Festive stuff

[Nemesis]

So OK - as is now traditional at this time of year (well three years in a row anyhow):

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TD4g0gmQSLk


Just don't try this at home, folks.

 

[plumbers mate]

******g heck!
Thank goodness people round me have some thought for the planet and their electricity bills.
I can't believe that someone who is willing to show themselves up as such a pratt can include the CND sign/logo in the "display".
With house prices falling, their neighbours must really love them for sending the value of property even lower.

 

[Nemesis]

Oh go on - you know you'd love to do it really!

How about the Lit n Phil all done out like that?

:lol:

 

[Nemesis]

And here you go... pass the sick bag...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nLazKA9KTYk

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Make your house look like a radioactive pound shop, as someone said on Radio 4 today...

A Christmas Poem
At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle,
The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you're single.

Wendy Cope

 

[Gareth Hughes]

So OK - as is now traditional at this time of year (well three years in a row anyhow):

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TD4g0gmQSLk


Just don't try this at home, folks.

Less is ... never quite enough.
This one made my eyes (and ears) bleed:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wGRXiy2ODqw&feature=related

 

[Nemesis]

Oh, the wonderful Wendy Cope!

Yes Gareth - that one is em... well, dreadful really.

I did enter into the spirit of the season yesterday evening, went to see a panto. However, it was

LES MISERABLES le panto by the wonderful Oddsocks, cast of five, so really think it still counts as Bah! Humb*ggery?

http://www.oddsocks.co.uk/index.php?id=30

Will Cosette find succours?
Will Javert arrest the suckers?
Will Valjean finally succumb?

Adventure and tension, barricades and battles. Love, liturgy and laughs aplenty this Christmas as Oddsocks take on the French revolution and come out on top!

There was a mill in it...

(Just don't sit in the front row folks as we did, or you may find yourself taking part also...)

Oddsocks the Christmas movie:

http://www.oddsocks.co.uk/index.php?id=31

 

[Lime]

At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle,
The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you're single.

Yet the one saving grace
As you sit in your place
Is that you get to eat more turkey.
Merry Christmas Everybody.

 

[Nemesis]

I don't eat turkey.
Still, soon be January...

 

[Nemesis]

Actually though - this looks full of festive cheer:

 

[Gervase]

Six percent! Now that's what I call a winter warmer.

 

[Cloudscape]

Talking of sickbags, nothing quite beats this bizarre treat from George Lucas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYQVyVyeWho (most of the characters appear to be on drugs)

Happy Life Day! :shock:

Sorry, but I like the ridiculously over-lit houses. I'm all in favour of lots and lots of lights (not that I would ever do it, because I don't want hundreds of nail and screw holes in the front of my house!) The only house lights I don't like are the pre-wired Christmas reindeer, Santas, sleighs, snowmen and other shapes that people use everwhere. There's a few gardens round here where almost every tree and bush is lit up and they look very pretty.

Yes, I have no taste. 8)

Right opposite my house is a 9ft inflatable snowman, with a big silly smile. It's horrendous, but very funny. He'll be gone by January, so no permanent mental injury will be caused.

 

[Nemesis]

My one sop to Christmas this year was to be the fact it was the best ever holly berry year for our trees. The one at the side of the house was especially full, and it's huge (higher than the house now). No decorating required. Natural, eco-friendly...


Last week the birds ate every one of them.

So I think it will be that six percent ABV stuff and more Bahing, even if I am visited by shades with clanking chains, I won't be in any state to notice.

 

[Juju]

Yes the birds have eaten all my holly berries too! For the first time in my life (grand age of 44), I'm hosting Christmas. My Mum always hosted Christmas but sadly she passed away this year so the responsibility has passed to me and it is a lot to live up to - in terms of food and tasteful decorations! But there's something about having an old house with beams, etc that makes you reach for the more natural decorations like holly, foliage, misteltoe, candles, etc so hopefully the house will look good for all my visitors. Minimal lighting too - confined to LED lights on the real Christmas tree and candles obviously.

Now, I'm not religious at all but I did enjoy the carol service in a local pub last night (for Penners - an ex-Witney resident, it's The HollyBush on Corn Street which had a very successful makeover a year or so back). My partner thought I'd gone mad when I started romantically philosophising about the continuities with the past all sitting in a 17th century pub singing at Christmas etc and how you can forget materialism, etc. But then I remembered that much of Christmas is a Victorian invention and that maybe it would have been disrespectful in the past to sing carols in pubs? Were they confined to churches, etc? Oh well, back to wrapping up presents (in recycled fairly traded paper of course).

 

[Nemesis]

Shame you missed 'Lark Rise' on TV last night then - a wonderfully sentimental affair, but an overabundance of festive greenery everywhere! Very lovely, if possibly very unauthentic. Certainly inspirational though.

Carols - certainly aren't something which were always solemn things sung in church - far older in origian than that.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/carols.html

http://www.christmaswishes.org.uk/christmas-carol/history.html

http://www.history.uk.com/christmas/index.php?archive=10


'Sign' of the times - a village green near us is 'bedecked' with one of those mobile digital road signs, the sort which can be programmed to give warning messages. It flashes between giving season's greetings and a digital Christmas tree.

 

[Gervase]

There's a wonderful tradition of singing carols in pubs around South Yorkshire and Derbyshire - Sheffield in particular has a great singing tradition. It was once common across the UK - Hardy has some great descriptions of drunken carol singing - but much of it was stamped out by the Victorians. The carols are very different to your 'trad' standards sung in church, with much livelier tunes and cracking four-part harmonies.
I'm afraid I did try to watch Lark Rise, but gave up amid a tide of cloying tweeness; I felt as if I was being beaten to death by Mabel Lucy Atwell. Poor Flora Thompson must have been turning in her grave!

 

[Nemesis]

Ah - the answer is to watch after several glasses of something alcoholic, when you are at the maudlin stage...

The Watersons. Many a 'carol' on old recordings... and so many more in the folk tradition.

 

[Cloudscape]

Round here, they like a good plygain.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/faq/plygain

Families and individuals take turns to sing old, and even older, songs - usually unaccompanied, often with rich harmonies.

 

[plumbers mate]

I get an error message from that last link.

There was a joke once about black and white striped sheep and the noise they make but it eludes me at the moment.

No Nemesis, the Lit and Phil wouldn't step so low anyway we can't afford the electric bill as it is

 

[Nemesis]

The link worked for me, but not then the music links, sadly...


Electricity - rather ironic given the Lit and Phil history re lighting!