Tag: UK

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‘Tis The Season…

To be sad maybe? Sad as in “I have no life!”

I really do look forward to this time of year, although heaven knows why! I live thousands of miles away from my immediate family. My partner is not exactly in what you would describe as a “close-knit” family. We have LESS than no money (we exist primarily on credit cards). I could go on, but I’ll only depress myself. Does the Christmas period account for more suicides than any other time of the year? If it does, I can well understand why. Despite all that…I’m STILL looking forward to it!! I’m a freak, I know!

OK, here is why: The Pros…

Lovely food! I like to spoil me and Em at this time of year. Usually that would mean some M&S food as well, but probably not this time. What it will mean is roast dinners, chestnuts (the best nuts on the planet), deserts, alcohol and lots of warmth.

Presents…when you can afford them. We don’t really do gifts for each other much these days, but rather splash out on a big joint gift. Last year it was a Freeview box with recordable hard drive of 40gb. This year it has been jumping up to a 26″ LCD TV. But I still love getting little personal gifts.

Christmas TV. A chance to see all your favourite old movies and lots of Xmas specials. It’s a dead time for Australian TV, but absolutely prime in the UK. I suppose it’s the weather that makes it that way.

The chance of snow at Xmas!

New Year…an excuse to p!ss up! And have lots of prayers that the New Year will be a better one for all.

The Embassy World Darts in the New Year!!! I LOVE IT! It’s like WWF, but darts! I love the “walk-on’s”, they are brilliant! My two favourites are Ted Hankey, who dresses up as Dracula (he has a darts nickname – The Count), cape and all, with spooky music and sounds playing (he even has the receding hairline – but not a widow’s peak, it’s too far gone) and he picks out plastic bats from under his cape and throws them into the crowd – it’s pure pantomime!!! My other fave is Martin “Wolfie” Adams. He comes out to Duran Duran’s Hungry Like The Wolf and howls and the crowd howls back!! I assume he’s called Wolfie ‘cos he has a lot of facial hair?!

The cons…

We feel compelled to buy presents.

We have to worry about decorations. Normally I’m the first to put them up, but I haven’t got a tree up yet. I’d love a fibre optic tree, but money dictates.

You can’t really be with the ones you love…or you are forced to spend time with family…depending on which side you look at it. I haven’t had a Christmas with my family for 8 years now.

There’s probably actually TOO much to watch on TV.

No snow and just horrible, cold, wet weather.

Running out of some kind of foodstuff and having to go to the supermarket on Xmas eve! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh

Sending cards by snail mail.

For those of you getting into the spirit, here are my two fave Christmas songs….

[youtube=http://youtu.be/P8Ozdqzjigg]

[youtube=http://youtu.be/DiXjbI3kRus]

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Thanks Guido!

Hooray for Guy Fawkes! I love the man! If it wasn’t for good old Guido, we wouldn’t really be enjoying fireworks this weekend! Only in England could what was a plot to BLOW UP the houses of parliament be CELEBRATED by letting off fireworks and having bonfires!!! Brilliant!

Our local fireworks display is on tonight. It’s usually quite a good display, and it’s free (always a good thing). I think we might go tonight, if not all the way to the park itself, at least somewhere closer so we can see the bigger crackers go off. Then tomorrow night we’ll go to the home of Big Brother UK, to Borehamwood for their fireworks display. We’ve been going there for the last 3-4 years now and it’s quite a good (& free) display.

I do get worried that fireworks are available to buy for the general public. I don’t think that is very safe. And I don’t understand why people want to waste their money on fireworks. Don’t get me wrong – I mean obviously by the subject of this post, I would expect it is obvious that I love fireworks, but I’d never buy them. Maybe a pack of sparklers, that would be it. But I don’t even buy them. I find sparklers WAY too dangerous. I just think buying fireworks are a waste of money to get for private use. I mean it’s like burning a £50 note. There are SO many professional displays put on around here, no one needs to buy fireworks really. But people do. More money than sense as far as I’m concerned.

I shouldn’t really say this, but we have done something INCREDIBLY daft lately. The weather has turned recently and we have been starting to get cold. We haven’t had any heating going to our central heating system. We were waiting for the estate agents plumber to come back from holiday so he could come and look at the central heating. Then this morning (after relying on other heat sources for the last 3 days), Em had a “eureka” moment and realised that what had been happening with the central heating was…

WE HADN’T ADJUSTED THE THERMOSTAT!!

Em felt like a total prawn for not thinking of it earlier and I felt even worse because I didn’t even think of the thermostat AT ALL!!! If we had a brain cell between us, we’d be dangerous sometimes! lol

So, needless to say, we now have heat. How damn embarrassing would that have been if we’d not have twigged and the plumber had come and went ‘click’ and adjusted the thermostat. Talk about wanting a crack to open up in the ground to swallow us!!!

Great minds think alike – soul-mates don’t think at all!

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Gearing Up…

Today was Em’s parents 50th wedding anniversary! Fifty years! Now that’s medal awarding! We went around in the afternoon with our rather lame gift (a golden anniversary card and a bottle of wine). Colin arrived afterwards with lots more gifts, somewhat outdoing us, but was kind enough to hand it over as a joint gift, although it wasn’t really.

Tomorrow I am sure there will be kiddies from all round “trick or treat”-ing. They won’t get anything here sadly. I can’t be buying sweets for strangers children. Buy your own kids sweets instead of scrounging off strangers! The local paper was kind enough to print a poster for the elderly to put up on their door (see picture…it’s of a copy of the poster being held by PC George Pugh of Bedfordshire Police), but I am in a right mind to put the poster up on OUR door. We can’t give them anything, so we might as well let them know they’ll be wasting their time knocking.


Tuesday is the true Halloween and it spells the passing of another year for me. I’ll be another year closer to 40, God help me! Be in mourning for me everyone 🙁 At least I might get fireworks for my brithday.