get us a better deal on our mortgage, I suppose. I’m not holding my breath though. I can’t help suspecting it will merely result in a tightening up of moolah elsewhere. Swings and roundabouts as they say.

Sorry. I’m meant to be being positive. Reasons to be cheerful and all that.

Ahem. At least she’s not a bailiff.

There, is that close enough?

You Can Tell By The Way I Use My Walk

Despite the utter contempt for snow-worriers and ice-cowards exhibited in my previous post I must admit that conditions here in the UK are possibly a little worse than those I was so glibly making light of. There are talks nationally of fuel rationing and billions of pounds lost from the UK economy. Things are beginning to sound dire. Or rather, more dire. And even here in quiet old backwater Leamo we have the odd snow drift that occasionally reaches a height of 2 inches or more and the odd bush that has been felled by the sheer weight of snow upon it.

I’ve been trying to phone Ray Mears but he stopped taking my calls sometime before Christmas.

What is most noticeable though about this current instance of bad weather is the persistence of the white stuff. Over the last few years any snow that has fallen in these parts has disappeared again within 24 hours or so. Like it’s been a mere token gesture. A quick hello and then it’s gone.

Not so on this occasion. Three days later all the snow remains in full force and has slowly transformed itself into ice so hard and slippy I’m amazed I haven’t seen Dean dragging Torvill along the pavements by her frilly forearms.

Walking has suddenly become an extreme sport. It takes the utmost concentration to remain upright on one’s feet – let alone placing one foot in front of the other and perambulating normally.

Now, when I walk about town I am wont to plug myself into my MP3 player and lose myself in some bangin’ tunes, innit?

Because of the snow I find I am having to modify and adjust my normal playlist. Fast music, you see, makes me walk fast. It gets the old heart rate going and I end up scurrying around at supersonic speed.

Speed and ice do not mix. Not unless you can allow for a sudden and unexpected lowering of your eye-level to the pavement and a braking distance of 5 to 6 feet.

So I am having to select all the ballady, slower stuff so that my walking speed slips into a funereal march that ticks all the health and safety boxes for walking in hazardous conditions.

The droning tones of Leonard Cohen and David Sylvian have so far protected me from pratfalls and broken limbs of varying degrees of severity.

I ought to be grateful...

But the sublimated extreme sportsman in me is dying to load up a bit of Metallica and go for it.

I could probably take out half the population of Leamington if I pogoed properly.

Snow Day

Why, in the UK, does the snow take us by surprise every year?

We act like we have never seen the stuff before.

Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!

A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.

Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.

What utter wussies we are.

The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.

There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.

Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.

It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.

The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.

From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.

Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.

I’m not. I’m at work.

Harrumph.

Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.

Silent Night

My grandfather would always walk out of the room when he heard this carol. It was bizarre. Up he’d get and storm off grumbling to himself. I can remember my Nan smiling sadly to us all and explaining it away with “he just can’t bear to hear it; it’s to do with the war”.

It puzzled me for years. Sometime in my teens I thought I had it figured. Silent Night is a German carol. That must be it, I thought. The Germans, the war time foe. Though his reaction was so extreme this hardly seemed a decent explanation.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that he finally told me the reason. Before his illness and old age robbed him of the ability and the will to tell me stories of his war time experiences he just came out with it one lunch time while we were tucking into fish and chips.

My grandfather was a seaman in the Royal Navy and took part in a great number of the convoys that carried and fetched supplied to and from South Africa, Europe, Malta and the Med, etc. His ship, H.M.S. Kelvin, saw a good deal of action and was one of the ships celebrated for breaking through the curtain the Germans and Italians had put around Malta – it was certainly the exploit that he spoke about with the most ease and pride.

This other story though was more painful and was one he’d carried around with him for more than 60 years without speaking much about it...

I believe his ship was part of a night convoy in the North Atlantic. It was winter and bitterly cold. A man overboard would be dead within minutes – from the cold rather than drowning. The going was cautious – German U-Boats were about and very active. The ships were effectively operating under black-out – no lights, engines only and no radio communication. Anything to minimize the possibility of a U-Boat picking them up. Another stipulation was that the ships were not allowed to stop. Not for anything. Not even to help a comrade fallen overboard. They had to keep going; they had to get through.

The ship ahead was unlucky. A U-Boat picked her off sometime in the small hours and she went down spilling her crew - hundreds of men - into the water.

The other ships, including my grandfather’s could not stop to pick up the survivors. They knew this. The men in the water also knew this and very softly sang Silent Night as the convoy and their comrades continued on into the night and away from them.

I cannot imagine the pain of having to live through that night and of having such a memory bubble to the surface for every Christmas that you experience afterwards. If not for his reaction to the carol we would never have known.

When I hear Silent Night now I too will feel sad and an aching sense of pain though for different reasons. And I shall remember all the Christmases when my grandfather disappeared out into the kitchen to bang about with the kettle until the carol had finished.

And I shall feel regret and I shall feel sorrow.

But mostly I shall feel pride.

No Grit

It’s official.

There is a lack of grit in the UK.

It’s all over the news. Local authorities in the Midlands are already completely out of it.

Salt reserves are also dangerously low in at least 8 far flung counties.

So there you have it folks. Clear and undeniable indications that the country has gone to the dogs. Standards have fallen. The Dunkirk Spirit is no more – oooh it’s much to cold and wet, I’m staying right here, girlfriend...

The UK has lost its grit and we’re running low on that hardiest of stand-bys: the salt of the earth.

All that’s left are the whingers, the ne’er-do-wells and the people-with-the-best-of-intentions-but-no-motivation-to-see-it-through.

The nation has been broken by a little bit of snow.

Back when I were a kid in a land that smelled and sounded like a Hovis advert we didn’t let a little bit of the white stuff hold us back, oh no lad. I’ve already reminisced in a previous post how, a mere 25 years ago, even in half metre drifts of snow, people still battled into work and kids still battled into school with no real expectation of scamming a day off.

In fact the only time my school closed in bad weather was when the boilers broke.

Fair enough. Can’t argue with that.

But when the boilers were working the school was able to function as normal and people made an effort to get in despite the snowy conditions – to carry on as normal, to keep the wheels of industry turning. To not be defeated by a little bit of weather.

True grit, folks. True grit.

Not so now alas.

Now, the slightest flurry of the most fairy-like of snow flakes will see people inhale sharply through their teeth, shake their heads in mock sorrow and exasperation and unravel the control leads to their PlayStation / Xbox in preparation for a couple of days at home, “snowed in”, while the country grinds to a comical halt once more (though it’s funny how we expect the gritting crews to still get out there and do their job, isn’t it?).

Yes, we’re all snowed in. We can’t possibly risk our lives getting into work or getting into school. Not in all this snow and ice. Might catch pneumonia. Or frostbite somewhere nasty. Or, like, just really painful chilblains.

Which is why the town yesterday was full of people of all ages, all playing out in the snow, all dressed in their best protective winter gear. Everywhere you looked there were snowball fights, sledging, snowmen and preposterously appendaged snow-women... and people dressed up quite comfortably like Sir Ranulph Fiennes. It was a real winter wonderland blah blah blah.

It seems to me then that the snow doesn’t really stop us doing anything very much at all if we actually set our minds to it... Just the stuff we don’t like doing... like, for example, going to work for a living.

Except this isn’t down to the snow, folks.

This is down to the lax and lazy attitude that has infected this country from the last generation downward. Suddenly it’s ok to be lazy, ok to take the easy way out. People who battle into work regardless of the conditions are seen as idiots and foolish. Why bother? Hard work and dedication are plainly rubbishy attributes for any man or woman these days and you’d best ditch them bloody quick if you want to fit in with the new laid-back modern world.

Just put your feet up. Relax. What’s an education and a work ethic at the end of the day? Look – daytime telly! How often do you get a chance to watch that? Go on. Treat yourself. Nobody else is bothering to turn in today. You’ll be the only nerd in the office if you go. Good lad. Stick the kettle on. The kids’ll enjoy a day off. It’ll teach them a valuable lesson. Or something.

“True grit? Ha! Not much.”

Proper Winters And Erin Grey

So is this a proper winter?

There’s been considerable debate in our house.

Well. Karen mentioned once that the temperatures this year have actually hit freezing a few times rather than just being “a bit chilly” and I grunted in reply that they still haven’t approximated anywhere near the arctic winters that I remember from my childhood.

But thinking about it I can only really recall one particularly arctic winter from the 18 or so that constituted my pre-adult life...

*(adopts West Country pirate-like accent for no good reason whatsoever)* Aar, it were the winter of ’82 and us young uns had to be carried through the mile high snow drifts like new born lambs in the arms of the bare-chested, ruddy nippled menfolk lest our poor shoeless feet should freeze solid like the last packet of rissoles at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland...

I think 1982 sticks in my mind because it was my very first year at Secondary school (the “big school”) and I had to tramp a mile or so there and back on foot which back then seemed akin to some poor African child walking 15 miles to fetch water from a bore hole and slay a gazelle or three on route, skin it and bring it home pre-butchered and ready for the village cooking pot.

Really I had no idea I was even born.

But the winter that year was genuinely very bad. A proper winter in every sense of the word. Snow that was several feet deep and lasted for weeks. Icy winds that froze ponds, streams, canals and rivers solid. Loads of days off school because either the boilers broke down or not enough staff / pupils made it into school to make a normal school day viable. And so bleak and grey outside that it seemed as if the sun had fizzled out completely like Jim Davidson’s telly career.

Going outside was frequently not an option that winter. I can recall in particular having to work hard to bend my parent’s arms to allow me to go for my usual Saturday morning walk to the papershop (we call them newsagents now) on a morning when the overnight snowfall had been extraordinarily heavy. Not going out that day was not an option for me. You see, every Saturday during this period I would religiously go to the papershop in the morning and hand over my hard saved cash – a piddling amount by today’s standards – to purchase a couple of packets of Buck Roger’s In The 25th Century sticker album stickers. I was very close to completing the album but the one sticker that I was most desperate to have and hadn’t yet acquired was the portrait of Colonel Wilma Deering that was to go on the very first page alongside Buck Rogers himself. My 12 year old self was very much taken with Colonel Wilma Deering – played by Erin Grey – and watching re-runs now it seems clear to me I must have had a thing about rather austere looking women with steely blue eyes and a slightly cold manner... though I will say she did look bloody fine in those tight jumpsuit things that they constantly crow-barred her into.

Crow-barred? I do hope not. I’d like to think that perhaps they oiled her up instead in order to facilitate her body’s smooth entry into that 1980’s smooth warm white Lycra... ahem. Oh yes. Where was I?

Well, this particular Saturday I finally got that much sought after sticker and it was fabulous. It was worth battling through snow drifts that were so high they swamped my wellies. It was worth enduring the biting cold that ate through my finger gloves like Kerry Katona eating her way through the last rissole at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland. It was worth the whole God damned ice blasted winter.

I still have the sticker album and no, it isn’t complete. I think once I got Wilma my incentive to buy the packets of stickers each week suffered a loss of impetus. I’d got what I wanted: Erin Grey in a tight blue futuristic zipper top smiling sardonically to camera. What a girl. Hard as steel but gorgeous enough to make the coldest of winter snows melt.

Which of course they did. Eventually. Leaving the world a rather grey, limp and drab place in its absence.

*sigh*

Now that folks was a proper winter.

Happy New Year (Slight Return)

Not sure why this has stuck in my memory.

I guess being back at work for a week is a milestone of sorts and makes you look back at the Christmas interlude with fondness and see it as a thing entire to itself. An ideal and an idyll. A little island of warm safety in the midst of a cold sea. A mnemonic antidote to the cruel, cold, credit crunch period that is now lying ahead of us naked and war-like, without the consolation of Christmas to offset its callous advance.

Despite my natural curmudgeonliness Christmas was good. Despite Tom being ill on Christmas Eve... Despite Ben having an asthma attack on New Year’s Eve and having to be taken to the local hospital in the neighbour’s car as ours refused to start... And despite Tom getting an eye infection on New Year’s Day that made his left eye swell up like a golf ball...

Yes despite all this Christmas was good. Cool pressies. Decent TV. Lego. A fab array of new DVD’s to choose from. Fantastic food. Quality family time. And a 10 day break from work.

But what sticks in my mind most of all is a lone walk I made to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Day to pick up a prescription for Ben. Sainsbury’s wouldn’t necessarily have been my destination of choice except that it was New Year’s Day and they were the only place open.

Nothing momentous happened. I didn’t experience an epiphany or see coloured lights in the sky or get invited to a party by a semi naked Keeley Hawes.

The last of the daylight was leaving the sky. There was a grey blue fog over the outskirts of Leamington and yet the sky above was clear enough to see the pale start of a few early stars. I took a shortcut over some wasteland in the middle of The Shires industrial estate. There was very little traffic. I was surrounded on all sides by the strangely quiet behemoths of warehouses and out of town distribution centres. All their lights off. The car parks empty. Their thin miles of wire fencing locked tight and secure.

All industry shutdown for the day. Everybody at home. Or disappeared completely. It was easy walking through that blue darkness to imagine myself the only person left in the world.

All of this will I give to you; just bow down and worship me...

And then into Sainsbury’s. A pleasantly muted shopping experience. Just a few hardcore purchasers searching out a few post Christmas bargains. Half empty aisles. The ghost of Christmas humming carols to itself over the tannoys. Cut price chocolates. Half price toys. I had a punt. Got New Year’s Day pressies for the kids and for Karen while I was there. Got something for myself too. Why not? Start the year with a treat.

Checked out. Paid for my goods. The world seemed normal and yet not normal. Quietened. It was nice. I found myself half wishing it could always be like this. The panic and fury gone from people. The rush and the haste eradicated.

And then back home across the wasteland. Getting annoyed every time the headlights of a passing car illumined the road and the hedgerows ahead of me as they spoiled the illusion that I was the last man left on the planet. An oddly reassuring fantasy as I knew that it just wasn’t true and there was a loving family and a warn fire waiting for me at the end of my journey.

And that was it really.

Writing it all down above I feel like I should have been moving the piece towards some sort of earth shattering denouement, shaping it, moulding it with some final revelation in mind. But there just wasn’t one.

There wasn’t one.

And I’m still not sure why it has stuck in my memory... but I’m very happy that it’s there.

I’ll carry it with me for a little while longer.

To Grit Or Not To Grit?

Back in the good old days when men wore cloth caps, drank real ale by the cartload and went to bed in hobnailed slippers icy roads and footpaths were rarely the source of major moral dilemmas. They were certainly not problematic enough to put you off your woodbines.

I mean the solution is simple, in’t it? Yer just sling a bit o’grit or salt down and tell people to walk proper careful like... It’s bloody winter what do you expect?

And should passersby still go arse over tit in the slippy conditions well... it’s only a laugh in’t it? That’s just the way life is. And if you end up in th’ospital wi’ a broken ankle or two we’ll drink ter yer good ‘ealth in pub later... no ‘arm done, like.

All sounds very sensible and civilized to me.

But alas, the good old days are no more and instead we find ourselves mired neck-deep in the modern age of political correctness and litigious opportunism.

You see gritting the pathways these days is a can of worms or a hot potato that few are brave enough to handle and in dear old Leam (from which I hail) such moral dilemmas cause many a frilly knicker to be entwisted.

In the modern age it seems one (and by one I mean an individual or a corporation) can be successfully sued if one decides to grit an icy pavement but a passer-by still falls over upon it and splinters a rib or three on a frozen dog poo... whereas if you do nothing at all and they fall headlong into a storm drain and break their neck they can’t touch you for a single penny. You are not responsible.

Crazy but true.

And I have it on good authority that this bizarre state of affairs is just as applicable to home gritting / salting. If you grit your pathway and your friendly neighbourhood postman cracks open his knackers in a spectacular pratfall that sees a recorded delivery parcel inserted somewhere tight and moist he can sue your ass to kingdom come. But if you leave the pathway as nature intended and he still anally ingests your brown paper wrapped package from Holland well it’s just tough titty cos he can’t touch you for a rusty farthing.

As true as I’m sitting here at the foot of our stairs.

Now, am I the only person in this country to think that such a selfish, mealy mouthed, spiritually impoverished outlook is a national disgrace? Indeed, is it a national disgrace or is such jobsworthy (mis)conduct just a local (in)delicacy confined to the ice-covered streets of Leamington Spa?

Surely as a nation we are better than this? Surely to do something is always better than doing nothing? Don’t we have a responsibility to each other as well as to ourselves? Isn’t there such a thing as a communal duty of care?

Do we really want to see Mrs Scoggins from number 73 cracking her spine in half performing an ice skating move worthy of Torvill and Dean in their heyday as she takes a walk to the local post office to buy a second class stamp?

Ladies and gentlemen, your thoughts please.

Ketchup

This is going to be a very messy post I’m afraid.

I seem to have been all over the place of late, constantly trying to catch up on my life and not at all succeeding. I owe far too many people emails. I have little projects around the house which I’m no nearer to completing than I was over the Christmas break. My novel, although not at all falling by the wayside, is languishing slightly under the cold shoulder of relative neglect... I’m still plugging away at it but my progress has been slow over the last few weeks. I just haven’t been able to spend enough time getting back into it after the New Year hiatus. Not that it’s doing too badly: 102,100 words and counting... just counting extremely slowly.

I can’t deny it; my energy and inspiration levels have dropped significantly since the New Year.

I’m sure it’s just a seasonal thing but I do find under achievement very frustrating... even though the old plate is actually pretty full at the moment. Karen’s mum is still in hospital though Karen hasn’t visited her for a week or two due to illness – she and Tom and myself have all been afflicted with the post-Christmas lurgy that’s been doing the rounds. Plus Tom is having periodic bouts of teething and is currently recovering from the mother of all nappy rashes. None of which is conducive to sticking a baby into a car seat for 4 hours to drive up and down the country to visit someone who doesn’t even appreciate it.

Sorry. I was going to give the anger thing a rest.

University continues well though, even there, I can tell that I’m slowly reaching the end of my tether. Another 12 months and it’ll all be over and I’ll be indescribably glad. The constant outlay of money and energy is wearing me thin. Doing a part-time degree has been great in many respects – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise – but 10 years slogging back and forth is way, way too much. I’m happy to commit to long-hauls but even I have a limit.

The web site business also continues apace. A constant background hum of extra work and toil sloshed onto my plate. It’s time consuming, tiring and frequently tedious but it does bring in much needed extra money. And God knows I need it – I’ve got Karen’s birthday fast approaching this month plus Valentine’s Day on top. My budget is as shot as a suicide bomber in Dimona. Sorry. Bad taste. But topical. And really I’m finding that difficult at the moment.

And TV at the moment – usually my hardy standby in terms of blog-worthy material – is ineffably flat. Sure there’s Torchwood and there’s Lark Rise To Cranford. And Ashes To Ashes starts this week... but it’s not impinging on me like it used to. I have no real enthusiasm for new stuff at the moment and it’s frightening. About the only thing that’s excited Karen and me with regards the telly is working out how to use the Catch Up TV feature on our Virgin box. But this just means we’re watching “old” stuff out of sync with the rest of the country. Lost in our own private TV schedule.

All in all I feel like some kind of weird psychological hibernation process is occurring in my brain. Like I’m not fully engaging with the world around me. Like I’m a record being played at the wrong speed. Mind you as long as it’s not Whitesnake I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Mainly though I’m just annoyed with myself. Annoyed because on the whole I have very little to complain about so why am I so full of moans? Other people are having a much rougher time. I’m just feeling a bit blurgh. And that hardly makes for a decent blog post.

The Grundies

It could be the pall of fog that has descended over the Midlands. It could be the cold that has swelled up in my respiratory passages like a water filled balloon. It could even just be the time of year...

But I feel like pants this morning.

And not nice, saucily exotic pants either but dull, off-white, verging on grey pants with a bobbly gusset.

In the great Pantheon of the Pant Gods, I have been transfigured by the Pant God of Death and Depression.

My elasticised waist is ropey and loose. I’ve gone horribly baggy around the back. The fabric around the front is wearing unpleasantly thin. And the less said about the skid-marks on the left inside leg the better.

I need a makeover but boxers and G-strings just aren’t my style.

I’d go commando but I have strong pacifist leanings.

Sports briefs on someone as naturally sedentary as myself just wouldn’t wash.

And as for fig leaves... well, they bring me out in a rash.

Geez. Is there really no other alternative but ladies underwear?

Aren’t I depressed enough without having to shop at Ann Summers for myself...?

Christmas Tag

Per.pri has tagged me for Christmas and so it is with festive joy that I respond and also tag a few of my other blog buddies in return to keep the tag going. Tris, Ally, Amanda, Laura and OC – consider yourselves tagged for Christmas; I look forward to reading your answers.

"When people say 'Christmas' you immediately think..."

Nativity and the school Christmas play. For some reason I have very strong memories of being at school and enjoying the anticipation of Christmas… the hours spent in the playground looking up at the cold grey skies and hoping that I’ll be getting the present that I’ve most set my heart upon (which tended to be Lego when I was a boy and still is Lego now if I’m honest). It also makes me remember the excitement of spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day with all the family at my grandparent’s house and the constant buzz of visitors and neighbours popping in. It also, rather annoyingly, makes me think of Slade. And Noel Edmunds. Urgh.

"Favourite Christmas memory..."

My favourite Christmas memory is wanting a Lego spaceship one year. It was way too much money for my parents to afford so we did a deal whereby they’d give me twenty pounds for it as my Christmas present and then I could put whatever other Christmas money I received towards buying it afterwards. I have to say that the thought of just getting money for Christmas was hard to get excited about and I recall writing off Christmas that year with a sad shrug. When it came time to receive the money I was told to close my eyes and hold out my hand. Sure enough I felt the feather touch of paper being placed on my palm but when I looked it was a fake £20 note as drawn by my sister. Ha ha – good joke. I was told to close my eyes again. This time the Lego set itself was placed in my hands. My face must have been a picture. Suddenly Christmas was back on again. Absolute result. Best Christmas ever.

"Favourite Christmas song/carol..."

This is easy: In The Bleak Mid Winter in honour of my gran who always cried when she heard this. And oddly Silent Night which always made my granddad cry. I never knew why it made my gran so tearful but I did learn why Silent Night upset my granddad so much. During WWII he took part in the North Atlantic convoys. One night one of the ships was hit by a U Boat and a lot of men were thrown into the water. Unfortunately due to the U Boats there was a black-out so all the sailors knew that there could be no lights on and no stopping to rescue anyone… the sailors in the water knew they were going to die and all sang Silent Night as their comrades sailed by.

"Favourite Christmas movie..."

Hmm. Quite a few. Traditionally Mary Poppins or Half A Sixpence come onto the TV at some point and I’m quite a sucker for them. Since the three Lord Of The Rings films were released during this time of year though they now have a Christmas feel to them and indeed Karen and I have just spent the last few weekends watching the extended version of each to get ourselves into the festive mood. Harry Potter is also a Christmas favourite.

"Favourite Christmas character..."

Difficult. I never went overboard on the Elves or the reindeers. However, I’m quite partial to the Christmas Carol story so I suppose Scrooge would be a good one. I have a soft spot for redemption stories.

"Favourite Christmas ornament/object..."

I quite like Crhistmas snow globes and have a musical one that features a long limbed Santa – he looks like a character from a Tim Burton animation.

"Plans for this Christmas..."

Shut the door, turn up the heat, and just enjoy being with Karen, Ben and Tom. We’ll get up when we’re ready. Spend the entire morning opening presents and then eat a luxurious dinner. The whole day will be one of chilled excitement – if that’s not too contradictory.

"Is Christmas your favourite holiday?"

I’d be lying if I said no. Especially now that Karen and I can enjoy it through our kid’s eyes. But I’m also partial to the summer holidays because I love the sun and love travelling to new places.

Morning Wood

Ok. I’ll admit that finally I’m getting in the mood for Christmas.

The spare room is over flowing with yet to be wrapped goodies for my loved ones. Karen and I are already compiling our Christmas food shopping list. Suddenly I’m able to stomach every cheesy film that the TV throws at me (I’m even enjoying the Christmas idents on all the TV channels).

And my budget is as blown as Hugh Grant on an L.A. side street.

I’m sure I’ll be annoyed with my spendthriftery come the New Year but for now I’m well pleased with what I’ve bought. There’s nothing worse than being lavished with gifts yourself on Christmas morning and then grimacing as you hand over a meagre pile of newspaper wrapped gift-ettes in return. Sure the January bills will be depressing but I can take consolation in the fact that Karen and the boys will be over the moon with what I’ve got them.

I’m sure such inner warmth will also help insulate me from the cold chill winds of February as I bed down for the night in front of Woolworth’s shop window...

And as for Roy Wood’s desire that it be Christmas every day... well. Nice idea Roy but, really, no. I honestly couldn’t afford it.

I’m already considering approaching Richard Branson for financial help as it is...

I wonder if it would help if I changed my name to Northern Rock?

No Bean Monday

Do you ever have one of those days when nothing major goes wrong, nothing especially disastrous occurs but nevertheless the day is a mega crap one?

I had one yesterday.

I didn’t get half an hour to myself at work – there was always someone around wanting something or needing my attention. Nothing particularly difficult or traumatic but I just didn’t need or want any of it.

I also found it difficult to be creative despite feeling in a creative mood. It took me nearly 90 minutes to “get into” my novel and then I only produced a measly 600 words. OK. It’s not going to be the end the world but it’s frustrating.

And then there was lunchtime.

Lunchtime summed up the entire day. I decided to treat myself by going to Mr Spud, the local purveyor of that fine English traditional meal, the hot potato. A nice hot spud with a chilli con carne filling was just what I needed to cheer me up and break the malaise of misery that had laid its broad hands upon my shoulders.

Only when I get to be served I get the dregs from the chilli pot. Instead of starting a new pot the seller merely tipped up the sparse remains of the old and slopped it all over my spud. The result was I was the only spud purchaser that day whose chilli contained not one single kidney bean.

And I love kidney beans. For me they are the highlights of a chilli.

Some days, it seems, it’s plainly not worth the effort of getting out of bed...

Snow Poo

This is rather a distasteful observation to be making but it’s impinged on my consciousness too much over the last 36 hours to be allowed to pass by without comment.

Now I know there will always be some dog owners who refuse to do the decent thing and scoop up their mutt’s poop from the pavement. Either through laziness, squeamishness, lack of preparation or just plain misanthropy they will decide to leave Fido’s faecal sculpture steaming obesely in full view of the world and fully in the way of every boot sole, brogue and flip-flop that happens to pass down that particular pavement for the next couple of days.

Revolting. But happily in today’s modern age of the acme pooper-scooper and the doggy-do flip-top dustbin anti-social incidents of this kind are becoming fewer and more far between.

Why is it then that whenever there’s snow on the ground incidents of dog-poo abandonment increase tenfold?

I’ve lost count of the number of dog droppings that I’ve literally had to skate past on my way to work this morning. They are absolutely effing everywhere.

Do dog owners suddenly get hit with an absurd desire to leave warm chocolate logs on the roadside in the vain belief that such seasonal decorations will cheer up the rest of us as we go about our business in the freezing conditions?

Or do they just like to prettify the snow further by giving it a slightly piebald appearance – dotting their little poo mounds all over the place like spilt Maltesers?

Or are they motivated by sheer scientific curiosity – an overwhelming yearning to see how long the snow takes to melt when a hot doggy botty lays a burning coil down upon it, creating a little brown island amongst that huge ocean of whiteness?

Or, as I really suspect, do they just think that the little snow faeries will magically clean away their poisonous turds when the snow eventually disappears in a few days time without them having to lift a finger to do anything about it themselves?

It’s disgusting, repulsive and disgraceful.

I’m looking at every snowman and snowball with extreme mistrust...

Here’s mud in your eye? I don’t think so.

Pathetic!

One pitiable fall of snow and everything grinds to a halt.

I don't know what it's like where you are this morning but here we've had no more than an inch of the white stuff fall upon our streets. And yet every school in town has decided to close. Some even announced last night - before a single snow flake had even descended – that they were going to close for the day today. How pathetic.

Scores of bus services are not running. Local radio is full of sage advice for people to "not venture out" or drive anywhere unless it’s "an absolute emergency".

How incredibly wet.

It’s not like we’ve never seen snow in this country before is it? Oh God! What is all this strange, cold white stuff? I can’t possibly go into work today in such cataclysmic conditions! I might get chilblains!

Back in 1981 I can remember having to trudge a mile to school through snow drifts that were a good 7 inches deep. Every single person in the country went to work as normal and just got on with things.

Now we have a light powdering of frozen water on the car roof and everybody takes the day off.

Except me. And my hard cheese has nothing at all do with the fact that my wife and boy are at home right now hitting the PlayStation with gusto while I sit and scrooge behind my desk at work trying to defrost my feet over a two-bar heater.

It’s Getting Hot In Here

It’s interesting to watch the theme of global warming slowly but surely gathering pace and momentum on all the major news channels on TV at the moment – at least on the UK ones anyway – helped I’m sure by the idiotically mild winter that we’re "enjoying" at the moment.

Scientists are both amazed and concerned that all over the country daffodils and hosts of other spring flowers are already appearing months and months ahead of schedule. Bees have also been spotted in various places - looking very confused and sluggish (mind you if you were a bee and you looked like a slug you’d be justified in your confusion). None of this is good.

One good frost could either wipe out the lot or severely stunt future growth.

Such advance flowerings and early insectoid awakenings have other more fundamentally worrying knock-on effect too: they upset the whole balance of the ecosystem which runs itself based on the timings of a million different variables. If those variables are now messed up then the whole system is liable to crash. In today’s computer age it’s an analogy that I’m sure we can all identify with.

The question is no longer: "does global warming exist?" but "what are we going to do about it now that it’s here?"

It’s about time that the politicians of the world realized that we no longer have the time or the leisure to debate the issue. We have to act now. The pendulum is already swinging...

For those of you that are interested, I’ve written more on this topic on my web site at www.pocketropolis.com