Christmas Lists

Bah Humbug... mmm, humbugs?

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is 29 days till Christmas. HA!

That joyful season of goodwill and generosity and over-indulgence. And really bad music.

Our advent calendar is up. It has sweeties in, carefully sorted so that each pocket contains either (a) one sweet that I like and one sweet that L likes, or (b) 2 éclairs. If you come round on an éclair day, you can have mine. It is however facing the wall, and will remain so till Monday. Our Christmas tree is still in the cupboard, but soon enough we'll dig it out and hang it up. This year we have a cheese plant to decorate.

I'm neither here nor there on the whole thing. It's like Christmas has become a million things all in one. I'm torn between "Yay, Jesus" and "Boo, plastic consumerism". I'm torn between "Yay, time off work to visit everyone" and "Boo, awkward conversations with distant relatives". Lebkuchen vs turkey sandwiches, stress vs fun, that kind of thing. I think in the end I come out as a Christmas person, but only just, and even then mostly for the lebkuchen.

Drool. I actually once turned down a job offer and a move to the other end of the country because of Lebkuchen. For real. Ask me about it some time.

Also an annual chance to buy stuff for the people you like and/or are related to. Fortunately, I really like giving presents. And I've never been minted, so you all get smallish things that I've bought in places like TKMaxx or charity shops. One year I did most of my Christmas shopping in one afternoon in September when I went in to TKMaxx and bought seven pairs of the same pyjamas. I didn't manage that this year. Besides, I'm still wearing those jammies (yes, I bought some for me too) so I guess they don't need replacing yet.

This year, I am worried about Stuff. Like the actual quantity and bulk of physical objects that come in to our possession in the month of December each year. When our houses don't get any bigger, and we don't get any better at tidying stuff up. It's not like someone gives me a gift and I go straight home and find something to throw away. I don't think anyone else does either. We just buy stuff, give it away; get given stuff and keep it. People buy us things they think we'll like, so there's a fair chance we will like those things and want to keep them. It's entirely reasonable but pretty much amounts to a net increase of physical objects in our homes. So I have an idea. And it goes like this...

Drumroll...

Tiny Christmas!

(Thank you)

Basic Premise = You all get gifts which are small enough to go in your pocket. I'm a genius.

If you are a person to whom (L corrected my grammar, so if this sentence is wrong, blame her) I give Christmas presents, you will be getting a voucher or a giftcard or a membership to something or a groupon or a subscription to something. Perhaps jewellery, but only if the box is really small. You know, something that comes in an envelope on a scrap of paper or one of those plastic pseudo-credit card things. The magical gift of not-quite money, because let's face it, you all have enough stuff. I may stretch as far as medium-sized things but only if they are consumable and not hideously over packaged.

Small, consumable, and packaged in recyclable stuff. In every possible way the only present you ever need buy me.

And everyone else can get drawings of stickmen.

They will be drawn on real paper, without lines on. I will take a bit more time than this to do them. Just get your request in soon.

So. Bring on the social awkwardness. If you are a person (like, you know, my pesky younger sibling) who would normally get stuff from me, now is the time to start saying things like, "Oh, if only I had an Amazon voucher right now, my life would be so much more fulfilling" or "I really like such-and-such magazine (keep it clean now), but I can't afford to buy it every month". Just slip it in to conversation some time soon. No need to be subtle. Actually please don't be subtle, I won't notice. Be blunt. Like really shockingly blunt. Please.

If you're thinking, "Oh dear this is awkward. I don't know if I'm one of those people or not" then well, I probably don't know either. It's just awkward. Sorry. Maybe be really subtle about your hints?

And if you would like a drawing of a stick person, please request one. You can have one. I'm nice and generous like that. Stick people for everyone! I've just refilled the ink in my good pen and I still have a half a notepad of decent quality paper, so we're good for quite a few of these little critters.

This is a thumbs up. No more questions.

And Little Bruv, if you're reading.

Or , y'know, Amazon vouchers. Nothing says "blood is thicker than water" quite like an amazon voucher.

Yikes, it's Tuesday

Evening All,

I have to go out in exactly four minutes, so this is going to be an interesting Tuesday Blog Time.

This week we went to the Edinburgh University Beginners' Dance. 18 of us! This involved many sleeping bags being lent out to many people who didn't use them in the end.

The dance itself involved most of our 18-strong gang being permanently bamboozled for 4 straight hours, yet going away with a sense of achievement and a lingering feeling that they might have had a good time. I went away knowing I'd had a good time, but with no voice left whatsoever, on account of trying to assist with the aforementioned sense of achievement.

This is what Scottish Dancing is about, it seems.

What Scottish Dancing also seems to be about, at least when it happens to me, it going to meetings on Tuesday nights. Where we will discuss such great and varied things as flights, mass catering and pirates.

Totally unrelated.

Please will you join me in wishing a happy 30000 miles to our own little Spoyk.

I am planning to be extravagant and drive him home for Christmas. 'Cos of freedom. 'Cos of some other things too, like my Mother's request that I absolutely vacate my room, and so that I don't have to decide exactly when I'm going to go south. It's mostly so I have the means of vacating the house full of highly-allergenic cats when I need to.

So... if you know anyone who would appreciate a lift southwards before Christmas and northwards after it, then the comments box is down there somewhere.

Over and out.

The Further Adventures of Squiggle the Tiny Squirrel

In which the tiny squirrel has many adventures. 

Skee-hee

Hello! This Tuesday I was 500 miles away eating KFC and cuddling a tiny baby, so Tuesday Blog Time rather passed me by.

But Fridays are when we all go home from work, make excuses for how we can't go out and sit in our houses on Facebook, right. So you could all use some happy pictures to pass your evening by?

Catch-up time then.

I hope you all remember Squiggle the Tiny Squirrel? If not, now is the time to become acquainted with the little chap. April this year seems to have been the month of the tiny Squirrel.

Last Thursday was the Aurora AGM, the result of which was that I still have the job of looking after our pennies and L now has the President's job and has to look after the whole caboodle, God help us all. Since then we have travelled many miles and had much fun with many people. It is, I think, a story that is best told through the medium of squirrel photos.

Less writin', more Tiny Squirrel. (Incidentally, one of my more successful life mantras)

Friday morning.

We get up far too early, to play taxi driver for L, who has a Real Job and gets to go to Conferences.

We went back to bed after though.

We go to work.

 We run out of coffee.

 We finally finish work and the adventure begins. Off to the Airport.

Departure Lounges make squirrel a little nervous, mostly because people keep giving him funny looks. Squirrels have adventures too, didn't you know? (is what he'd tell them, were his mouth not sewn shut)

Squirrel meets some friendly faces at the airport.

The Safety card makes Squirrel sad, as he is unable to assume the brace position. On the plus side, he doesn't need to remove his high heels and has no carry-on baggage to leave behind. He is, in many ways, the model passenger.

Saturday - Cambridge

In which there is shopping...

And markets...

And everyone rides a bicycle, and we approve.

There is food.

For a busy squirrel requires regular mealtimes. Or perhaps that's me.

Squiggle briefly considers a career in academia.

He's in there, honest.

 And this one's for my worky people. Also, that new coat I bought last week. It has served me well so far.

Saturday night - Party time!

Squirrel enjoys a good ceilidh, but in the way that you or I might enjoy sky-diving or swimming with sharks.

Happy Birthday and thanks for all the cake!

Sunday - Oxford 

(in the interests of academic parity)

Mostly this one pub in Oxford. Good sausages, excellent company.

Monday was mostly spent at BIG SPACE (soft play) with various children, who didn't get photographed on account of none of them being my children, and this being the internet. Squirrel was a bit scared that the children might eat him (not unlikely), and stayed tucked away in the pocket of my awesome new coat.

Tuesday - London

Now I am from The North, and most of my mental picture of London comes from the News and Charles Dickens novels. I was quite mentally prepared to be stuck in a traffic jam for three days while Victorian orphans raided my pockets and nobody spoke or made eye contact. I actually had a really good time.

I think one day I might like to go to London for a whole week, and each day just visit a different section of the Natural History Museum.

This is a Duckboat. We drove around London scaring tourists and then we just drove in to the Thames. Just like that. Nuts. We had the most awesome tourguide too. 

Not pictured with the squirrel are the mountain of Churros, or the Tube crushes we endured to visit the Tower of London poppy exhibit. But I did it, and I survived.

I have visited many Jones family members, and met many new people. I have done many exciting things, and just about learned to not say "bum" in front of the children. Exhausting work. Yesterday we made it home, on a rather bumpy flight, just in time to do some more dancing. Today has been reserved for recovery before we go running around the country again tomorrow.

Awww...

And I might just see you on Tuesday. Sorry if the sheer volume of images in here has crashed your computer. If it did, let's blame L's fancy camera and it's massive image sizes.


I leave you with one last picture, for those amongst us who had the pleasure of 2nd year Palaeontology with Prof Walkden. Crinoids!

I don't understand coats

In which I buy a coat, although still struggle to comprehend its exact purpose.

This is a picture of a bunny, because the evil book of face now uses your first image as a post thumbnail, whether you like it or not, and without this bunny, that would have been the truly awful photograph of a half-finished milkshake that is now (thanks to the bunny) second on the blog post. Bunny to the rescue! A good friend of mine once bought a bunny to assist with the process of buying a computer. A computer was purchased, and the internet connectivity is markedly better when the bunny is close by. Just sayin'. Yay for bunnies.

Tonight there are sausages for tea, or at least there will be soon. Smells all sausagey. There are no bunnies in the sausages. There's leek and mustard, and presumably pork. And roasted beetroot which I'm quite proud of. I am having a crisis of condiment choice, and may have to go for mayonnaise, ketchup AND chutney because I am incapable of narrowing down that particular short-list.

Decisiveness. That might be what tonight's epistle is about. It could happen.

You'd get 18 points for "decisive" in a game of scrabble. Plus the fairly likely using-all-your-tiles bonus. If I ever get the word "decisive" down in a game, I'll feel very proud of myself and endeavour to let you know.

I week ago I was being all smug and unbearable about how I had managed to do some exercise. That was Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore throat, but went to the swimming pool anyway. Where the bloody fire alarm went off, and I wound up standing around in the cold, in my swimsuit. So I spent Wednesday evening and most of Thursday in bed, being pathetic and leaking snot. Probably serves me right for something.

By Saturday I was a bit less dead, and having been declared "probably not contagious" by someone who is a Doctor, albeit a real one and therefore not of much medical use, I ventured out of the house. I live a busy and varied life. We built some Ikea furniture, and went in to town to wander the International Market and go for these awesome milkshakes.

Ok, I'm sorry the picture's crap. We got over-excited and drank/ate most of it before I even thought to get a picture. Instagram generation I may be, but I'm not very good at it. There was squirty cream and a whole biscuit on top, and it was amazing. Honest.

And I did all that wearing a huge brown Arran jumper that used to belong to L's Great Uncle. It's an amazing thing, but should probably be kept for wearing in the house and on camping trips. Because it's now November, and because my go-to hoodie is well, covered in chocolate stains, I was wearing this jumper in place of a coat.

The jumper, in it's natural rural environment. Where being big enough to keep me decent comes in handy.

So while this is a fairly awesome item of clothing, me wearing it pretty much all weekend (ok, and on Monday as well) is a sign that I haven't quite figured out coats just yet.

I just took a scroll (like a stroll, but less energetic) through my facebook pictures, and this thing is everywhere. Every other picture. I need to stop wearing this thing when I should actually be wearing a coat.

Frost, ice, big hat and mittens. Yet still no coat, only the jumper. It's knitted, kiddo - it's full of holes!

The problem here is deep and meaningful. Or at least I really hope it is, because I've always wanted to be deep and profound.

• I grew up in the North East of England, where coat-wearing is a bit of a cultural no-no, so I never quite figured out what sort of thing was appropriate for what sort of temperature, I just kept sneaking in extra hidden layers.
• I always wanted to be a Ninja. Ninjas don't wear coats. It's really hard to creep up on someone in a coat that swooshes when you walk. Waterproof trousers bug me even more for this exact reason. 
• I moved to Aberdeen and spent that first winter in a very cheap, poorly maintained, top floor flat on top of a hill. So that Christmas I fetched a coat that I had been bought for a winter trip to Germany. It's warm. Warm enough to not die in properly cold places. It came with me on a January trip to Finland, and I didn't get exposure and die. Where I'm trying to go here is that the coat I do have, whilst pretty darn good, is too warm for most of the time in the city, in Aberdeen. I wear it for a few minutes, then I wind up getting warm and sweaty or having to carry it. So I don't tend to bother with it until there's at least some snow on the ground. 
• Coats are expensive. Hoodies are less so. 
• I'm quite long, and not particularly wide. Coats don't understand me. All this "leaving room for a jumper" business never made sense. Why would I need to leave room for a jumper? It's a coat. Surely it's job is to keep me warm. All that happens is that there is extra space around the edges for the cold to come in through.
• What sort of coat do you even wear when it's too cold for a hoodie but not baltic enough for the full Arctic Expedition getup?
• My internal thermometer is crap.
• Really what I actually want is for fashion to include cloaks. To be able to walk down the street at 2 in the morning in a huge white (or other colour of your choice) cloak (which looks suspiciously curtain-y) and not turn heads. As a total aside, I once (aged about 15) drank so much vodka after a night of Scottish Country Dancing, that I only managed the walk home by concentrating on nothing other than following a man in a cloak. Cloak stories in the comments, if you feel the need to share.

Knitwear, fire and cloaks. That's actually how we should go about keeping warm. 

This story does end. The story ends with me going to TKMaxx after work, and trying on pretty much everything in the shop. Smart grown-up coats, ski jackets, strange things with furry hoods and too many toggles. Ladies' section, Men's section. Actually [Tangent alert] while I'm on the topic, small men - how do you find coats? I tried those things on and they're huge. I'm not tiny, and some of you are, but the smallest possible men's coats are freaking tents. If it's some sort of I'm-a-big-manly-man-and-I'm-so-manly-I-couldn't-possibly-be-tiny thing the men's outerwear industry is trying to do, tell them to stop it, please [End Tangent]. In the end I gave up, decisively resolved to just wear lots of jumpers and get cold till Spring comes round and I can stop worrying about it, and left. I might have bought a dress, but that doesn't count.

Then I went to Sainsbury's ('cos it's closest to my house and I quite like orange. I don't know if I'm posh enough to openly shop there) to buy food, and found a coat, and decisively decided to buy it. So the story ends in a really boring way with me giving in to the world, and buying a coat. But it's got toggles and big pockets for people to sneak sweeties into (cough, cough), so the world is probably a good place. Tomorrow I will wear it and go and watch fireworks without freezing off any of my extremities, which I should be thankful for. 

This weekend I will get on a plane on my own for possibly the first time. Possibly. I can't remember every flying without company, and I can't ask my friends if they ever remember not-flying with me, because that's not how logic works. Either way, I will be doing it with the sort of budget airline hand-luggage that will definitely not include this laptop, so whether or not you get a blog post next week will remain to be seen. I leave you with a picture of me being sick and pathetic, as a warning about the consequences of burning your toast if you work at a swimming pool. 

That would be moisturiser, by way of sticking my face back on again, after the constant nose-blowing had made it fall off.