I don’t know where the regular staff is– buried in tinsel or stuck in a pudding for all I know, perhaps they were abducted by pirates!
That’s right, it’s Pantomime Season. Whether you’re classical commedia dell’art or Berwick Kaler Dame, place your orders for your panto cocktail.
What? A giant spider? There’s no spider behind me. There’s nothing there at all.
Posted by Donkey on behalf of KTD
As a boy, I used to love Christmas. Particularly Christmas Eve. That was when the telly was best: Laurel and Hardy trying to get a piano up some steep steps, endless Disney cartoons. I’d lie on my stomach, glued to the googlebox all day long. Christmas Eve was also my grandparents’ wedding anniversary. It was always very jolly.
Every year, I had to slap the turkey before it went in the oven. (Which I still do.)
I even liked Christmas as a teenager. Again, Christmas Eve. This time, falling down the hill from the village pub after too many vodka and limes (I’ve always been classy), to eat freshly slapped turkey sandwiches on white sliced bread before going to bed.
I may have enjoyed Christmas as a student – but how can I be expected to know that?
It all started to go wrong when I had an office in the centre of town. I liked being in the city in those days. It felt urban, sophisticated, cool, my space. (This was Nottingham, for fuck’s sake. I’ve always been classy.) As Christmas approached, the town would fill up with grockles, frantically searching for shit to wrap up in bits of nasty paper. I had to queue in M&S to buy my lunch. The rot began to set in.
I began to hate all the frenetic activity of people around me acting like Armageddon was imminent. Social hysteria. I have the same reaction at concerts, too. I started to withdraw from it all, fingers in ears, lah lah lah.
Then, one Christmas Eve, my Grandmother had a massive heart attack; it was also her wedding anniversary. I watched her slowly drown, due to Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome: a condition I had studied as part of my PhD. She died on Christmas Day.
That year, friends had to cook Christmas dinner. They were not used to cooking on an Aga, and so they let all the heat out, as I got pissed on whatever I could drink. (I had, however, progressed from vodka and lime.) The turkey was almost raw, and no amount of slapping would warm it up; a bit like my Grandmother, really.
Since then, I have backed further away from Christmas, and I think I now have it just about right. It starts on Christmas Eve, with Carols from King’s, as I make mince pies. It ends on Boxing Day, when I get the wonderful feeling that next Christmas is as far away as it’s possible to be.
I love January. Everyone is miserable, and nobody goes out, because they’ve spent all their money on bits of shit wrapped up in nasty paper. I feel free, unencumbered by social pressure. The world has just fucked itself, and that’s how I like it.
This year – because it will be our last in the cottage, and because we have Mike’s mother and sister staying for the first time, and since I am in a better place than I have been for many years – we have decided to put up decorations, and even buy a tree. (I am sure I will enjoy watching it wither and die over the twelve days.)
For several years, we have had no decorations at all. Although a couple of years ago, we arrived at the cottage to find that my mother had hung a solitary bauble in front of the fireplace:
I love my mum.
Merry fucking Christmas to you all.
Now, fuck off and leave me in peace.
Are you living in the same place as in 2004/05?I’m still in Sydney; or rather, I’m back in Sydney – I was in New York from 2007-2009 doing my Masters.
This question actually prompted me to make a list of all the places I’ve lived in since ’04, and it turns out in the last 9 years I’ve moved house 11 times. Just realising that makes me feel tired..!
Yes. Unless I’m rocking my Fu Man Chu disguise (see picture).
I haven’t blogged regularly since I was in New York, sadly. I keep meaning to start again but I find it is so much easier to to perform a fractured set of identities on various social media platforms than it is to sit and compose the kind of long-form writing that I feel is expected of blogs today. All the random bits of things that I used to throw onto a blog now go on Twitter, or Facebook.
I’mma make me some robot chocolates!
I’ve wanted to do this for a while now, being both a fan of robots and a chocolate fiend. I even bought a mould (like this one) ages ago but never got round to using it.
Six months ago I quit sugar, and it wasn’t until very recently that I learned that you can make tasty chocolates with dextrose instead of sucrose (the Internet says so, and why would it lie?) so I’m going to give that a go in the new year.
I’m less afraid of the government taking over the internet and making it rubbish than I am of the Google (or the Facebook) taking over the internet and making it what-is-that-I-don’t-even. (She says as she uses Gmail for all her personal and most of her professional communications, and merrily tags herself and all her loved ones in photos on Facebook.)
Actually, as Destructor mentioned, where the current Australian government and the internet are concerned, the biggest problem is getting the internet to work good. But given Abbott’s trail of destruction through issues like our environment, marriage equality and our treatment of refugees, Internet speed is the least of our concerns at the moment. (Sorry, sorry; I know this isn’t Facebook. I’ll get off my bloody soapbox now.)
This question makes me feel old. What are the kids even listening to these days? Next question!
I joke.
Let’s see. A few of my favourite artists from 10 years ago have made music relatively recently that I love. Radiohead’s output has stood the test of time (although TKOL was over 2 years ago and I must admit I listen to the remix album more than I do the original). I still adore Cinematic Orchestra; they’ve made more curatorial than studio albums recently but they are still excellent.
Ooh I know! Amon Tobin! After all these years he is still a god amongst men. The album he released as Two Fingers is delicious and I highly recommend it. His bass sounds have gotten all crunchy and dirty in recent years; I love it. I also saw him perform ISAM last year (at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall) and it was just…tremendous.
In a nutshell: I am consuming far more than I ever used to, and yet constantly feel like I’m being left behind.
Marriage. It’s not something I grew up wanting, or assuming I would do one day. Even after I found myself in a relationship with someone I knew I wanted to build a life and grow old with (which was in itself surprising and delightful enough!) getting married was not a thing we really felt a need to do. Certainly we would have preferred not to marry until we had marriage equality in Australia, not least of all because of that awful monitum from the 2004 Marriage Act that specifies marriage in Australia as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”. All celebrants are legally obliged to say this at every wedding they perform; I’ve been to a few weddings in Australia since ’04 and every time I hear it I throw up a little in my mouth. At our wedding we dealt with it by shaking our fists and boo-ing when the celebrant had to quote it during the ceremony. (She didn’t mind. Also, if you can’t heckle bad laws at your own wedding, when can you?)
I changed my mind about getting married after my dad had a health scare last year. My relationship with my parents has always been an uneven one. I love them and I know they love me, but we are so very different and that hasn’t made for the easiest parent-child relationship over the years. Getting married was one thing I could do that they would understand and would bring them joy.
Looking back, I’m very glad we decided to get hitched sooner rather than later, because 3 weeks before the wedding, Dad got pneumonia. Up to 2 days before the wedding we were uncertain about whether he would be able to attend. In the end the hospital granted him day leave but when he got to the venue, he felt he wasn’t well enough to stay for the wedding ceremony or the reception. He did manage the traditional Chinese tea ceremony though, and in some ways that was the most symbolically important part of the day for him. James and I offered tea to him and Mum, and they welcomed James into the family as a son. And he got to witness me offer tea to my in-laws, and become a part of their family.
Our whole wedding day was just joyful, from start to finish. We spent the day ensconced in the loving company of our nearest and dearest – 35 of our closest friends and family, many of whom had traversed great distances to be there. I came to understand (in the way that experience brings understanding) how powerful and transformative these life cycle rituals really are.
Getting married is an act that is performative and affective; I am convinced of its significance in way that I never imagined I would be even 5 years ago. I’m not saying getting married is something everyone should do, but it should certainly be more than it currently is: an enactment of heteronormative privilege. It should be a choice made available to all consenting adults regardless of the gender of the person they love, and an inalienable human right in a civil and just society.
And now I really will get off my soapbox and put it back on my Facebook wall where it belongs…
Christmas has always revolved around three things in my family (by which I mean the family consisting of me, my parents and my brother – my other family (wife and son) are relatively (pun!) recent interlopers and so must fit in with my family’s traditions).
These three things are: Continue reading
Karen tweeted
“… probably christmas grumpiness on Tuesday from @Gammidgy”
It’s true, I am a miserable and cynical sod, and Christmas provides me with so many delicious reasons to rant and rave. So many tacky, expensive and ridulous Christmas traditions, enjoyed seemingly for no reason other than that they are traditions, leave me bemused and somewhat scornful of my idiotic fellow humans. Continue reading
‘Ssshhhhhhh, you’ll wake Mum and Dad’
My sister was born when I was 7 and a half years old – back then that half was very important – so as her big brother it was my duty to induct her in the ways of Christmas. Continue reading
“There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas” has always been untrue. Kilimanjaro has a year round white cap, the Atlas mountains get frequent dustings down to the village altitudes, and the Mountains of the Moon still have glaciers (just). Continue reading
It’s the 14th, so we’re halfway through the runup to the Festering Season, and pretty much in the midst of the whole marketing frenzy. It’s started earlier this year – my local Tossco had Christmas cards on sale in September (cue epic levels of swearing, and a complaint to the “Customer Experience Manager”, a spotty little twerd with no understanding of Customers or Experiences, let alone managing them)
[NOTE : I’ve just realised that I’d got my maths wrong, and the 14th is past mid-way. That would’ve been the 12th. Well done Lyle, you unutterable knob-end] Continue reading