the years go by so fast, let's hope the next beats the last

I really like Christmas.  As Tim Minchin sings, it's sentimental, I know, but I just really like it.

People just seem a bit softer at this time of year, with some of their rougher edges smoothed off a little bit as they prepare to spend a bit of time away from work and with their families, eating and drinking too much and watching crap telly.

I like the cold, dark nights and the warm, convivial atmospheres as people get together with their friends, families and colleagues to bring some light into the darkest part of the year.

What I don't like, though, is "Christmas"... the brightly packaged thing that people -- retailers in particular -- want us to consume in order to make them more money.  This "Christmas" starts to appear around September-time, when shops begin to put out their seasonal offering; earlier and earlier every year because of the apparently logical thought that, if this is their most profitable time of the year, then it can't start soon enough, can it?  I work for a retailer, and it never fails to amaze me how people moan about how Christmas shopping is starting later and later every year... meaning that most people don't really start buying presents until December.  Which is normal, right?

I've been working in-store most of the last week, and it struck me as I was loading shelves on Friday afternoon that I was listening to the same, shoddy seasonal playlist that is played everywhere, and I was unpacking pretty much the same gift sets that we were selling last year... Christmas is about more than this, isn't it? ...and no, I'm not expecting any presents from Jesus.

Don't get me wrong: we sell some pretty good gifts... it's just that if you bought them for your brother and your sister and your mum last year and the year before that, why on earth would we expect you to keep on buying them now? Especially when the internet has opened up a whole world of small, boutique designers just waiting to sell you something interesting and possibly personalised.  Perhaps we think that hearing Wham and Shakin' Stevens on a loop will somehow hypnotise people into auto-pilot, buying this stuff because they always buy this stuff.  It sort of works, but it's diminishing returns, surely?

Or maybe this is the Christmas that people actually want: wearing crappy jumpers and cheap Santa hats and reindeer antlers as we tramp around the shops like zombies listening to the same playlist of fifteen songs everywhere we go and buying Aunty Doris the Soap and Glory gift set for the tenth year in a row. The annual excitement over the big shops' Christmas advertising on the telly would seem to indicate we really like this shit.  Why on earth are we wasting brain space getting excited about the John Lewis advert or whether the Sainsburys one is better?  Who cares? You know they just want you to buy stuff, right?

But, in spite of all of this,  I do love this time of year.  It's the winter solstice tonight, and the night is the longest it will be all year.... but I prefer to look on the bright side and to think about lighter times to come.  The daytime tomorrow will be three seconds longer, and that's a start... isn't it?

Whatever 2016 has been for you, there are lighter days ahead.

---

same old songs, every single year?  Well, my favourite seasonal songs are these ones:

Tracey Thorn - "joy"
Smith & Burrows - "this ain't new jersey"
Emmy the Great & Tim Wheeler - "home for the holidays"
Joni Mitchell - "river"
Tim Minchin - "white wine in the sun"

but baby it's cold outside....

In case it has escaped your attention (or if you are reading this from somewhere outside of the UK), it's freezing cold outside at the moment and it has been for what feels like weeks.  It looks entirely likely that most of the UK will be having an honest-to-goodness white Christmas this year, not one of those ones where the bookies pay out if a single flake of snow lands on the top of the roof of the Met Office (or whatever it is they usually do).

The satellite map above shows it pretty clearly: the entire country is in the grips of a deep freeze.  Indeed, it's one of Britain's coldest winters: Since 1900, only the Decembers in 1950 and 1981 have had such prolonged snowy periods. The trend for the last thirty years, until interrupted by last December's cold snap, has been for warmer, damper winters. These colder winters may well themselves be a statistical blip, but it looks rather like climate change is going to mean that we Brits should expect more winters like this in the future.  And no, please don't insert any Daily Mail-esque grumbles about "global warming" here.  OBVIOUSLY man is having a huge impact on our climate.  To suggest otherwise is to be obtuse beyond the point of stupidity.  The climate is subject to natural fluctuations, of course it is (there was a medieval warm period, for starters), but the scale and pace of change seems to be moving faster and faster.  Let's just hope it's not entirely irreversible.

Anyway.  I digress.

In all this cold weather, the focus of the media has been on the transport chaos that these freezing temperatures and this snow have caused: we've seen passengers sleeping in Heathrow waiting for their flights to be cleared; we've seen queues of several thousand people trying to get onto Eurostar trains at St. Pancras; we've seen cars abandoned on the sides of snow-swept motorways. Not surprisingly at this time of year, as people seek either to get to, or to get away from, their loved ones, coverage has almosy entirely focused on people inconvenienced by the snow.

As I nearly got stuck in Oxford last week, and C. was stuck in Lyons for 24 hours, I can understand exactly why people are interested in this stuff. Once we both made it home though, I have to admit that my thoughts turned elsewhere: to the people who are not as lucky as I am and do not have a nice warm house with a cosy fire, a lovely wife and a cat purring on their lap (or, more likely, stomping about complaining about the weather and demanding some of my tea).

With that in mind, I've made a donation of £50 to Shelter, the homeless charity. I can't send you all Christmas cards, but I hope that you'll consider this an adequate substitution.

Happy Christmas everyone.

---

On a completely different subject, at about this time of year, I usually start collecting votes for the Earworms of the Year rundown. To be honest, as I've been away for much of the year, I feel a bit disengaged from the whole thing. How do you feel? If I was to do it again this year, would you cast a vote for your top 5?

little saint nick....

I've been on Santa duty unusually early this year.  You might remember that, for the last five years, I have had the heavy responsibility of being the pen of Father Christmas for two young girls... the daughters of a colleague of mine.  Every year, towards the end of December, my colleague would bring in the letters (complete with pictures) that her daughters had put in the chimney for Santa, and my job was to write the replies.  Mostly expectation setting, but with a hefty dash of Christmas magic thrown in too. 

When I started, I hadn't quite appreciated that this was going to be a job for life... but the kids loved it, and they began to check the handwriting of everyone that they could.  The very fact that they could not identify the writing on those letters became de facto evidence of Santa's existence.  In fact, so great did the handwriting obsession become, that I was very quickly forbidden from allowing any of my handwriting to appear before their inquisitive eyes: all Christmas cards and postcards had to be written by someone else as they absolutely could not be written by me.  I love it.  It's great to see the world through the eyes of a ten year-old child every once in a while.

We had to be a little more organised this year: the family moved to Australia, but as the kids have apparently been avidly checking the handwriting of all their Australian relatives, it seemed that demand was still high.  So I had to dig out my special Santa pen and ink a little earlier than usual in order to (comfortably) make the post in time to reach Australia before Christmas.  My (now ex-)colleague had to be more organised too... getting her children to write their letters and then going through the whole process of explaining that no, Santa didn't have a supplementary base at the South Pole but that yes, he would be paying a visit as usual.  Ellie, the younger daughter sounded very enthusiastic and she had also drawn a picture of Rudolph pulling Santa in his sleigh. The letter read:

Dear Santa,

This year I would like to be given.....

The Guinea - Pig Family. And plese can I have a karokie CD  Some new slip on shoes, A Solvanian family cotage and some surprises.

I hope you can get all of these. Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou if you can
Lots of Love
from
Ellie
PS I am exited about you coming!

(bless her.  Completely seperately, she also enquired through her mother how our cat was getting on in all the snow!)

Santa's reply was also enthusiastic:

Dear Ellie

Thank you for such a lovely picture and letter.  Every year your pictures get better and better.  Rudolph looks fantastic!

It was very exciting for the collection fairy to go all the way to Australia to collect your letter and I am very happy to have you on my Australian route this year.  The reindeer especially enjoy travelling to Australia as they get to spend some time with the kangaroos.

I hope your new family gets along well with the other Sylvanian families.
I wish you a very Happy Christmas in Australia and I hope you enjoy all your presents.

Lots of love
from Santa

PS The reindeer were very well behaved with your pets and only took a little bit of their food

 Hannah, the elder daughter, nearly at the age where she perhaps doesn't really believe any more, was a little less chatty and excited.  The sketch on the front (pencil) looks like flames reaching up to ignite 3 stockings labelled M & D, Ellie and Hannah.  Her letter read:

Dear Santa
please can I have a
camera
nice shoes
and some earings 4 christmas
Merry Christmas
Hannah

As her mum wrote, "sigh.  I can't help but feel that the magic wasn't quite in the air.  Still I guess I should be glad that she at least plays the game for Ellie's sake."  (I think she was told that if she didn't believe, she didn't receive....)

Santa's reply was measured:

Dear Hannah
thanks for your letter.  Its nice to know that you still keep in touch as the years go by.
I hope your presents meet with your high standards and that you have many happy days of shooting ahead of you.
Enjoy your second ever Christmas in Australia
Lots of love
Santa

PS any chance the chimney could be cleaned for next year?

All safely in the post as of this morning, with some labelled gift-tags and with the envelope studiously addressed by the guy who sits behind me at work and the Christmas card written by my wife.

I'm not big on lots of things about Christmas, but this bit of it, I love.

raise a glass for everyone....

Look, let's not make too big a deal about this, but at this time of year especially, I'm actutely conscious of how lucky I am and how not everyone is going to be tucked up cosily in front of a warm fire with their friends and family, with a glass of wine in hand, enjoying a peaceful Christmas.

With that in mind, and on behalf of everyone who stops by here, I've made a £50 donation to the Red Cross Darfur Crisis appeal.



As many as 4.5 million people are suffering as a result of vicious internal conflicts across Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic. The British Red Cross has been working in Darfur since 2004 providing food, water and healthcare to the most vulnerable. £50 isn't much, but it is enough to buy a medical kit equipped to treat 1,000 patients, or it could be used to feed one malnourished child for three months.

Read about what the Red Cross are doing in the area and why they need our help here and here.



It's not much, but it is at least something.

Thanks for popping by over the last twelve months, and I hope to see you again around here in 2009. Happy Christmas to you and to yours.

gonna find out who's naughty or nice....

Today I carried out one of my favourite tasks of the year. It is also, as it happens, one of the most important jobs that I do every year.... I copied out some letters from Father Christmas for a colleague's two daughters.

We started doing this several years ago: my colleague is determined that her children should grow up in a house where Christmas is a magical time of the year, and as such she encourages her kids to write letters to Santa which they "post" up the chimney breast. Then, on Chrismas Day, these two little girls wake up to find their presents and a lovely letter in reply from Santa. More often than not, these letters are an exercise in expectation setting and a way of explaining why the girls may not have got everything that they asked for. It is also, clearly, a special moment for both of them - Santa's letters are stored away each year in a folder of precious things and are looked at from time to time. The eldest daughter is now nearly ten, but she has resolutely insisted that she still believes and has painstakingly made up a letter to Santa with stickers and glitter and all sorts on it. That said, she's also old enough to insist on checking the handwriting on the letter and making sure that:

a) it is the same handwriting as it was last year
and
b) that it is not the same as her mum and dad's handwriting

Luckily for everyone, she hasn't got around to thinking that it could easily be the handwriting of someone else her mum and dad know.... although C. did write our Christmas card to them this year just in case. So you can see, I pretty much have a job for life here, or at least for another few years. (Besides, every smart kid knows better than to be too loud or grown up in their declarations about Santa's existence or otherwise... after all, you wouldn't want to jeapordise the volume of presents you receive, would you? I officially "believed" until long after I left home. In fact, I think I may still....perhaps I'll put my stocking out just in case, eh?)



The ritual is always the same: my colleague provides me with some headed notepaper ("From the home of Santa Claus. Lapland, The North Pole") and a couple of letters to copy out. I get out my good fountain pen and carefully transcribe what's written in my best handwriting and in blue-black ink. This year, the eldest had to be steered away from her desire for a "Dareway" (which looks hideously dangerous) and set up to receive her surprise present - an MP3 player. The youngest was easier: she only really wants Hannah Montana and High School Musical stuff. She'd expressed a desire for a bike, but told her dad that she realised that Santa would really struggle to put it onto his sledge. Well, I'm pleased to say that Santa has managed to squeeze one on for her, and hopefully her parents will be able to see her face light up when she gets exactly what she wanted.

When I first mentioned that I did this a couple of years ago, I was surprised by the level of debate it kicked off around perpetuating gender roles. Well, I do think that Lizzie raised an interesting point, but I still cannot quite bring myself to believe that helping to keep a tiny piece of the magic of Christmas alive for these two little girls is anything other than a good thing.

I enjoy doing it, anyway.



Happy Christmas.

Ho ho ho, etc.

----

Over at The Auditorium, we've reached the number 9s in our countdown of our top 10 albums of the year. Between the three of us, LB, bedshaped and I have plumped for albums by Sigur Ros, TV on the Radio and Billy Bragg. It's a bit harder to spot which one is mine today, but I'm sure you can manage it......

You can also vote for your singles of the year here.

Oh, and I also need your 5 selections for Earworms of the Year 2008 please. You may as well give in and email them to me now - I'm only going to go on about it until you do.....

it's gonna take some time, but I'll get there...

Phew. It's certainly nice to be back home after a week away in France, somewhere down near the banks of the river Loire.

I'll do a proper post at some point, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts / observations from the last seven days:

-> New St. Pancras looks great, but service at the champagne bar (Europe's longest, apparently) is very slow. (I also harbour suspicions that it was their roast beef sandwich that gave me the tummy bug that has followed me around for much of the last week. Grr.)
-> nice uniforms on the staff though, even if they do look like the coldest people on earth
-> Eurostar is a great way to travel and far less hassle than flying
-> (not very insightful this) Paris is a beautiful city
-> (nor this one) The French sure do know how to cook. Our restaurant ("L'AOC") is superb
-> not impressed by the Impressionists at the Musee d'Orsay
-> ....but very taken with a huge sculpture of a polar bear
-> the countryside between Paris and the Loire is flat and almost entirely featureless
-> ....but their train service is fantastic. East Midland trains this is not.
-> oysters may look like snot, but they taste great
-> cellared wine is sometimes absolutely delicious, but sometimes it's a bit too much. Perhaps my palate has been ruined by £3.99 bottles from the Coop?
-> Seasonal beer from a trappist monastery? Now we're talking
-> C's mum is an ace cook...
-> ...but Xmas dinner is done by C's dad and is superb
-> Christmas pudding made from brioche is very rich but also surprisingly light
-> I really need some exercise
-> The banks of the Loire are a great place for a run
-> or four....
-> I don't know what this says about the relative fitness of people in Orleans and people in Nottingham, but I see more people out running on the Loire on Christmas day than I ever do down by the Trent
-> The French have a strange fetish for small dolls of Father Christmas that they hang outside their houses. They're all a bit Stephen King, to be honest....
-> "Das Boot" by Lothar-Gunther Bucheim is a gripping and claustrophobic novel. I really must watch the film sometime
-> "Time for Bed" by David Baddiel is still quite funny, 10 years after I first read it
-> ....but neither can hold a candle to "Moon Palace" by Paul Auster
-> family are great, but I think I'd rather spend Christmas with my friends
-> She's in excellent hands, I know, but I miss my cat
-> Doctor Who is really awful. The Xmas special this year is (in my opinion) derivative rubbish. The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. It's only 70 minutes long and it still feels like they're spinning it out
-> Flash's new album is actually really good. Properly good. Seriously. Give it a listen.
-> proper headphones are brilliant. What a great prezzie
-> I like getting presents, but I genuinely prefer giving them than receiving them
-> I don't expect gratitude either - it's just nice to pick something out for someone and then see them (hopefully) get a kick out of receiving it.
-> ...that said, there are some ungrateful sods out there, family included.... especially family
-> French radio is weird - every second song has to be French, and they seem stuck in a musical timewarp where all that cod-rock guitar from the 80s is still cool
-> They're also obsessed with James Blunt
-> although, to be fair, Telephone are quite good
-> I must have needed to catch up on my sleep. I'm getting about 12 hours a night
-> It's cold
-> Open wood fires in massive grates are very, very soothing
-> ...so is vin chaud
-> cutting a wedge of goat's cheese across the middle to take all of the cheese and leave everyone else the rind is rude, selfish and ignorant. Don't think I didn't notice
-> I really shouldn't have watched the news. Very depressing - I'm not sure why Fiona Bruce is smirking at the news of Bhutto's assassination, for starters
-> time to go home. The trains in France are painless, but there are no direct trains from London to Nottingham, so we return via Grantham. Sigh.
-> Sleeping in your own bed is ace

I could go on.

But I won't.

---

If I get time, I'm going to try and put the Earworms of the Year up on Friday this week. Thanks for all the nominations so far.... but it's not too late to cast your votes. Details are here, and emails to the address in my profile please.

---

If I don't see you before, Happy New Year to one and all. Let's hope 2008 is a good one, eh?

War is over if you want it.

you've got to laugh into the dark....

No Earworms this week.... Just a request: I'm compiling the 3rd Annual Earworms of the Year list, and I need your help...........

I want you to rummage around your internal jukebox and I want you to email me your top 5 earworms for 2007. Chuck in a few comments on each, if you like. You know you want to.

Full details are here.

Votes to the email address in my profile please.

I'll be putting the list up at the end of the month.

All welcome.

Roll of honour.

2005 Coldplay - "Speed of Sound"

2006 Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

---

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'm declaring this blog closed for a few days. After a bit of mulled wine with some friends and a trip to the pub for some seasonal beer, I'll be packing my bag for a week in France with C's parents. C tells me that we don't have to spend all week with her mum and dad, but as her mum is an excellent cook and wants to feed me up, and as her dad keeps a wine cellar and sees me as an excuse to get the good stuff up..... I think I'll survive.

I think we've got time to have a look at Europe's longest champagne bar before we catch our Eurostar too....

Mmmm.

Happy Christmas all.

---

Still looking to download some more xmas songs? Go check out Joe the Troll's Trolling the Underground (courtesy of Cody Bones... thanks Cody!)

from now on, our troubles will be out of sight..

I really enjoy this time of year.

I know that it's not everybody's cup of tea, but I like it. There's just something in the air that makes people seem warmer and more full of generosity towards their fellow man.

Whether it's down to all the parties, the present giving, a bit of time off work, or because we're all particularly looking forward to watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special with our families, I don't know.... probably a combination of all those things and more. What I do know is that people just seem a little nice towards one another at the moment as we all anticipate the shared festival that's just around the corner.

I like that. It certainly makes a nice change, anyway.

I was out in town last night having a very pleasant meal with some dear friends, and in the cold of a dark December night, it seemed to me that everyone seemed full of cheer... some more full than others, it's true.... but it was nice.

Of course, not everyone is having a great time and there's still plenty enough pain and hurt in the world to go around. With that in mind, I've got a Christmas present for you all: in the name of everyone who reads this blog, I have donated £50 to Shelter, the homeless charity.



I hope that's alright with everyone.

Merry Christmas.

I've built my dreams around you....

Not surprisingly, given the time of the year, people have been busy downloading festive songs for their iPods. One of the consequences of allowing downloads to count towards the official singles charts is that there are currently 8 'classic' Christmas hits sitting in the UK Top 40.... Wham!, Mariah Carey, Shakin' Stevens, Andy Williams, Slade, Wizzard, Band Aid and -- of course -- The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.

Since it was released in 1987, "Fairytale of New York" has gradually established itself as almost everyone's favourite Christmas song. I think it's been dulled by repetition, but there's no denying that it's a fantastic record, and that the trading of insults between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl is a welcome antidote to most of the saccharine rubbish being peddled at this time of the year.

Most of us have probably absorbed the lyrics to this song subliminally over the last twenty years, so perhaps it's not all that surprising that there was an uproar when the BBC decided in their wisdom to only allow an edited version to be played on Radio One... the new version having the words "faggot" and "slut" dubbed out.

After a day fielding flak, the BBC backed down, with Controller Andy Parfitt saying:

"Radio 1 does not play homophobic lyrics or condone bullying of any kind. It is not always easy to get this right, mindful of our responsibility to our young audience. The unedited version will be played from now on. While we would never condone prejudice of any kind, we know our audiences are smart enough to distinguish between maliciousness and creative freedom. In the context of this song, I do not feel that there is any negative intent behind the use of the words, hence the reversal of the decision."

Quite right. Why would such a festive classic only be deemed offensive now. It's political correctness gone mad, I tell you.

Oh, but hang on. Just because it's a much loved song, does that make language like that acceptable? I can't help but think that Peter Tatchell might well have a point when he said:

"The word faggot is being sung as an insult, alongside scumbag and maggot. In this abusive context it is unacceptable"

I think he's right - in the context of the song, the word is clearly being used in a perjorative sense alongside other unflattering words. Substitute "faggot" for a -- say -- racially charged word and tell me that the song would be alright, because I'm not sure that it would be.

It's a bit of a storm in a teacup, I suppose, and it would be daft to bleep the song now, but language is powerful and sometimes we forget that.*

Or perhaps they were talking about meatballs.

Or bundles of firewood.

Either way, all the publicity has certainly not harmed the song's chances of topping its previous highest chart position of number#2 in 1987... when I looked last night, it was sat proudly on top of the iTunes chart for the week.

Speaking of Xmas songs.... head over to Del's place and download some other classics now.

[* interestingly, on the totally unnecessary Ronan Keating cover of "Fairytale of New York", the offending line is changed to "You're cheap & you're haggard", although apparently the word "slut" was fine. O Tempora, O Mores and all that....]

pa rum pum pum pum.....

I love Christmas songs.

Well, I love some Christmas songs - like everyone else I'm pretty bored of that album of songs that has remained unchanged for about the last twenty years, at least. You know...... Slade, Wizzard, Lennon, Shakin' Stevens, Jonah Lewie, Paul McCartney.... that one. That same album is currently playing in nine out of ten shops on the British high street. When I worked at HMV, we waited until Christmas Eve before we put that album on, and we were all so sick of it that we had it off again by lunchtime and were back on the godawful dance compilations. They're not all bad songs, but they are terribly, terribly overexposed - so much so that the magic has worn off.

There are other Christmas songs that you don't hear quite so often; songs that make you feel all warm and fuzzy and ready for the festive period. Some of them even make me crave an eggnog, and I don't even really know what eggnog is. They're that good.

With this in mind, I"ve got an early Christmas present for you: it's an xmas album for you to download. I'm pretty new at these things, and I'm not 100% sure it will work, but hopefully, if you click here, you'll be able to download a zip file containing 22 songs.

I like them anyway. For reasons of me not being arrested by random record company googling, you can find the full tracklist here. (I nearly put Band Aid 20 on it, but I resisted the urge... you'll have to put up with the Darkness though).

For many of these songs, I'm heavily indebted to a collection made available a couple of years ago on Sweeping the Nation, so thanks to them for that. The rest are probably either on an old XFM compilation from a while back, or things I've picked up here and there along the way. It's good for the next 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first, so get it whilst it's fresh and let me know what you think.

I just hope it works.

My favourite ever Christmas song is either track one or track five here. What's your favourite?

(oh, and all music is made available here for non-commercial use only, right? If you like something, promise me you'll go out and buy it, okay? Good).