I'll send you on your festive way with a top Christmas tip courtesy of Take a Break:
To wash that out of your brains, here's a lovely Christmas song from Slow Club. Have a good one, everyone.
What's your favorite holiday memory?
As in the Christmas holidays? For me, three years ago when I finally took the decision not to spend another Christmas with my parents. I chose because they look after two of my nieces - the two born to my crazy oldest sister who I don't wish to ever see again. It's the one day a year we're guaranteed to see her otherwise. Neither of my other sisters goes now for the same reason. It's also lovely to be freed of sitting around doing bugger all after the delightful frenzy of opening presents - often descending into watching the Eastenders schmaltzy Christmas special, not even playing board games. Literally doing nothing but break for huge amounts of food during the day.
Now we measure our christmases not by much - by eating, opening presents, and watching things on TV (including Dr Who!) but we do so on our own terms. Eating filet mignon this year with what's to be a lovely gravy and lots of other things. Enjoying eachother's company and not feeling forced to spend a day doing bugger all on someone else's terms whilst with someone we've got no interest in seeing being there.
My mum takes it surprisingly well. And I do go down very often throughout the year other than this.
Favourite holiday-holiday memory...: Probably anything concerning Cape Town. Walking on 'our' beach (possibly the night the sea was all churned up and stormy and when the baby seal found itself parked on the shore (it lived)). or climbing Table Mountain. or walking around Cape Point (not the time we were harassed by baboons!).
Say what you like, but I'm not picking the canal boat holiday with my mother in law.
What are you hoping to find under the tree this year?
A hunky man. This will only work if I don't get my way to get a real one that drops needles on him.
Next up is Mrs Dolittle's column. As you can probably guess from her pseudonym, Mrs Dolittle talks to the animals. Not for her, however, the time-honoured tradition of talking to an animal by vocalising speech sounds, waiting for it to meow, bark or squeak, and then cooing "oh, he thinks he's people!" No, Mrs Dolittle communicates with animals psychically. She meditates quietly and tunes into what animals are thinking. She goes into a trance to tap into your pet’s thought processes. She brain-rapes them, essentially. Let's not sugarcoat this.
This month, Mrs Dolittle is forcibly inserting her mind into a hen.
Or rather, several hens, starting with Henry who tells Mrs D about how wonderful it is to submit to her partner, the cockerel Bertie (who , Mrs D notes with with stunning insight, 'is rather cocky'). 'The hens accepted that their cockerel was the boss,' she says admiringly.
She moves on to a broody hen, Francine, sitting on a clutch of eggs, who has a 'feeling of relaxed purpose’. Mrs Dolittle asks her if she’s bored and gets the reply ‘Not boring at all. Youngster to hatch, very important.’ So charmed is Mrs D by this ‘wonderful experience’, she tells us she will communicate with her whenever she is stressed.
Through Mrs Dolittle, C:IF is promoting its sly anti-feminist agenda that women should submit to their men and will never be happier than when fulfilling their maternal duties. C:IF wants us barefoot and pregnant and chained to the wall of the barn.
Ignoring this misogyny, I pressed on. There is a lack of chickens in south London so I chose to commune with an animal more commonly found here: a squirrel. Specifically, Ceiling Squirrel, who lives in our loft and likes to scrabble around noisily in the evenings.
Earlier this evening, I sat back on the sofa, closed my eyes, and waited. Sure enough, within minutes there was a tell-tale pattering and thumping overhead. 'Hello?' I thought very hard. 'HELLO?' Nothing. I wondered if Ceiling Squirrel had heard me and was translating my thoughts into Squirrelese and forming a response. This could be slow. This could be like using chat rooms on a dial-up connection in 1995. From up above, nothing but the sound of tiny paws scuttling around. Thump. Bang. Clamber, scramble, tumble, CRASH.
'I wish you would be quiet, Ceiling Squirrel!' I thought loudly.
And suddenly, Ceiling Squirrel came though. 'No, you don't,' he psychically replied, 'because that would mean I was dead. Then you'd have to deal with my stinking rotten corpse. FUCK YOU. I’m going to fuck shit up in here until the end of your tenancy.'
I ended the connection. No-one needs a squirrel cursing directly into their brain. Some people may see this exchange as me projecting my thoughts about our loft-dwelling pest. I assure you, it is not. Ceiling Squirrel spoke to me. There is no real evidence for this, but it is a fact.
CONCLUSIONS
I need to tell the landlord about the You Know
What in the You Know Where. (Shh. He can hear you.)
What's your guilty television pleasure?
My television is innocent until proven otherwise.
I just wrote a paragraph about how rubbish I am at blogging, but it was so rubbish that I deleted it.
You'll thank me when you're older.
What's your guilty television pleasure?
I've just got Freeview, so at the moment it's watching Beauty and the Geek on a Saturday morning. Also Judge Judy. and Sally Jesse Raphael... and more Friends and Scrubs than any normal person can take.
Thankfully, I still have 4OD - channel 4 repeats on the internet - and I am loving Cast Offs at the moment. What a fab series.
Christine Stockall is employed to do rubbish smudgy pencil drawings of people who have appeared to her, and
BACK ON THE FLOOR, BINKY.
Conclusion: not all dreams are messages from the other side. In fact, none of them are.
Tomorrow: Following Mrs Doolittle's advice, I try to psychically commune with an animal.
I choose the man who, in a nearly empty carriage, came and took the seat next to me. I was so enraged by this clear breach of the unwritten rules of carriage seating (everybody knows you always take the position diagonally opposite first. Everybody!) that I had to pretend to get off at Putney just so I could move to another seat.
Now I'm going to have to make myself some toast just to calm myself down.
For the edification of everyone on the interwebs, here's stuff that’s been righteously pissing me off this month:
1. Dragonflies. I have solar powered plastic yellow dragonflies in my garden which are supposed to light up at night and fill my garden with an enchanted LED glow. Instead they switch on when the sun is shining on the sensor, and switch off again when night falls. I don’t know enough about solar energy or gardening to fix this anomaly. Dad attributes it to daylight savings, and because every contraption in his house is run on solar electricity, I’m apt to believe him.
2. My social conscience. I stupidly downloaded the Ethical Consumer Guide, and the guilt is all consuming. I’ve stopped shopping at either of Australia’s supermarket ‘duopolies’, I’m boycotting Nestle, and I check the labels on all my food to make sure it doesn’t contain Zimbabwean orphan liver. Despite all the effort, I still have an ecological footprint that would rival the Sultan of Brunei.
3. Fast food. I’ve haven’t eaten fast food in 5 weeks, and have been cooking myself nutricious meals with vegetables and fish and monounsaturated fats. Admittedly I’ve lost a kilo, but apart from that I haven’t saved any money, I don’t feel particularly energetic, and I’m definitely crankier than usual. Clearly I have one of those metabolisms that run most efficiently on trans-fatty acids, carcinogenic preservatives and tequila. First thing tomorrow I’m stopping in at Hungry Jack’s for a pig carcass cholesterol wrap and three grease laden hash browns dipped in a crust of salt. With a side of Zimbabwean orphan liver.
Bugger it, I’m going to the pub. Happy Friday, y’all.
Helllo! I was reminded earlier today that I used to blog, because I got my Advent Calendar ready for tomorrow, and I remembered how once on 20six I made a naff fun blog game of guess the advent chocolate.
