Day 14 (A.K.A. Christmas shopping)

I've got all my christmas shopping done!

That is all!

I intend to head round to a house where my entire extended family is, drop off the presents then leave...

Of course noone hates Uncle Nic... I am a legend

Now just to get my girlfriend to wrap it all... I'm not sexist, i'm just an invalid.

I wish you all smug Christmas wishes.

Happy 14th!

Xx

December 13th (A.K.A. Santa's lap

What age were you the last time you sat on Santa’s lap?

"Can I sit on your lap"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"because I will be arrested!"

A thought came into my head the other day, whilst watching the Santa Clause with Tim Allen (I imagine some Hollywood producer realised that Claus and clause sounded the same and basically made the film around the title!) Anyway, I don’t know the last time I went to see Father Christmas, I don’t remember when I learned the horrible truth about him either!

If I went to Westfield this evening and got a ticket to see Old St. Nick firstly, would they let me go in, sit on his lap and tell him what I want for Christmas? Secondly, would I want to? Probably not.

In all honesty why is it a thing? Every year millions of parents let their children go and see an old man with a fake beard, sit on his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas.

Of course they are… It is Christmas! It helps maintain the magic that Father Christmas is real, which let’s be honest, helps keep kid’s ‘nice’ all year round due to fear of being on the naughty list!

But why on the lap???

They could just meet Santa, shake his hand and tell him. ?They could just stick to writing a letter.

Of course if you start to question that you start to question most Christmas traditions;

Imagine the first time someone ever tried the old mistletoe trick…

Man: We need to kiss!

Woman: No we don’t

Man: Actually we do points up

Woman: Looks up Why because of the plant on the ceiling.

Man: um… yup

Woman: Oh ok!

Couple kiss… she feels nothing except a bit cross at herself for going along with it. By the next year the tradition has taken off and she entirely blames herself.

Meanwhile the man ends up in prison five years later after flashing a woman under a fig tree and claiming it is ‘a thing’… it does not catch on.

What about the guy who, after a particularly bad year, decided to hang his sock up on the fireplace and told his family it should be filled with gifts because CHRISTMAS.

Happy December 13^th – If you haven’t already bought someone a chocolate orange, eaten it and then had to buy another one… you’re not doing Christmas right.

December 12th (A.K.A. STOP WITH THE GIFTS!)

What?

No December 10th? no December 11th?!

In my defence I have broken my elbow and I did write an awesome parody of 'Twas the night before Christmas' detailing said break on the 9th.

I'd like to say that my creative processes were all worn out after that and it has taken me three days to recover but if I am being honest it is just very difficult (and slow!) to type with one hand!

So December 12th... On the 12th day of Christmas the so-called true love of the writer of the song 'The 12 days of Christmas' gave to them -

Twelve Drummer's Drumming.

Are you allowed to give people to someone as a gift? NO!
I suppose they could be employed to do the task, but how long do they have to do it? forever? surely not.

I suppose one could assume that they have simply been hired for the day but even they would need significant breaks. They cannot drum for 24 hours straight.

Perhaps they are going for some sort of record!

But the record for longest time drumming as part of a team is 3 days, 8 hours and 2 minutes so they might as well not bother with a measly 24 hours.

At least the 12 drummers might go someway to drown out the multitude of pipers piping. Over 2 days the gift-receiver has been gifted 22 pipers piping! Good heavens

The twelfth day marks the 3rd day that 10 Lords-a-leaping have been be added to this insane person's gift list. How did he persuade 30 lords to come and leap for his true love? what sort of blackmail does he have?

What are they leaping over?

Why would anyone want to see this?

IMPORTANT FACT;

Buying people the gift of jumping members of the peerage is not a thing!

Yes... 'a-leaping!'

Also given are 9 ladies dancing. This fresh set of 9 female dancers join the 9 ladies dancing given on the 9th day, the 9 given on the 10th and the set of 9 gifted on the 11th. We cannot be sure if these ladies joined the previous sets each time or replaced them when they inevitably died of exhaustion.
In total there were 36 ladies dancing though... Do you imagine them doing the Macarena?

either way I imagine them in some sort of chain gang. Arrested and forced to dance forever for some maniac's idea of reasonable gift giving.

Would you rather spend your day dancing non-stop or milking?

8 maids a milking have been given every day for 5 days now. So there are 40 of them. The fact that they are currently milking suggests that some cows are present! The amount of cows is hard to determine.

Assuming each milker needs at least one udder then that would suggest on each day you'd only need 2 cows! But then each day they'd be 4 udders left over so if they planned ahead of time on the third day they wouldn't need a cow at all!

By day 12 the minimum number cows you'd need (assuming each cow has 6 udders and assuming that you can milk six udders at once (my cow milking knowledge is non-existent!)) is 7, you'd have 2 spare udders at this point so perhaps some of the lords or ladies who fancy a break from leaping or dancing could take an udder and have a cheeky milk! (Favourite phrase of the blog so far!)

Of course most milkers worth their salt would probably own their own cow anyway. So they might all rock up with one, basically along with the 40 maids a milking are somewhere in the region of 7 to 40 cows!

Since the 7th day, the gift of 7 swans a swimming has been given. Hopefully the gift receiver has a large lake available because on the 6th day of this gift it would be hard to house all 42 Swans in a bath.

I doubt there are 39 more Swans under there!

That brings us back to the Geese mentioned on Day 6.

All in all by this point the receiver has received;

140 Humans, 34 of which are musicians and a large proportion of whom are members of the peerage.
184 birds, 12 of which are in trees
between 7 and 40 cows
and
40 Gold Rings


All in all, this supposed 'true love' is a psychopath with: no concern for human, avian or bovine welfare; no idea about employment law; a good relationship with a local goldsmith; and a terrible understanding of when a present has gone 'a little over the top.

Happy December 12th

December 9th (A.K.A. Twas the night before Day 9)

Twas the night before Day 9, when all through Hyde park
Many people were stirring, although it was dark
The commuters were all heading homeward with haste,
In hopes that none of their own time they would waste.

The music was playing and fun was at hand,
If you ventured south east, to Winter Wonderland
But I, heading westward, somewhat business like
Had hopped on the saddle of a Boris Bike

Hasta la vista, European Union!

And off I did cycle, as fast as I could,
Perhaps a bit faster than maybe I should.
On through Hyde Park I flew like a flash,
Never suspecting I may have a crash.

The moon on the breast (LOL) of the rain sodden ground
Gave the light of mid-day to the leaves all around
When, what to my wondering back wheel should occur,
But a loss of all friction and the rest was a blur.

I jumped up from the ground, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment I’d been a right dick!
My Glasses I’d lost in my unfortunate tumble,
But found them quite fast so I guess I can’t grumble. 

And I would have gotten away with it too, were it not for those meddling fallen leaves and light rainfall

For the rest of my journey, I ventured on foot
Though in all honesty I felt O.K, but
An ache in my elbow began to grow larger
Though it would be a few hours before I thought on that harder.

I met with the Girlfriend, then went off to Sainsbury’s 
Bought Mexican food, Olives and some Cheese.
Perhaps the first clue that I’d caused myself folly
Was when I had to give up on pushing the trolley

When we arrived home, we barely did err,
Started cooking right then, for starving we were
The second clue came, when I tried to chop chicken
I could not chop at all without the pain kickin’ in (my favourite rhyme of this poem)

(Now some out there among you may think this a ruse,
Perhaps you would do it, were you in my shoes
You think it’s a lie, the excuse getting thinner
Did I just do all this to avoid cooking dinner?)


So dinner I ate, sorry for myself
Though somewhat cheered up by Will Ferrell’s Elf
‘til my arm full of pain I couldn’t unbend
I said “so off to A and E in the end!”

Two bus journey’s later we arrived pretty late,
Told the nurses the problem who said ‘sit and wait’
We sat and we waited as nurses then came
And asked for the next patients, each by their name;

"Now, Gary! now, Larry! now, Sue with the flu!
On, Terry! on Gerry, who’s foot has gone blue!
Then after 3 hours we shouted hooray!
As a nurses voice boomed to shout out “Nic Munday!

So the nurse I did see, then was sent on my way 
To see a radiologist, to get an x-ray
The results then came back and the answer was spoken
“I’m afraid Mr Munday your Elbow is broken”

I'm no superman!

So the lesson we’ve all learned from my recent past
Is when cycling home, there’s no rush, don’t go fast.
And now I must finish, but one final thing,
“Merry Christmas to all, even those in a sling!”

Happy December 9th all!

December 8th (A.K.A. Greg Lake, Trump and Bridget Jones!)

In my 25 years of being alive I have never put much thought into the singer of 1975 Christmas hit 'I believe in father christmas', Greg lake until yesterday.

Yesterday he featured in my blog. I posted two photos of him. This was literally the first time in my life i'd thought about him whatsoever.

Today the news was released that he died on Tuesday.

Greg Lake: King Crimson and ELP star dies aged 69

So I think today's blog will be in memory of Greg Lake

They said there'd be snow at Christmas, They said there'd be peace on earth

I must note that Greg Lake is not just famous for a novelty Christmas hit in 1975. If you like prog rock then have a listen to King Crimson or ELP. He was pretty darn talented.

I am a little bit worried I have weird powers. Well, one specific weird power. The power to kill artists who have released relatively successful Christmas songs by writing about them in a blog. Because of this I won't be mentioning any other Christmas songs today. (Would hate to be the cause of Noddy holder's demise).

In many ways it is a shame that Donald Trump never released a Christmas single. I'd write about that until the cows came home in the off chance my mystical powers would take hold.

I just double checked... he definitely hasn't released a Christmas single (yet!)

You can, however, buy this rather stylish Christmas jumper;

For those of us who want Christmas to be a bit more racist

You CAN buy it. like if you REALLY want to.

But which sort of person would want this jumper?

Apparently 62,853,497 Americans would. Plus I kind of want it... ironically.

If I am being honest, I am really glad I have become an adult at a time where wearing awful jumpers in December is allowed. I feel like we live in an age of post-modern Christmas jumper wearing. Having gone through the 90s and 00s period of thinking they are super lame.

CASE IN POINT!

In Bridget Jones Diary (the most 00s film of all time except for love actually) she turns up to a Boxing Day party wearing a 'hideous' Christmas jumper sees Mark Darcy and is literally like...

'Oh my god, a man I find physically attractive is in the room and we would live happily together forever having all the sex and babies but I'm meeting her whilst wearing this jumper so I will instead remain single and babyless forever and end up being eaten by my cats simply because of this jumper!!!!'

Then Dido plays so you remember it is the naughties!

Of course he's all like...

 

So it's ok!

Nowadays she's have simply thought 'ah a guy I think is hot, good job I'm wearing my ironically cool christmas jumper!' THE END!

Anyway better go as I'm in A and E with a suspected fractured elbow. Let's hope it's ok! 

Happy December 8th!

Xx

December 7th (A.K.A. The Decemberists)

WARM THIS WINTER - GABRIELLA CILME

We are 7 days (one week!) into this alternative advent calendar and other than an illness based hiccup on the 5th we appear to be going strong!

Feel free to share this blog on your facebook wall or anything like that. If you're trying to think of a way to sell it to people say it is an Advent calendar where instead of opening a door to chocolate, you open a door into my head and you have to read it whether you like it or not!!!



To really help me feel festive for this blog I am listening to Christmas Songs as I write this. So you know what mind set I am in whilst writing I shall let you know when the song changes to something new.

I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS - GREG LAKE

This is a picture of Greg Lake. Or is it? You don't know what Greg Lake looks like. You could look it up... but you won't

I spent so long trying to find a picture of Greg Lake (if it is Greg Lake) that I am now on...

SAVIOUR'S DAY - CLIFF RICHARD
Now when it comes to Christmas songs there is only one question worth asking which is this;

When should we start to hear Christmas songs?

This is an argument that could last a long time with answers spanning from 'From boxing day' to 'NEVER!'

I find that people sit in a few categories. My favourite category being...

The Decemberists
You will recognise the Decemberists outside of December because they will say things like 'Oh I don't really care about Christmas'. They will be on the cynical side of life. They will tell you off if you start humming 'We wish you a merry Christmas' in April by accident.
If you tell them you've completed your Christmas shopping on November 19th they will genuinely groan with disappointment at your life choices.

WINTER WONDERLAND - DEAN MARTIN

The Decemberists curl up into a cocoon on the 30th of November and wake up on December 1st, eat their first chocolate from their advent calendar, read the first advent blog of one of their more vain friends and emerge from their house a Festive-Jumper-Wearing, Mariah-Carey-Singing, Christmas nut!

LAST CHRISTMAS - WHAM

During December they will turn any conversation onto Christmas, they will organise a secret santa at work, they will get drunk every day in December and burst into song at any given moment.

They will have all their christmas shopping done by December 7th! (Well done guys!)

In short a Decemberist on Novmeber 30th looks like this;

"I hope I still have that ready meal lasagna in the fridge."

and on December 1st they look like this;

"Let's start an office Christmas Choir and perform Band-Aid, I'll be Bono!"

WHITE CHRISTMAS - BING CROSBY
Many of you will be Decemberists, they are similar to a different group named Mid-Decemberists who have to wait for about the 15th for it all to kick in.

So to all the Decemberists out there... next year push yourself a little. Sing "It's beginning to look a lot like christmas" on November 29th!

I DARE YOU!

Maybe another time I will tell you about the June-Onward-Christmas-Creepers!

Happy December 7th!

Pro-tip - Buy you're crackers soon otherwise you will forget in the mad rush up to christmas and imagine a christmas without terrible jokes, paper hats and gifts you have lost before you've gone to bed on christmas day but find again on March 12th.

A WINTER'S TALE - DAVID ESSEX

Oh look it's David Essex... or is it? (It isn't, it's Greg Lake again! IT IS ALWAYS GREG LAKE!)

CHRISTMAS MUSIC REALLY HELPED I FEEL SO FESTIVE!!!

X

December 6th (A.K.A. A menagerie of Birds and Rings)

The sixth!

On the sixth day of Christmas the overly generous but, let's be honest, terrible at gift giving true love of the singer gave them 6 geese-a-laying.

I do hope the gift receiver in the song had a large plot of lad because by the 6th day they've already received

1 partridge living in a pear tree-
What would one do with a partridge?
Does the partridge eat the pears?
The pears are the only fruitful (pun definitely intended) part of the gift and if the partridge eats them then it would actually be better to receive a pear tree sans partridge.

2 Turtle Doves-

Are they turtles? Are they doves?

'You lookin' at me?'

3 French Hens-
How do French hens differ to English hens?
A french horn looks like this

This doesn't help to understand what a French Hen is but it is true and you can't say i haven't given you any facts.
Assuming that all nationalities of hen lay eggs then this is quite a good gift I suppose. Assuming the plot of land of the gift receiver is sizeable. Otherwise they are going to have a very full and very messy house by day 12, and a significant chance of catching avian flu.

4 Calling birds -
Now I always imagine a bird on the phone. Maybe trying to order some sort of nest furniture from a catalogue. However, you may be interested to know that at different points in this song's history this line has been 4 Calling birds, 4 Canary birds and 4 originally 4 Collie birds, which is an old fashioned term for blackbirds...

Regardless these are useless birds and make a terrible gift!

5 Gold Rings -
What a thoughtful, if not a little overwhelming, gift! doesn't clutter the house up at all. You don't need to deal with the mess it leaves behing in the form of bird poo. Rings are given as gifts. 5 is probably too many, but compared to how terrible this gift giver, or 'True love' is at giving gifts, the minor issue of him giving a whole hands worth of rings in one go can be overlooked.


So there we have it. By the 6th day the grant total of the gifts already given is 3 useful birds, 7 useless birds, 5 gold rings and a tree.

Now I don't know if there is a market for goose eggs. I do know that the geese are currently laying eggs though or 'A-laying'. I assume this means they are at the time of their life where they do lay eggs and not that they are literally laying eggs at the point of being given. The latter option of course poses the important question - How could you POSSIBLY organise this?

Therefore at the end of the 6th day you have 3 useful birds, 6 possibly useful, possibly in the process of laying eggs, birds, 7 useless birds, 5 rings and a tree.

Now, when I listen to the song I assume the receiver gets 1 partridge and one pear tree on the first day and then no more partridges and pear trees after that. However, an argument could be made that on each day they receive all the gifts from previous days again. Which would mean that by the 6th day they'd have received -

6 Geese in the process of laying eggs at that very moment,
10 Gold rings, about 9 more than you need to give on one Christmas,
12 Calling birds, about 12 more than you need to give on one Christmas,
12 French Hens, a good start to an egg farm
10 Turtle doves, no one knows if this is a good thing or not.
6 partridges and 6 pear trees. Does each partridge stick to it's own tree? how territorial are partridges?
Is the receiver going to be dealing with partridge based gang warfare?

A lot of questions and very little answers from this song.

Tune in on the 12th to find out about when the giver gives more birds, before human trafficking everyone from lords to maids and a fair few musicians.

Happy December 6th

December 5th (A.K.A. I'm Sick *Cough* *Cough)

Interesting fact about December.
It is in the winter.
In the wintertime people tend to get ill.
I was ill today... so this blog will be shorter.

Despite moving very little today and mostly sleeping I promise I have remained festive.

In other more exciting news it is my friend Deakin's birthday today!!!

Although his birthday is 20  days earlier than Jesus I have not yet ruled out the possibility that he could be the second coming of Jesus. He can't turn water into wine but he is pretty good on a guitar and... look at him stroking this picture of a cat...

"Go home Deakin, you're drunk!"

Happy December 5th!

December 4th (A.K.A. Hangover-mas)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

To which 'it' am i referring? my calendar!

Why does it look like Christmas?

Because it is full of arrangements to drink. 

Nothing says 'It's Christmas!' more than excessive drinking. As a British person I can pretty much find an excuse to drink at any time of the year so how does December differ? In December you don't have to come up with an excuse. You can say to a person "I was in the pub for 8 hours yesterday on a Tuesday" and without even an inkling of judgement they'll just be like "and a merry Christmas to you too!"

Of course it is only the 4th of December so it is difficult to know if this December will be as drink fuelled as previous Decembers I've been involved in but I can say that so far I have woken up hungover on 50% of the mornings December has given us so far!

But what does heavy drinking have to with the birth of Jesus?

What a silly question! the answer is of course, 'Basically everything!'

Not long after Jesus was born Joseph and God went out to 'Wet the baby's head'. The two of them were getting on pretty famously by this point despite the fact God and Mary had had a cheeky one night stand 9 months before. 

The two of them got utterly shit faced and Mary was not best pleased. Looking after a baby in a stable is already a pretty tricky thing to do and the hoards of shepherds weren't really helping.

On the night out Joseph was showing everyone a selfie he'd taken of him, Mary and the baby, he'd just got instagram and was a bit filter happy and he'd taken one picture that, with the 'Autumn sunrise' filter almost looked professional. When he showed it to his mate Gary from the pub he was like 'JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH THAT'S A GOOD PICTURE' and the use of the phrase as an exclamation really stuck!

To make it up to Mary, the next night Joseph stayed in with Jesus and Mary hit the town with the girls she'd met in her NCT classes. They started at the Inn of the stable they were staying in and did shots. Mary doesn't remember every bar she went to after that but she knows she ended up in Bethlehem Tiger Tiger, she was gutted because she had to run to the toilet and be sick and missed 'Saturday Night'.

Already we are seeing that around the time of the first Christmas both Joseph and Mary got royally smashed. 

The most interesting alcohol connection to the first Christmas is the fact that the second wise man's gift of Frankincense was not, as people tend to believe, a common type of essential oil used in aromatherapy that can offer a variety of health benefits but in fact it is a brilliant Cocktail that Wise Man 2 had invented during his time working as a mixologist in a cocktail bar in Nazareth.

The drink contains one short of vanilla spiced rum, some melted brandy butter, 2 shots of brandy, the crust of a mince pie, some crushed mistletoe berries, some water that Jesus then turns into wine topped with whipped cream and Chocolate orange shavings. It is the single most disgusting cocktail known to man but it gets you absolutely trollied.

I dare you to try it, for best results use normal wine if you don't have the messiah present.

Happy December 4th... have a drink on me! I won't pay you back.

December 3rd (A.K.A. POP TARTS or the importance of answering questions)

With only 22 days to go I suppose the main question we’ve got to ask ourselves is this;

What is Christmas?

(You can tell I think this question is important because I have made it bigger and put it in bold!)

Some may argue that some more pertinent questions would be;

1.      Why are we here?

2.      Where is my life going?

3.      Why don’t people have pop tarts for breakfast every day?

"Oi, who ate half my pop tart!"

But those questions really aren’t as important, let’s be honest those questions can be answered as quickly as they were asked

1. Fun
2. Fun places
3. I actually don’t know the answer to this one. I mean, they’re so good! Certainly better than toast and how could anyone even begin to compare them to bran flakes… even sultana bran doesn’t come close. Pop tarts may be the greatest thing to happen to breakfast since sliced bread.

Before sliced bread we had to put the whole loaf in the toaster and then you’d just end up with burned edges but the middle would still be untoasted… plus you’d have a broken toaster!

Why did they bother inventing a toaster before they’d invented sliced bread! What a ridiculous way to have done things. Toasters are perfectly designed for sliced bread to go in them. It is almost as if I am chronologically misinformed on this point.

The result of googling 'Loaf of bread toaster' -Interestingly the best thing in today's blog

I think if I were to rate my top 3 breakfasts then pop tarts would be top followed by a fry-up, followed by a bacon sandwich with brown sauce obv! HP sauce to be specific… obv!

HP Sauce was, of course named after J.K. Rowling's most famous character 'Harry potter'. Which is odd because I reread the whole series recently and Harry literally NEVER mentions eating brown sauce. 

I once had a roast dinner for breakfast, or a ‘Roast Breakfast’ if you will. It was smashing, had all the trimmings, Gravy and everything. However it has generally been perceived as an affront to humanity so I haven’t repeated that action.

Although thinking about it, why should I bow to public opinion! If I want a roast breakfast then I can have one. You should try one before you get angry with me about it. Gravy… on breakfast! A Yorkshire pudding… with breakfast! A portion of Apple crumble for dessert… for breakfast! There are no downsides

Saying that, there is one minor problem with a roast breakfast and that is that you’re so full afterwards that you just want to go back to bed. So you go back to bed and fall asleep for 3 hours, when you wake up you’re already 2 hours late for work and by the time you get there its gone 12. You get fired for having no reasonable excuse, because the world frowns on roast breakfasts, and you immediately become homeless struggling to find sustenance. Luckily your last meal was a roast breakfast so that keeps you going for at least 18 months.

Why do we stop using months for ages at 18 months? I think we should continue. I for one am 303 months old and will turn 304 on the 22^nd of this month, perhaps we shall celebrate that fact in this blog. More likely though, we won’t.

My dad is coming up to his 683^rd monthday which poses a new question all together;

Why do I spend time working these things out when I could be outside seeing the world?

To which I would return you to answer 1 above.

Anyway. I got a little side-tracked there. I believe the most important question I was going to answer in this blog was this;

What is Christmas?

An exclamation, informal - 1. expressing surprise, dismay, or despair.

 Unfortunately that is all I’ve got time for today but tune in tomorrow for something equally unrelated.

Happy December 3^rd everyone.

Pro-tip – You should have decided what you’re going to buy for at least one person by now. 

December 2nd (A.K.A. Advent Calendars are for a month, not just for December 1st)

Ah the 2^nd of December. Not full of the heady excitement of December 1^st. remember December 1^st? (If you don’t you should worry… it was yesterday)

On the 1^st everyone is saying things like;

“So THIS is Christmas”

“I love Christmas”

“Christmas is the best”

“I am so excited for all the decorations and presents and food and goodwill!”

“I should write an Advent Calendar Blog!”

On the 2^nd the same people are saying things like;

“it is still 23 days until Christmas.”

“It’s three weeks AND two days until Christmas, including today there are still 16 work days, sure the last few days might be a bit fun but there are least 13.5 proper working days”

“I will probably wait until next weekend to put the decorations up”

“I can’t believe I’ve committed to writing 24 days of Blogs in a row… what an idiot!”

Now I know what you’re all thinking, “Nic, I thought you’re Advent Calendar Blog would be a little more uplifting than this.”

(Disclaimer: You may not be thinking that… you probably weren’t but I Plan on spending the rest of the blog trying to cheer you up so maybe imagine your miserable for a bit. I don’t care if isn’t sincere I can’t see you. Unless you read this whilst sat in front of me. For instance if you are my colleague Lawrence (Are you? More than likely you aren’t) who sits opposite me. Perhaps you will read this whilst at your desk and I will see you reading and at one point you will look really miserable but in an incredibly fake way and I will think “I don’t care that that expression isn’t sincere”)

So attempt at cheering you up in a festive way #1

"I promised myself i'd never do naked modelling!"

Sure, a animal in a Santa hat isn’t for everyone but what if I told you that today is the birthday of renowned Greek football player Kostas Stafylidis!

"Guys! GUYS! this ball is levitating!"

If that hasn’t cheered you up I don’t know what will. After all who hasn’t heard of Kostas Stafylidas and the way he is a Greek footballer who plays as a left back for Bundesliga side Augsburg and the Greece national team. Remember the time in 1993 when he was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. What about how he is 1.78 metres tall (5 foot 10 inches), Legend! I also can’t get enough of how he joined Fulham on a season-long loan from Bayer Leverkusen in 2014.

No? Truth be told I’d never heard of him either. I am ashamed to say that those facts about him were simply stolen from his Wikipedia page. You probably didn’t notice because of how subtly I put them into the last paragraph.

He doesn’t matter anyway. The real star of the 2^nd of December is up next.

Born on this day in 1978.

A Canadian songstress and producer who first rose to fame on the back of first album in 2002.

Yes…

The maneater herself…

Nelly ‘She’s like a bird, she’ll only fly away’ Furtado

"I don't know who the man behind me is... I hope he sets on fire"

Happy 38^th Birthday Nelly.

The only famous person born on this day who didn’t start their football career at the age of 6 by joining their village football team Aetos Akropotamou. (So subtle)

Interesting fact about Miss Furtado (Or Nelly to her friends), if you follow her, follow her, follow her down, down, down, down you can see all her dreams.

Anyway, I have written for long enough about nothing of any particular interest and as the birthday girl always says ‘All good things come to an end’. However, I shall finish with three more December 2^nd facts.

1.      On this day in 1958, Vladimir Parfenovich was born. A man unique in being both a Belarussian Canoe Racer AND Politician.

2.      Today marks the 616^th anniversary of opening of Leipzig University

3.      Not everything in this magical world is aw-aw-aw-all what it seems!

So with those facts and my awareness that this blog will make little to no sense to those who are not aware of Nelly Furtado’s greatest hits I wish you a Happy December 2^nd.

December 1st (A.K.A. I'm doing an Advent Calendar)

So THIS is Christmas…

And what have you done!

You will probably recognise these as the first two lines from John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Festive hit, ‘Merry Xmas (War Is Over)’. What a classic.

(Interesting fact about this song, at the beginning you hear John and Yoko whisper Merry Christmas to their children from previous marriages, Yoko Whispers ‘Merry Christmas Kyoko’ and John follows by whispering ‘Merry Christmas Julian’. Most people believe that they say Merry Christmas to each other… erroneously mishearing the words as ‘Merry Christmas Yoko’, Merry Christmas John’. Idiots)

When I read the lines ‘So this is Christmas, and what have you done’ I do not immediately think of John and Yoko’s festive hit. No, I always imagine an exacerbated mother awoken at 5:17 in the morning on Christmas day by sounds downstairs. Forgetting the date she immediately assumes its intruders so tries to wake her husband. He grunts and rolls over and immediately starts snoring, she is beginning to wish she had kissed Paul from accounts at the work ‘non-denominational mid-winter festive gathering’ the week before, of course she would have regretted it over time but she hasn’t had any excitement from Gary for a few years now and perhaps snogging another man would have led to more passion at home… or a divorce. Thinking about the ‘non-denominational mid-winter festive gathering’, or NDMWFG if you will, reminds her that this is no ordinary day.

It is Christmas day.

She wonders for a moment how she had let that slip her mind during her first 30 seconds of consciousness but solves this mystery immediately by looking at the clock and realising that at this point she has had less than 4 hours sleep. Of course her mother had insisted on her going to midnight mass the night before, “It is my first Christmas without your dad” her mother had stated with an enormous sense of self-pity, she did consider mentioning to her mother that her father had never actually attended midnight mass with her whilst he’d been alive but she found herself, as always, too tired to argue. So she had gone to midnight mass with her mother. When she had returned, Gary had not managed to get the boys to bed yet, opting instead to allow the 6 and 8 year olds to stay up watching Die Hard. After an hour spent putting Trey and Kyle to bed whilst shouting at the elder for screaming “yippie kay yay mother fucker’ at the top of his lungs repeatedly, she found herself finally going to bed at 1:23. So now, 3 hours and 54 minutes later she realises firstly that the noise downstairs is probably Trey and Kyle already up, and secondly that she has 12 members of assorted family, from both sides, arriving later in the day, she decides to make her way downstairs. As she opens the door to the living room she is already thinking about the fact she is about to spend a day cooking for 16, clearing up wrapping paper, putting together toys, untwiddling toys from their boxes, comforting crying children whose new toys have already broken, missing the ‘call the midwife’ special that she’d hoped to see and making idle chit-chat with her step-father-in-law who is, let’s face it, a bit racist. She will need to do all these things having had only 4 hours sleep the night before, after a long, exhausting December buying, wrapping and distributing presents for what seems to be an infinite amount of family and friends. Why does she even need to buy a present for her uni friend Barbara’s daughter Kim? She has only met her once and Kim was only 4 months old! She walks into the living room to see Trey amongst a sea of already unwrapped presents, chocolate all round his face, disappointedly looking at two Transform-a-kill trains he’d insisted he’d wanted in November but that he ‘doesn’t really care for’ as of the 23^rd of December. It is at this point she frustradedly says to herself “So THIS is Christmas”, she then turns to see Kyle emerge from a smoke filled kitchen covered in, what she hopes is, cranberry sauce and she screams “AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!”

I imagine many of you think the same.

When I awoke this morning, on the 1^st of December I thought “So this IS Christmas!”

It’s not though is it? If we are being technical it is only Christmas on the 25^th of December. But Christmas does seem, as an epoch, to last much longer. For instance I put a Christmas tree up on the 25^th of November and you can scoff at that if you like if you are prone to scoffing.

SCOFF

But I simply do not care. My room looks nicer and any scoffing you do won’t have any more effect on me than the fact I have had to change the position of my laundry bin because of the Christmas tree. I am sure that after a while muscle memory can be changed and I will stop throwing pants at my Christmas tree at the end of each day.

So if this ISN’T technically Christmas? What is it?

I will tell you what it is. It is Advent.

And what better way to count down to the day on which we celebrate the birth of Jesus than by me writing things daily that are, in some way, tenuously related.

Let’s see if I make it!

Happy December 1^st