Monday, December 30
For your viewing pleasure, some recently added photos. Wedding photos have also been moved here.Monday, December 23
These are the things I can do withoutI work in an open plan office, fairly close to the Sales and Marketing Division, for whom, for the past two weeks, life has been one long party. Party activity peaked a couple of Fridays ago with much popping of cava corks, singing, playing with radio-controlled cars and putting Fifteen Christmas Songs Most Likely To Make You Set Fire To Your Co-Workers on repeat on their shitty, tinny little stereos, all in view and, what's worse, earshot of everyone in my division, while we vainly try to shut our ears to the din and keep working. And they're still bloody well at it! At the moment it's Rockin' Around The Fucking Christmas Tree. Am flashing back to being the only girly swot trying to work in the library at the end of term, while all around me the less worthy are yabbering loudly and inanely about their fascinating weekend. Bastards.
It wouldn't be Christmas without ...... well, endless speculation and pontification about the 'twue meaning of Chwistmas' for one thing. 'The true meaning of Christmas? Why, spending, of course!' quipped one broadcaster the other day as though he were Oscar Wilde road-testing an epigram and not some tit stating the bleedin' obvious. Have just entered the BBC Films site, to learn that 'It's not quite Christmas without watching a few old movies.' Spending, movies, got that - anything else? After four years in the UK I'm becoming resigned to six hours of grudging daylight, miserable weather and Christmas Number Ones (God help us all). And there are many aspects of Northern Christmasses I enjoy: candle-lit carol services, port and stilton, the spectacularly tacky Christmas light displays with which people bedeck their houses ... But as far as I'm concerned it's not quite Christmas without sunburn and cicadas, and long afternoons on pohutakawa-fringed beaches, and the smell I most associate with Christmas isn't chestnuts roasting on an open fire but a blend of sunscreen, sweat and sea water. Can't say I miss the hole in the ozone layer much though.
Sunday, December 22
A couple of teenage girls wearing antlers just came around and sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at us. I'm new to this - what are you meant to do when people do this? I asked if they were collecting for anything (they weren't), so I offered them a mince pie each. They went off happy.
I've just moved (OK, Jack just moved me) onto Blogger. Previous entries can be found here.
A fish is for Christmas
Was pottering about the other evening when at about 6 o'clock there was a knock at the door. Opened it to a young woman I'd never seen before, who began 'This is going to sound really strange ...' Oh God, thinks I, she's going to try to convert me to some dumb-ass religion. To my surprise she then asked me if I would feed her fish. On the assumption that this wasn't some sort of metaphysical metaphor, I agreed, and five minutes later a plastic fish tank with one small boggle-eyed occupant was sitting on our table. The fish's name is Flash, as in Gordon. I don't really think it suits him so am going to see if he'll answer to Archie. We'd been planning a quiet Noel à deux, but as waifs and strays go I guess he's pretty low maintenance. Maybe I'll slosh some Lindauer into his tank on Christmas morning as a special treat. As someone who's been a Christmas waif on more than one occasion, I can sympathise with his plight
Mind you, the Christmasses I've spent as a waif and/or stray have been among the best, thanks to the good-heartedness of various friends I've met during my travels. As to the worst I'd rather not dwell: there have been a couple of doozies but I guess everyone has to have at least one truly fucked-up Christmas, and it certainly makes you appreciate the good ones. Last year's was, if not fucked-up, then definitely a little sub-optimal since my doctoral thesis was due on January 4th. My memory of the event is a bit of a tear-streaked blur; as far as I can recall, my diary entry for December 25th, 2001 was "Commemorate birth of Saviour; Overeat". In the end I spent most of the festive season barricaded in the study, emerging occasionally for food and presents and to help myself from our dwindling stocks of gin. My mother-in-law, who was visiting at the time, must have thought I'd turned into Bertha Mason.
