Bah Humbug - 2

Despite having shit loads of Uni work, I thought I would try and do a series of posts each day about the bahhumbuggness of christmas to go with my new seasonal background.

Day 2 – Decorations

When I was a wee badger pup, I used to delight at being driven through the suburbs to wherever it was we were going. Moreso when it was Christmastide. I would gaze out of the window with wide eyes eager to espy illuminated windows bedecked with Christmas decorations.

Back in the 1970’s and 80’s it was like some advent calendar. You knew Christmas was coming because more and more houses would look festive each night. From the very rare one toward the beginning of the month, to the sudden explosion about a week before the special specific day.

Since then, like a rash, it seems that some are excited about the big day in November and the once eager countdown has turned from a “count the tree!” into a “Spot the Christmas victim” sport.

But I touched on illuminations yesterday, so today I am going indoors.

My Nan had the best Christmas decorations ever. I have some of the ones that haven’t disintegrated still.  My favorite is a cardboard cut out of Santa on his sleigh over arced by the words “HAPPY CHRISTMAS”, it has a sister, that of a cardboard cut out of Santa in his airplane over arced by the words “MERRY CHRISTMAS”. Simple. effective. Still with stubborn remains of glitter clinging on. There is also a small bag of garlands. Not any ordinary garland mind. None of this tinsel stuff. These are brightly coloured PAPER GARLANDS!

Ah the simple things.

These days however, houses seem to spend a lot on decorations. Either that or the festive decoration business is very lucrative. Everything seems to appear to have some kind of organic feel to it. Even the fake stuff. Garlands of green swathing stairways, posh looking real trees and even plastic pseudo trees that would convince even Percy Thrower from a distance.

Why?

What’s wrong with the tatty tinsel? The crap baubles with their lacquer coming off? Or the cheap looking flue brush Christmas tree in the corner? Why bother with all the expense of new decorations? My Nan's had clearly lasted since before the war with a small top up some time in the 60’s. Nothing extravagant. Just basic. And yet still looking like you’re doing your part.

But no. Because designers need to earn a crust, new concepts in the latest decoration styles come forth. It’s like redesigning spoons and encouraging people to buy different spoons depending on the flavour yogurt they’re eating. Decorations don’t go tacky. They might get damaged yes, but they don’t go tacky. It is YOUR PERCEPTION that makes them tacky, spurred on by the fashion industries in an effort to generate more income for themselves. Now I can’t blame them for that. After all if we’re all gullible enough to follow new trends then good on whosoever makes a crust out of that narcissism. But a tree is a tree. Convincing or not. A string of green tinsel is a string of green tinsel. Flame retardant or not. A bauble a bauble – child friendly or not.

So this year, if you are tempted to buy new decorations. Save money. Use the ones you already have. Don’t throw the old ones away. Keep them. Use them every year ad nauseam. Until you are in your 70’s and you can pass them on to a governmentally approved young person (providing you’ve been checked out of course).

Of course, you could go down the other route. The “Don’t bother” route.

Before I digressed I was writing about the Christmas tree spotting occasions I used to take part in. Of course, living in an ethnically diverse place such as Liverpool, there were quite a few houses that didn’t bedeck in gaiety. This confused me because I wanted to know why Mr & Mrs Singh^* didn’t have decorations ups and I also wanted to know why Mr & Mrs Goldstienburg^* didn’t seem to bother either. Of course I wasn’t allowed to ask them as this was the 1970’s/80’s and even looking at people who had different creeds and beliefs was unthinkable. After all you might catch something.

Aside from the Singhs and the Goldstienburgs there was the mysterious Joneses^*. They seemed like an ordinary couple. Dog, house, cars, both were teachers but they seemed to lack decorations at Christmas. I thought the reason why they didn’t dress their house up was because they didn’t have children. So as they didn’t have children Father Christmas had no right being there so why would they try to tempt him in with decorations? Logical thinking no?

As my years went on and I moved away, I became aware that other people didn’t bother with decorations. It became apparent that some would dread the annual scuffle to find a box of musty smelling balls of tinsel; bedeck; sit surrounded by it all; take it down 3 weeks later.

And why not! Who wouldn’t. So think about it. You’re going to mooch about in a dusty attic, damp cellar, rank shed, cluttered cupboard. Take all the boxes of decorations out. Spend the entire day sticking up bits of cheap crap around your accommodation in an attempt to make yourself feel festive for a couple of weeks. You’ll find that some lights wont work, you’ll find bits of tinsel have some how become entwined with each other. You’ll find bits of stuff you had forgotten about from the previous year. You might even find that smelly Aunt last seen in the corner sipping sherry the previous Christmas.

Then 3 weeks later, you’ll have to take it all down again. Stuff it back into boxes, return your Aunt to the nursing home and some how muster up the arsedness to stuff it all back in the place you got it from. I mean really….CAN YOU BE ARSED?

Do what I do. Don’t bother.

Bah humbug

Despite having shit loads of Uni work, I thought I would try and do a series of posts each day about the bahhumbuggness of christmas to go with my new seasonal background.

Day 1 - Christmas Lights

Last month, the council cherry picker came round and put up the usual festive illuminations around the main street through Brierley. This signalled the impending annual tradition of the Barnsley Christmas Lights Switch On. A tradition that dates back to the early days when locals would gather, set fire to a virgin and honour the ancient God of Coal. These days it is a more sedate affair. Local celebrities (of which there are two maybe three) arrive, say some inspiring words ("It's Christmas" "You're all going to die" "What the fuck am I doing in Barnsley?") and flick a switch. A nice job if you can get it. Bit seasonal though.

This year's switch on was about 2 weeks ago.

Now I had expected the gay baubles to be illuminated outside the Church of the Blue Bag already. But no. Possibly because Councillor/Mayor Vodden hasn't got round to plugging in the extension cord or maybe because, as tradition holds with fairy lights, a bulb has blown somewhere down the street and the council are too busy to come and test each bulb. So there it hangs. On the street light. Dull. Dim and extra.

Of course this would probably be a problem if, over the next 3 weeks, the plethora of social housing and swaythes of other residences didn't bedeck their houses with gaudy strings of coloured electric lighting. Already, the streets of Brierley are starting to resemble a poor man's Blackpool and yet this is only the beginning. Residents clinging on to some vague recollection of happy Christmases past. Re-enacting, modernising and reattempting to capture that one heady happy jolly merry christmas where gran would sit in the corner farting and the deformed elderly Aunt that nobody cared for slowly got pissed on rum in front of a flue brush christmas tree dressed in Woolworth's best bargain death trap fairy lights.

And yet, though the whole idea is frightful to some, there is something carnal and comforting about the bright glow of coloured lights against the dark December evenings. We banish the darkness with light, harking back to those long ago days when electricity was witchcraft and we would be huddled in the corner of a roundhouse with the cows and sheeps for warmth while praying that the sun would come up the next morning. So as you drive or walk down your local streets during these cold cold December nights and you observe the brightly coloured lights of festive celebrations, think. Think how those who cover their homes with more lights than a Las Vegas casino are actually trying, in some sort of primal tribal memory way, to banish the darkness. Laugh to yourself. Think how foolish they are for being afraid of the dark. Then. Walk into a lamppost.

Look where you are going.

Ooops

Pizza for tea tonight ended in disaster when, trying to be poncey, seasoning the cooked pizza with freshly ground black pepper, the bottom fell off the 3 year old over large never ending pepper grinder and my dinner ended up buried under a mountain of pepper corns.

I’m now finding pepper corns all over the house.

Wavey Gravy

So I managed to snaffle a Googlewave invite and after a morning of poking about in it, I my life is yet to be enhanced.

stegzy@googlewave.com if you use it and you’re not in my address book already or whatever.

Regulation of Social Networking Part III

So, you might remember a few weeks ago I did a post about the regulation of social networking. No? Were you too busy to read it? Were you not arsed about reading it? Were you too scared to read it? Well in case you missed it it is here - (http://stegzy.livejournal.com/818818.html). If you never read another of my posts, please make sure you read this one.

 

Anyway, the past two weeks have been very interesting. Little stories tucked away here and there with one that I almost missed. But first, let me take you back to the letters page of the Daily Mirror of last Monday. Recently a girl, was found dead after going to meet someone she had met through Facebook. This someone curiously was a homeless someone which begs the question where did he get computer access from. But that aside, the police think he did it...wait...no...the PRESS want us to think he did it because he was arrested because of it. See how I'm falling into this trap too. He has not been to court over this yet and few details have been released, but the automatic assumption is that HE did it. But that aside, the method of how HE allegedly did it, was by luring an innocent teenager (who incidently was 17) to her death through Facebook. At first I was like "meh, another one" but this time I thought no, I'll look at this a bit closer. Now, one of the ways governments like to get over an unpopular motion is to make it seem that their unpopular notion is actually popular. They do this by quoting opinion polls and surveys which back their stance (think Iraq War II and any number of other recent unpopular events) or by refering to what "people in their constituency" have said to them (like Jack Straw constantly says) or by manipulating the media to whip up a frenzy or moral panic. So when I looked a bit deeper, I discovered this nice little letters page -

Daily Mirror 02-11-2009

Clicky for biggy Ok, so if you're too lazy to look at that, I'll tell you what it says here. Basically it is a page of letters, unbalanced, calling for tighter regulation of, or the abolition of, social networking sites like Facebook. The people that wrote those letters are clearly unbalanced individuals and I don't mean in a political standpoint I mean mad and possibly without the mental capacity to actually contemplate their own arguement. The type of people that only vote a particular political party because that's what their parents voted for. Automatons. But wait, maybe there is the slight possibility that.....THEY DON'T EXIST and that the letters are just constructs of agenda setters bent on making the idea of a regulated internet and social networking sphere a socially acceptable one....Surely not.....but it is a possibility..... So I was going to not bother posting that. Until earlier today when I came across this nice little gem which I think you should all read.....

 UK surveillance plan to go ahead - BBC News Website [Accessed 10/11/09]

Again, if you can't be bothered to read or follow the link, it is an article announcing the Home Offices intention to require all internet habits to be monitored. Of course, it is facing some opposition but, now you'll love this bit, I bet you this....over the next few months we'll hear more about criminals meeting through social networking sites, more about people getting murdered by meeting people off the internet and I would even wager that one "victim" will end up being a child....a beautiful middle class child.........Moral panics...gotta love them...

 

Anyway, if you can't be arsed to read this, the articles or anything else, why not be equally unarsed to watch this little film. It is the most interesting two hours I've spent in a while.....

Bang bang

I suppose you know it’s a bad recession when firework night is quiet. Either that or :

1. The weather is shit
2. Nobody fancies paying £35 for a rocket (yes £35 for a whiz and a bang, as seen in a local newsagent near me)
3. People go to council run displays more now
4. People realise the celebration of the murder of a catholic terrorist hell bent on the regicide of a corrupt and suppressive monarch has no place in modern society
5. Arsebook and Twatter are more stimulating to Jo Public than watching a lot of money go up in smoke.

When I lived in Liverpool, Bommie Night was such a big event with the local scallies. What with being able to legally get their hands on explosives with ease and that. For weeks leading up and after, the suburban soundscape would be accompanied by a regular beat of bang bang bang all evening.

But here in Yorkshire. Not very much. Apart from a big fire in the field at the top of the field behind the field behind the lane with no name and a couple of pathetic efforts of Netto standard fireworks.

Personally though, I think the time has passed for this festival and it should go the way of bear baiting and gin dens. Besides, it seems absolutely crazy to me that in this day and age of global terrorism, ordinary people are legally allowed to buy gun powder based explosives over the counter. I mean, if I was Johnny Terrorist, all I’d have to do is fork out £35 for a rocket, dismantle it, put the powder in a coffee tin, add a couple of nails, ball bearings and sharp metal things and there you have it….instant bomb…..Course, you might need something to light it with…..

Bonkers!

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School Dinners

For dinner tonight I had faggots and chips. I haven’t had faggots in years. The ones I got at school were a lot more herby than the ones I had tonight so were a little disappointing.

 

 

Later this evening I was having a text conversation with Uncle Monty about how disappointing they were and how I had them for school dinners. Uncle Monty said that he wasn't fortunate enough to have faggots at school and suffered a disgusting mix of curried cabbage, boiled beetroot and mashed potato.

So this got me thinking about school dinners on a national, if not global scale. Are school dinners an exclusively British thing? Or do they have them in foreign climes? What did you have for your school dinners? Did you like them?

Faggots weren’t my favourite. Sausage and chips was my favourite. If you were lucky you had the option of plum tomatoes instead of beans. The sausages were often just MRM but by the blue bag, they were gorgeous.

How about you?

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