Review of the Year - Gary recomends... a haiku

Gary, a regular visitor to The Barstool, has recommended one of my Haiku Bar haiku series - No. 99, on the zen of playing pool. As habitués of my 'drinking blog' will know, this is quite a frequent topic over there (most notably in this early post).

HBH 99

first posted on 26th September

The table, the balls,
The player, the cue are ONE:
Zen of the pool room.

Last night I had one of those moments. It didn't last very long, but for a couple of games last night in the Pool Bar I was suddenly really in the zone. I think I was inspired to dig deep to find my best game by the challenge of two young Chinese guys new to the place, who were just playing too darned well (and were being a bit too cocky about it). I'm not usually able to find that steeliness of focus you need to beat people who are really good (probably better than me) if they are friends of mine. I'd like to have a better record against Kung Fu Man and New Dad and The Chairman, but..... I just don't get really fired up about it.

Last night (well, the early hours of this morning, actually) felt good.

It helps that Luke has finally bought some new cues for the place as well..... (I take this as a reassuring sign that he has no thoughts of selling up just yet!) We had been down to only three: one good one, one bad one, and one with a loose weight in it. Most unsatisfactory. Two or three new sticks now: a bit light, but with decent tips, and ramrod straight. Much more satisfactory.

Review of the Year - Elizabeth recommends....

We kick off my seasonal retrospective with this suggestion from my newest fan, Elizabeth. She claims to have now read my entire year's output on Froogville! I hope she's pulling my leg. A lady should have better uses for her time. And I'd feel somewhat intimidated by the idea that someone else might have come to know my quirks and foibles better than I do myself! I suspect in fact she's only made it half way through January.

Anyway, her pick is rather appropriate for the holiday season, since it discusses the etiquette of eating here in China.

If you have been reading here for a while, and would like to nominate a favourite post for republishing - please feel free to do so.

And please contribute a review (good, bad, or mixed) here.

Chinese people LOVE me! (13)

first posted on 5th January

"Chinese people love me because...... I always remember to leave some food on the plate."

This goes very much against my natural inclinations. My parents grew up during the days of austerity in the Second World War and were thus pretty fanatical during my upbringing about not wasting food; and, while I don't like to be too fanatical about anything, that's always seemed like a pretty sensible policy to me. But here in the Orient, there is a powerful cultural belief that finishing all the food implies that you are still hungry and that therefore your hosts have not served you well enough; to prove that you couldn't eat another thing, you must always leave some food on the dishes.

When dining alone or with foreign friends, we're not too likely to bother about this, just for the sake of sparing the restaurant owner's feelings (although it's pretty hard to under-order in a Chinese restaurant!); but when out with Chinese friends, especially when they're paying (having dinner at people's homes just never seems to happen in Beijing; it's such a restaurant culture here), it is vital good manners to leave food unfinished to show your appreciation.

This curious custom is probably well-known, even to many people who haven't worked or travelled here; but I think it's always worth trying to maintain a high level of self-awareness about things like this. If we allow them to become too internalised, too reflexive, there is a danger we may start using them inappropriately; perhaps too there is a danger that they may start displacing the 'cultural reflexes' of our native culture - and, however long I stay here, I don't want to become Sinicized, thank you very much.

Lately I have been brooding on what I might do with regard to this eating convention if there were an unfamiliar collision between the private and the public spheres - if, for instance, I started dating a Chinese girl (or got a Chinese flatmate). If we were eating on our own together, whether at home or in a restaurant (but especially at home, of course, and especially if they'd done the cooking), would I be feeling all awkward and uncertain about how much of the food I should eat?? "Er, it is OK if I have this last dumpling, is it? You're sure you don't mind?"

Another Christmas treat

The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show was the centrepiece of the festive season during my 1970s childhood. There is one clip in particular I've been looking for - a very simple little gag from, I think, the opening of one of the Christmas specials. Eric and Ernie are decked out in white tie and tails, and standing very sombrely each behind a pair of kettle drums. Music begins to play and Ernie pounds out a vigorous flourish on his drums. Eric's turn comes to repeat the figure with even greater gusto..... and we discover that his drums are in fact open vats of milk, so that when he beats on their surface he gets completely soaked. One of the most gloriously silly visual jokes I have seen - it still brings a warm glow to the heart 30 years later.

But I couldn't find that, alas. So, here instead is the classic 'André Preview' skit. Possibly the best punchline ever??

Advent silliness (4)

I found it very hard to choose between this

and this

so I offer you them both. The Leprechaun Nativity and The Luau Nativity were very close runners-up! From the Calvacade of Bad Nativities, kindly recommended to me earlier this year by JES.

A Christmas Card

Happy holidays to everyone!

(For me, it's Saturnalia....)

A (not quite) final reminder...

My planned End-of-Year Review will run through the 12 Days of Christmas, from December 25th to January 5th: one or two posts each day reprinted from the past year's output on Froogville and Barstool Blues, as recommended by my readers.

If you would like to add a request, it's not too late (but it will be soon, so pull your finger out!): just leave me a comment here, telling me the name and date of a favourite post, and why you liked it.

I think I probably have now goaded responses out of nearly all of my commenters. But who knows? Maybe I can still flush a few 'lurkers' out of the shadows.....

The best of bah-humbuggery

Nobody does it better than Tom Lehrer. Here's his infamous 'Christmas Carol'. No video, I'm afraid - but this does display the lyrics, if you need to brush up your Lehrer.

And just to show that Mr Lehrer and I are equal-opportunity offence-givers, here's his 'Hannukah in Santa Monica'.

All I want for Christmas (3)

All right, if no-one is going to give me MONEY for Christmas, how about some music? I am rather short of seasonal CDs out here.

List of the Day has recently provided a superb two-part rundown of the most improbable Christmas albums of all time, here and here.

I was particularly intrigued by, particularly sceptical about

and

but, amazingly enough, these do both appear to be genuine. I hope these fine performers were approaching the project with a sense of zestful irony (and self-mockery).... and that they hadn't just fallen upon desperately hard times.

However, I think the most fascinating title on the entire list has to be this:

A collaboration with John Cage, perhaps? I really need to find out what this album is all about. Please bring me this, Santa. Please.

Christmas shopping blues

I have wasted every spare moment of the past 5 or 6 days shopping for various bits and pieces that I felt were necessary to a proper Christmas.

Things like sticky tape, for example. Imported brands never seem to be available here. Locally-made ones very seldom are (you'd think they'd be a regular item in any place selling office stationery, but NO); and, of course, they just don't stick. If any of my friends feels like sending me a seasonal package of goodies this time next year, one or two big rolls of Sellotape would be top of my request list.

However, the main object of my quest these last few days has been parsnips - my favourite winter vegetable. I'm fairly sure I have seen them here in the past: certainly in foreign chain supermarkets like Walmart and Carrefour (although here in Beijing, these are mainly targeted at the local Chinese market, and so don't carry very much in the way of exotic overseas foodstuffs), and even occasionally in Chinese stores and street markets. Or so I thought. Anyway, I've been to every darn place I can think of this year, and not a sign of them - not even in the covered market on Shunyuan Lu, a place where many of the city's foreign restaurants buy their produce: if they haven't got them, I figure no-one has. Alas.

To help in my quest, an English friend who speaks rather good Chinese sent me a text message with the name of the vegetable in Chinese characters and pinyin; at least, she said, this was what two separate dictionaries had told her was supposedly the name: 欧州放风 (ou zhou fang feng). I haven't been able to verify this from the online dictionary I usually use. [Brendan, can you offer any help??] None of the Chinese people I showed this to evinced any sign of recognition at all, not even a couple who are in the bar/restaurant business; though quite a few of them laughed.

The problem is that these characters correspond to something like European Union break wind (thing). Well, that final feng, apparently, can mean 'rumour' or 'news' as well as wind, and I am unable to determine whether it is also used of intestinal gas; so, maybe it has to do with breaking news? But how does that make any sense as the name for a vegetable? However, as I am now developing some alertness to the Chinese sense of humour, it seems entirely plausible to me that they would name an unfamiliar foodstuff something like "Makes foreigners fart". I'm stumped, though, as to why they would do that to the dear old parsnip: in my experience, it is one of the least flatus-inducing foods.

Anyway, it looks as though - despite the semi-coordinated efforts of four people scouring the city and comparing notes via text message - we face a parsnipless Christmas tomorrow. Swedeless and turnipless, too (and again, these are vegetables that I have seen here in past years; the ubiquitous luobu - the Chinese 'white radish' - wouldn't quite work as a substitute, I don't think). Brussels sprouts were also looking a lost cause, until I finally turned up some in the Sanlitun Jenny Lou's yesterday afternoon (having already come up blank in two other branches of this foreigner-oriented Chinese supermarket chain!). Now, if ever there were a vegetable that deserved to be dubbed European fart-inducer, sprouts would be it! I suspect, though, that the Chinese for this is just 'very small cabbage' - it's a very literal-minded language, most of the time.

Anyway, a Happy Christmas to all of my readers! I hope you have parsnips, if parsnips are a thing you like.

Advent silliness (3)

All I Want For Christmas (2)

OK, yesterday's suggestion was silly: what would I do with Viagra??

No, I'm a simple man. A nice big stack of money is what I'd really like for Christmas. And I have been very NICE this year, Santa, really.

Though, in current times, I suppose dollars are not really the thing. Could you make it krugerrands, Santa? Pretty please.

Signs & portents (The End of Days?)

People sometimes ask me, "So, how is the global meltdown affecting China?"

Well, it's difficult to say.

One of the first things I notice is that people seem to favour the 'tsunami' metaphor rather than 'meltdown'. Does that have any wider currency, or is it just a regional linguistic preference? A couple of the Chinese "academics" I edit for have used it already, and I noticed Hong Kong supremo Donald Tsang say it on TV the other day. I suppose, as a metaphor it has the advantage of suggesting transience - whereas a 'meltdown' can just go on and on (hmmm, perhaps not a good time to mention 'the China syndrome'?!), and even when it's over leaves an irremediable mess.

Then, the air has been uncannily clear over the past few months. I mean, even cleaner than it was during the Olympics. It started getting all crappy again pretty much the instant the Paralympics was done, but then it suddenly brightened up again at the beginning of October and we've been almost entirely smog-free ever since (we've had just a few bad days, but I'm sure it's been almost entirely domestic coal-burning and the occasional blitz of ancestor-worship bonfires, not industrial haze). Admittedly, the weather is usually pretty good through much of the autumn and early winter: it's an especially windy season, which helps; also, the government's statistics-wranglers are usually working desperately to hit their promised quota of 'blue sky days' for the year, and so ordering sporadic factory shutdowns to achieve that. However, we do also get a lot of really shitty air quality days through October to December every year, and this year there have been NONE. Chinese friends will insist that factory closures have thus far been limited to a few highly-publicised incidents in Guangdong, but..... I really think there isn't much manufacturing industry going on in the entire country at the moment.

There is a lot of forced jollity in the media about how pro-active the government is being in trying to stimulate the domestic economy (to bail out the rest of the world - thank you, China!). However, China Daily last week also mentioned a survey which suggested that the typical response of Chinese citizens - 3 out of every 4 respondents! - to the economic crisis was to "save more" (and, given the continuing crapness of China's banks - much improved since I've been here, but still pretty terrible - much of that saving is going to be, like my own, under the mattress). China is seeking to maintain its nominal GDP growth - and restrict unemployment - by pouring money into state-funded infrastructure projects. Stimulating domestic consumer-spending is a bit of a pipe-dream, I fear. And when you've become used to a decade or more of continuous double-digit growth, 7.5% counts as a recession.

The roads are oddly deserted. Really, the traffic is much better now than it was during the Olympics. OK, there has been a new restriction brought in to cut down car use (registration plates with a certain last digit are banned from operating on a particular day: I'm not sure if that works out to a 1-in-10 or a 1-in-5 reduction - though it seems to me like a pretty difficult system to publicise or enforce effectively); but during the Olympics, there were similar measures intended to cut down car use by half, and, in addition, most government-owned vehicles (nearly half of the total on the roads in the capital!) were pulled out of service, and a huge number of people quit town for a fortnight to avoid the whole circus. I would say that the number of cars on the roads now is significantly lower than it was during the Olympics, and down by maybe as much as 50% on what it was 6 months ago. Yes, maybe some people just learned to do without their cars during the period of Olympic restrictions - but I rather think that at least some of this lull on the roads is the result of reduced business activity (or of belt-tightening, loss of economic confidence, converting that second-car-for-the-Mrs into something-more-portable-like-gold). I am thus far something of a lone conspiracy theorist in making this observation, but I'm confident that in time more and more people will realise the truth of this. When the cars disappear from the roads in these sorts of numbers, it's a sign of something pretty dramatic - and not good.

Oh yes, and this may not be so much of a 'meltdown' thing as a 'China's economic miracle is built on straw' thing, but..... a couple of weeks ago I learned that almost all of China's domestic airlines have been losing money hand over fist for the past year or more. This being China, their response has been to start omitting to pay their landing fees to the airports. Since the state has to prop up this industry (and is probably still the major investor even in nominally privatised airlines), we can be sure that there will be some kind of surreptitious bail-out. But we had reached the awkward, ugly, risible stage of having the chairman of the Airports Association going on TV to threaten the airlines with being refused landing rights if they didn't make good on their arrears. What larks.

Ah, and then I mentioned the other week the curious phenomenon of how massive road and sidewalk mending operations around the city of Beijing appeared to have been abandoned half-finished for two months. Something odd going on with that too......

My basic Jeremiah message (or perhaps Cassandra?) for you is this: if you're waiting for China to dig the rest of the world out of a hole, think again. China is built over a hole of its own, and this global crisis might just cause it to topple in. Interesting times.....

Christmas is CANCELLED!

Well, the original 'plan' is, anyway.

You see, one of my pool-playing buddies has this friend who has a Chinese wife who manages a European restaurant..... that isn't opening on Christmas Day. So, the suggestion had been made that we, a select group of friends, could take the place over for the day, and try our hands at knocking together a Christmas lunch in a professional kitchen.

Yes, I fear it was always 'a bridge too far'. The number of invitees began to snowball (and to include more Chinese guests, thereby increasing the pressure to provide a mixture of Western and Chinese dishes; we'd already been committed to trying to do two roasts, since the Welsh, apparently, favour lamb over turkey as their traditional Christmas meat - now it seemed as though we might have to add Beijing Duck to the menu as well!). And we'd had no time to get together for a planning meeting - to discuss how we were going to divvy up the shopping and cooking (and cleaning up afterwards!) duties for such a large party.

It was small wonder that the project rapidly unravelled at the end of last week.

However, despite the rather high potential for chaos and acrimony in the kitchen, I had rather been looking forward to it. After all, what is Christmas without a little chaos and acrimony?! I had been nervous about the prospect of trying to use professional cooking facilities (and in a kitchen/restaurant I'd never seen before) - without trashing them - but I was also strangely excited by the challenge.

I think we must try to resurrect this idea next year - keeping tighter control on the numbers, and allowing ourselves a bit more preparation time to address the logistics.

I had briefly worried that I would now be left friendless and foodless on the big day (90% of my friends have left town this year; and it's almost certainly now too late to book anywhere for a meal out.....); but instead I find myself helping my friend DD to cook dinner round at her place. An altogether more manageable sort of party, but still..... 7 adults and 2 young children: far from straightforward!

All I want for Christmas (1)

From those fine people who brought you the Tampon Menorah.....

Mother, Governor, future President... and cake-maker!

OK, after this, I promise - NO MORE Sarah Palin jokes.

Bon mot for the week

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

More festive frivolity

In my researches the other week into the YouTube archive of Adam & Joe skits, I found one particularly good one that did cater for an embedded link. This is one of their soft toy sketches - but not, for once, a complete film parody but a profile/interview/plug with Guy Ritchie talking about Snatch, hosted by Tom Terrapin (an affectionate piss-take of Tom Paulin, a wonderfully lugubrious Irish academic and poet who has established a bit of a niche for himself as a presenter on BBC arts review programmes).

A change of diet

The notorious "man-eating sofa" has now taken to eating mobile phones as well.

That's twice in two days!

You'd think I'd get wise....

Film list - COLD!!

I had thought of trying to come up with a Christmas list, but..... in that category, I fear, the choices are severely limited and all a bit obvious. In fact, I start getting stumped after the thoroughly charming old 'Do you believe in Santa?' classic Miracle On 34th Street (I'm thinking of the black & white original, of course; I've never seen the later remake). I'm not a big fan of A Christmas Carol (Dickens at his most gloopily over-sentimental!), although the blackly funny Bill Murray update of the story, Scrooged, is one of the few modern Christmas films that I enjoy. I haven't managed to warm to It's A Wonderful Life, either. In fact, it's probably my least favourite Frank Capra film: mawkish and far too long. I know it's become a Christmas staple for Americans, repeated on TV every year and reverentially watched by entire families; but we Brits don't have that sentimental history with the film. To my knowledge, it has only ever been shown on British TV once (at least, up until the late '80s or early '90s, which was the one and only time I got to see it).

So, discarding a Christmas theme (and prompted by the weather, which has just turned brass monkeys here in Beijing again!), I thought I'd instead offer a list of the coldest films I know.

The best COLD films ever made

Nanook of the North
(Dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)

The Gold Rush
(Dir. Charles Chaplin, 1925)

Scott of the Antarctic
(Dir. Charles Frend, 1948)

The Savage Innocents
(Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1960)

[Anthony Quinn as an Inuit is a bit cheesy, but it's a well-made quasi-documentary about life in north Alaska.]

The Red Tent
(Dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1969)

[This all-star international co-production is, I fear, largely forgotten now, but it is one of the most gripping Arctic survival films I have seen. It tells the true story of the Italian general Umberto Nobile's (Peter Finch) doomed attempt in 1928 to become the first man to fly an airship to the North Pole. Overcome by bad weather, the airship crashed on the ice-cap. Eventually, Nobile and some of his crew were rescued, but many others perished, including some of those who tried to mount rescue missions; the famed polar explorer Roald Amundsen (Sean Connery) disappeared without trace while trying to reach Nobile.]

McCabe & Mrs Miller
(Dir. Robert Altman, 1971)

[Surely the coldest of all Westerns?]

Jeremiah Johnson
(Dir. Sydney Pollack, 1972)

[This very nearly made it into my 'favourite Westerns' list last month; but I suppose I think of it more as a wilderness survival tale than a classic Western.]

Dersu Uzala
(Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1975)

[Probably the best film in this selection, and also perhaps the coldest; shot partly on location in Siberia.]

The Thing
(Dir. John Carpenter, 1982)

["Man is the warmest place to hide!" said the posters. Carpenter's canny blend of Alien and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is one of the best horror films ever made. The Antarctic location creates an overwhelming atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia.]

Pathfinder
(Dir. Nils Gaup, 1987)

[An old Lapp legend vividly brought to life, this is a compellingly simple little film. Though there are others on this list that might make you feel more of a chill in your bones, this is almost certainly the film that was actually the coldest to make. I think it is the only film to have been shot entirely on location within the Arctic Circle; and I gather it was quite a problem to stop the film-stock freezing in the camera! IMDB tells me there was a Hollywood remake of it last year - I am curious, but also filled with trepidation. You shouldn't mess with a classic.]

Fargo
(Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 1995)

A Simple Plan
(Dir. Sam Raimi, 1998)

[I actually rather prefer this to Fargo. One of the best - and bleakest - thrillers of the last few decades.]

Shackleton
(Dir. Charles Sturridge, 2002)

[A two-part TV movie made for the UK's Channel 4, this is rather too long for a regular feature film, and rather more modest in its production values than we might hope for in a cinema film. Nevertheless, it's a thrilling re-enactment of what is surely the most awe-inspiring of all tales of survival in the Antarctic.]

Touching The Void
(Dir. Kevin Macdonald, 2003)

[One of the best dramatised documentaries ever made, a heart-breakingly intense re-telling of the ordeal of a pair of British climbers tackling a remote Andean peak in the 1980s. There is one point at which the main protagonist, Joe Simpson, knows that his life depends on his ability to thread one loop of rope through another. It should be a simple enough task, especially for such an experienced climber; but there's 20 degrees of windchill and his hands have stiffened into clumsy claws. Watching him try and fail again and again to thread that rope-loop is just agonizing for the viewer - your identification with the predicament is total.]

Eight Below
(Dir. Frank Marshall, 2006)

[Yes, I know, I had low expectations of this when I first heard of it, expected it to be very twee and Disney; but, in fact, this story of a team of sled-dogs on an Antarctic research station who are abandoned to fend for themselves when the winter storms arrive early one year is utterly absorbing - and unquestionably very, very cold.]

Brrrrrrrr.........

Yet again, I despair of the Chinese education biz

Yesterday, I was approached by a friend of a friend about the possibility of doing some writing/polishing work - for an educational consultancy that "facilitates" applications for graduate study in US universities.

I've done quite a bit of this sort of work in the past, but I do regard it as something of an ethical minefield, and always proceed very warily to try to keep within what I feel to be an acceptable level of 'application enhancement'. I'm quite happy to advise people on what kind of thing they should write for the personal statements, essays, etc. (though people are never happy with just that!). I don't mind giving detailed feedback, suggesting changes, rearrangements, and extra material (or different emphases) that might be useful. I'll even agree to 'polishing' the English, including a fair amount of re-writing - just so long as the substantive content has all been provided by the candidates themselves, and we're trying to preserve the general character of their original English (not vainly trying to make it 'perfect'). You can readily imagine what a muddy area this is, how difficult it can be to keep that line of moral rectitude clearly defined in your mind.

And, of course, what Chinese would-be graduate students invariably want is for someone to just write the whole bloody thing for them.

And that's what this agency was asking me for. I said NO, of course; tersely and emphatically.

Well, at least they had the decency to be a little shamefaced about it (or perhaps just tactically dishonest?): they claimed that the essays they wanted me to write would not actually be submitted with any applications, but would simply be used by their clients as 'models' to guide them.

Yeah, right. Plagiarism is a particularly big problem in China: there seems to be little understanding of the concept; and it fits all too snugly into the wider culture of pervasive cheating in academe, where anything that works is accepted as OK (hmm, yes, in fact, that is the culture of the whole country, in everything - Deng and his cats, again). If I write 'model answers' for these guys, the very best that can happen is that they will follow the template slavishly, quoting long sections verbatim, and only occasionally adding crude - and not always very appropriate - examples or explanations of their own. The worst that can happen - and IT WOULD, for a certainty - is that some of them will submit one of my 'models' as their own work, with few if any changes made to it. (And, probably, without even making any attempt to remember, understand, or research what I'd written about. I was briefly quite amused to contemplate some of these guys being challenged at interview to explain their choice of 'favourite character in literature', and having to reveal that they had absolutely no idea who Holden Caulfield was, or why they had chosen to call him "a whiny, self-dramatising little charlatan". I soon restrained these ungenerous impulses. Schadenfreude, alas, is not an adequate motive for compromising one's ethical principles.)

Guys (and gals), please try to get this through your heads:

The point of these writing tasks is a) to provide evidence of your level of written English, and b) to demonstrate your individuality.

You can't possibly demonstrate your individuality by following someone else's template or 'model answer' - even if you do customize it appropriately with details from your own experience and opinions. It is utterly fatuous - completely bloody pointless - to attempt to utilize anyone else's writing when completing your university applications. And, really, if you aren't able to attempt this kind of writing task in English unaided, then you aren't fit to undertake graduate study overseas.

Oh, yes, and if I help you to look smarter or more competent in English than you actually are, then I am colluding in your cheating - and, maybe, am helping you to win a place at university that you don't deserve (and probably won't profit from), and thereby denying that place to someone else who'd make better use of it than you. I'm not prepared to do that.

[I only compromise my principles on this issue ever so slightly, to the extent of doing some prompting and 'polishing' for grad school applicants, because I figure that universities expect that everyone is getting some help of this kind, and therefore make allowances for it.

I realise I am a freakish anomaly in taking this moral stance. There is a thriving industry here in China for 'ghostwriting' university applications. And, I fear, most of the universities must be quite well aware of this, but just don't give a damn - because they don't care whether the majority of their overseas students will actually be any good, they just care about collecting their fees.]

This week's studio highlight

We've had another run of recording scripts this week where - contrary to usual practice - we're not allowed to correct anything.

This meant that I had to keep a straight face while discussing the American mega-chain, Wart-mark.

(By the way, one of the local Chinese supermarket chains blatantly apes the famous trade name by calling itself Wu-Mart. In these times of improving IPR enforcement in China [no, don't laugh], I wonder how long they'll be able to keep getting away with that.)

Haiku for the week

The holidays drag,
A season of emptiness;
Far from our loved ones.

I do, as a rule, rather like Christmas. But this year, I'm missing my family and friends back home more than usual; and most of my friends here have fled the country.... It's likely to be a drab and uneventful next couple of weeks, I fear.

More Advent silliness

Why, why, in the name of god, WHY? What do the Madame Tussaud's people think they're up to?? Is this somehow sly humour, or is it just sheer unadulterated madness? I fear, the latter. (The middle magus is Prince Phillip - an even more unfathomable choice than Blair and Bush!!)

The 12 Days of Christmas - a year-end review?

I've conceived a plan to try to give myself a break from daily blogging over the upcoming holiday by re-printing a selection of the best posts from the last 12 months.

I have endeavoured to contact all of my 'regular' readers (and/or anyone who's ever left a favourable comment!) to ask them if they can nominate one post they remember as a personal favourite - from either or both of my blogs. I already have a number of replies, and a few more promises "to get around to it".

However, I thought I'd make a more public announcement - just in case there's anyone I missed; or in case there are some lurkers I don't yet know about out there who'd like to join in.

Just leave me a comment here with the name and date of a post you like (and perhaps just a line or two about why, if you can be bothered).

I'm intending to run this series of re-posts as a sort of End of Year Review from 25th December to 5th January - so you still have plenty of time. I'll put a notice up over on The Barstool as well. Please join in.

'Advent' silliness

Not that I have any truck with the religious aspect of Christmas, you understand.... but I do get rather sentimental about the children's tradition of counting down the last few weeks or days before the big day with a special Advent Calendar. For a '70s child like me, Blue Peter is always the key reference for this. This classic BBC children's magazine show (50 years old this year!) went out on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and on each of the last 4 shows before Christmas they'd light one more candle on their four-pronged 'advent crown' (Note: this link blocked in China!!) - a hanging decoration precariously constructed from coat-hangers and tinsel, which always seemed likely to be an atrocious fire risk (see below).

Now, I'm probably already too late to keep pace with them, since Christmas Day is falling on a Thursday this year, but.... I have a series of 3 or 4 amusing Christmas pictures to share with you over the coming two weeks. Ho, ho, ho!

First up is this. My discovery of 'tampon art' the other week - via the reliably diverting List of the Day website - led me to investigate the artform's home website, Tampon Crafts (slogan: For any time of the month...), where they have such jaw-dropping wonders as..... this Christmas Tree. (They're very multicultural: they also have a menorah - check it out.)