Posted by Donkey on behalf of Bekki (@pigwotflies)
Christmas in the PWF family is about, in roughly equal measure: Jesus; food; presents and squeezing as many family members as possible into one room. Continue reading
Posted by Donkey on behalf of Amy [@cat_knits]
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”
Er no. It’s really not.
“In the bleak mid-winter…”
Again no. It’s sunny. I’m wearing flip flops (or jandals) and high factor sunscreen.
“Snow is falling, all around us…” Continue reading
Today is the shortest day of the year, but for me it is the longest.
I’ve been awake, off and on since midnight riding a wave of memories. Most of mine can be shared with only a handful of people, it’s the theft of age and death has been with me since childhood.
The one that haunts my Solstice is my mother’s. To tell you who she was would take pages, and really all that’s important is that she was vibrant, generous, fierce and force before whom politicians trembled, and we loved her.
On December 21, 2005 the phone rang at just before noon- she was dead. Heart attack. A heart attack after four years of a barely living hell, caused by a massive stroke suffered on the operating table as one and then two surgeons attempted to correct one and then a second aneurysm. I had dropped everything to spend five months with her in rehab- hoping to get her to the point where she could return to her own home. Those five months were torture for us both. She went home. Round the clock care was hired. Organizing a large public funeral was already done- we’d laid out most of the plans together. She was an organizer. It was the only thing left to her in those last years. The funeral was on Boxing Day. Christmas is hard. Her death was a relief, but still…
This is the shortest day. Good.
It’s the shortest day, which might mean rushing around like fools trying to get everything done, or it might mean howling at the moon and praying for the light. Either way, if you have an uborka login please feel free to post something – a photograph or a thought – or just comment here. Do you do anything to mark the winter solstice?
Some years we have made the effort to eat yellow and orange food and light candles at dusk; this year we’re having solstice spaghetti and no individual gifts but maybe some sort of family treat later in the afternoon. It’s a vile day outside and we have chores to do before we can look forward to the rest of the holidays.
Welcome to Panto Bar, secret hangout of underground Panto players. What? You didn’t know? Well it’s a secret innit? Continue reading
The trouble with coming in so late to an event such as this is it has mostly been said. We’ve heard the spectrum from bah humbuggers to deck the hallsers – though none were very rampant – and have all most politely agreed that Christmas is as Christmas does; that one is at liberty to shape one’s own festivities whether that includes saluting the Queen or necking a bottle of Baileys (or both, or neither). I get the impression the traditional family rows and tensions – and Christianity – have gone out of fashion, though perhaps that is 11 months of fading memories for the former, which might feature more prominently in a Boxing-day post, and Uborka self-selection for the latter. Continue reading
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.