Bah Humbug - It's December again! 5 days to go!

Tuesday 20th December, which can mean only one thing. It's that silly 5-4-3-2-1 countdown thing.

Oh, whoops, no it isn't, that's what they do at New Year, when no one is really quite sure what time it is actually. The only way is to turn on the TV, but then again, if you have a delay on your TV which tends to happen with HD TV, you will probably be late for the New Year. One advantage of not knowing what time it really is, means that if your camera doesn't work properly at the allotted time, you can always manufacture a replay and no one will be any the wiser. Believe me, we have done that ...

Five.

And so begins the mad dash.

But I only have two reindeer.

Why does Santa have reindeer? I mean, they don't have wings, unless there is some hidden drone-like engine in there and the antlers are the antennae?

Reindeer are found in the Arctic and can grow to be fairly large - 4 feet tall or well over a metre. They can weigh around 250lbs, or 113kg. They're pretty strong, being able to pull up to twice their weight. 

Well, that sort of makes sense, Santa is rather rotund. 

Santa was first mentioned as flying over the rooftops in 1812 by Washington Irving, but he didn't have any reindeer. And then an anonymous story appeared in New York in 1821, and there were the reindeer.

The one we really have to thank is Clement C Moore and his poem, The Night Before Christmas. All of a sudden, there were 8 reindeer! Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. 

So, where was Rudolph all this while?

Probably not born, until Gene Autry recorded that rather annoying song, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or was it Montgomery Ward's department store in Chicago that gave birth to Rudolph?

Well, I only have two, and they've both got dodgy legs, but I do have some wild-looking glasses.

Bah flipping Humbug.

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 10 days to go!

Thursday 15th December. And a quick dash to the bookshop.

Why was it so busy?

Ah, yes, I went on the first day of 20% off for members and 10% off for non-members. A ruse to charge more during the year, and then charge a more reasonable price for books leading up to the season when most people purchase books that will sit on shelves and never be read.

Off I dashed. Rather like Santa's reindeer - only, I was dashing through the carpark trying to find a parking space.

Too many people out today. It took me 15 minutes to find a space.

And then I was dashing up the escalators, trying to dodge the people who refuse to stand on the correct side.

Finally, I found myself dashing around the bookstore. It's sort of a circular bookstore, laid out around a central set of escalators, so the dashing was definitely circular. It brought to mind a corporate ski holiday in Park City, Utah, many moons ago. The company I was visiting arranged a reindeer sleigh ride, complete with sleigh bells.

It was dark. The reindeer walked us around in a figure of eight - two circles. It seemed like we'd covered a lot of ground. Perhaps we had, but we hadn't gone very far.

So, there I was, in the middle of a bookstore in Singapore - Kinokinuya - dashing around, trying to find where they'd moved all the sections.

Why on earth do stores move things around?

It can only be to tourture customers, or make you find things you suddenly think you need, but didn't need when you first walked in.

Bah flipping Humbug, it's a good job my overspend was on books ...

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 19 days to go!

Tuesday 6th December. And, I still haven't written a single Christmas card.

I think I must have felt extremely grumpy this morning. I lined up Are You Grumpy Santa? to read with my primary student in the afternoon.

She was not overly impressed.

She had not chosen this book last week. But then again, I believe I omitted to give her the option.

So, she was not overly impressed, until she opened the book and saw Santa fall out of bed, have a cold shower, the elves shrink his best Santa suit in the dryer - so he had to wear the itchy woolly one, and then his reindeer got snowed under.

The mood changed.

Amazing how the excitement and magic of Christmas permeate young children and infects adults. I think I had forgotten, what with my Austerity- and Alt-Christmas trees, and two teenage boys.


Nevertheless, I could not quite get the image of an itchy, woollen Santa suit out of my head for the rest of the day, and became sympathetically Bah flipping Humbug itchy myself.

Think I need some more exercise.

Bah Humbug - It's December again! 23 days to go!

Stupid robotic lights

The tree was delivered in a thunderstorm. I wonder if that has some ominous Odin-like portent?

Ah, well, if it does, then we'll either get hammered this Christmas, or it will be a Loki affair - (oh my goodness, what puns and for this time of the morning!).

Instead of filling the house with the arresting aroma (not the alliteration there - just for my students), a dank rankness of rotting wood (oh such onomatopoeia and I can still feel the dampness in my nostrils), wafted through the house. 

"What's that dead wood smell, Mum?"

Sigh, this was not what I was hoping for. I wanted to conjure up a scent from my childhood, and not one that was normally found in an overfilled nappy.

I couldn't put on the aircon to dry out the room, as the drainage pipe, embedded in a concrete wall had decided to leak last Friday.  I shall be buying the aircon a new drainage pipe for Christmas. I've never bought an object a Christmas present, but I suppose the world is becoming a funny place, and very soon, we'll be buying our own personalised robots gifts to keep them happy.

So, does that mean that there will be a robot Santa Claus? And do dead robots go to Calculator Heaven? Too much Red Dwarf.

What has all this got to do with lights?

My perennial hate, fairy lights - why on earth are they called fairy lights? There are no fairies in sight - unless you count the froufrou fairy who only wore feathers, and sat on top of the small fake tree my mother used as a hall table tree when I was growing up. No one liked her; she was just too froufrou.

The lights, well the icicle lights have let me down, as I mentioned.

The two reindeer are so disgusted, that whichever way you look at them, they are showing you their butts!

Back to the lights and the apparently tenuous robotic link, which in fact, is not that tenuous. Chasing Christmas lights, are programmed, controlled with a little box. Rather like a robot. 

Robotic lights on the Christmas tree, so it won't be long before we have talking decorations.

In true Christmas tree light fashion, and as a reminder that even robots will have to retire to calculator heaven one day, I cannot control the lights. There are eight options, none of which work, apart from one, mega flashy freaky light mode. That is on one set. 

The second set twinkles. OK, I can just about handle twinkling. 

The third set, yes a third set - it is a large (well relatively) tree - fades in and out. Gosh, that one is almost as mind-jarring as the first.

And then, there is the final set. The set I recently purchased from Ikea. Stupid time to shop in Ikea, Sunday afternoon. That is when half of Singapore goes to window shop as there is nothing better to do. Exit a grumpy ang moh lady from Ikea over an hour later. The final set doesn't do anything. It just doesn't match.

And, as if to make matters worse, I need to remember to turn all the lights off when I go out (they are on a timer), just in case they short and set fire to the tree.

I now have nightmares of Victorian Christmas trees, adorned with candles suddenly bursting into flames.

Maybe my son was had a point when he asked for no Christmas tree this year ...

Bah Humbug. It's December again - 20 days until Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 5th December, and this year a Friday. 

I haven't sent out the Christmas cards - still - actually I haven't even written them, but then again no one seems to bother these days. A sad tradition lost. 

Old Christmas cards were particularly useful - you could recycle them as gift tags, props for an uneven desk leg or chair, folded up they make excellent door stops, even drink coasters. 

Maybe I should write a book on the revival of the recyclable Christmas card? 

20 days to go? Did I mention that already?

I haven't even sorted out Christmas gifts. Then there's food and who to invite.

As I start my morning in a ponder, I look up and see what Santa must see in quadruple or however many reindeer pull his sleigh, a fluffy reindeer butt.

The mere sight of it, really just is not quite right. No wonder Santa sings out, 'Ho, ho, ho!'

I wonder if they painted a butt on the back of the Virgin Traindeer?

BAH HUMBUG

Bah Humbug - It's December again - 21 Days until Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 4th December and I haven't even sent out the Christmas cards I printed yet.

I also realised that last year I waited until 4th December to purchase Advent Calendars. Now I am thinking that maybe I might have got an even better discount if I had waited again this year?

Perhaps not, they were, after all, very cheap - my father always told me that it was cheaper to mean.

I suppose he had a point.

This post - out of character - is not about being mean however

This post is about what makes Christmas special, and you don't need to be Christian or whatever to see the magic in what Virgin Trains made come alive:

(Thanks Michelle Gaskell & Rafal Jaworowski, I nicked your photo)

The train even has reindeer fur and a red nose, and a Father Christmas!

How cool is that?

Well done Sir Richard and all who work for you.

Somehow, today, at least, I can't bring myself to say: 

BAH HUMBUG