Next Christmas

Dear Santa

Thank you for a wonderful Christmas, all the lovely the presents, the delicious dinner . . . hang on, that was all down to me. Next year could you send the Christmas fairy to take care of all that so I can just put my feet up and enjoy it? Oh, and could I have Christmas Eve off rather than spending it stood in a shop being shouted at?

While you're at it, could you also make me worry less about other folk, take more time for myself and make people feel obligued to shower me in gifts in thanks for the hard work I put in all year making every other f**ker on the planet happy.

Other than that, booze and pyjamas would be fine.

Yours sincerely

Sharon
xxx

Festive Food

It seems as soon as there is a sniff of Christmas in the air, the celebrity chefs crawl out of the woodwork and start telling us how to par-boil a sprout. Granted they must film these Christmas specials in July, but that is no consolation when you're being patronised by some tubby arsehole in a festive jumper (but enough about Anthony Worrall Thompson)

The fever spreads like measles with the likes of Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith promoting supermarkets they don't shop at, while Lorraine Pascal does her best to look convincing while taking a tiny bite of something you know she won't swallow. There are so many chefs (chefs mind you not cooks) who think we have nothing else better to do than to comfit our duck legs and the likes of Gary Rhodes and the Hairy Bikers who think we should all eat more butter and lard.


Well at least these guys look as if they eat and enjoy what they make, poor old Gary wouldn't last the winter in my neck of the woods.

Then there's Nigella; curvacious, vivacious, voluptious, Nigella. Mistress of temptation. She appears before us in her silk dressing gown and slippers, licking her lips and whispering her secrets of domestic goddesshood and we can't fail to be impressed. I have seen her drinking cocktails in a low cut evening dress, rolling out a black cab in killer heels, stumbling into the kitchen as she removes her elbow length gloves and dons her marigolds and then . . . she preheats the oven.


Anyone else would be found in a drunken stupor by the firebridgade among the ashes of what was once the entire street, but not Nigella. Even pissed as a fart, she is able to set something away marinading before she falls into bed with her makeup still plastered to her face and her marigolds still on her hands.

Don't get me wrong, I love to cook and bake and make Christmas food that demonstrates how much people mean to me (nothing says I love you like homemade chocolate fudge) But I have a life and aspiring to the perfect foody Christmas presented on these shows is a meltdown waiting to happen.

I love Christmas food, but I also love shortcuts and cheating. Things come in jars and packets for a reason, so some other poor buggar can spend weeks perfecting the recipe and everyone else can just buy a jar of it. I would love to have the time to make mince pies with little stars on top, dusted with icing sugar, or a mammoth chestnut and mushroom pie just in case the one vegetarian I know comes round but I don't.

I don't have their huge, cavenous houses and cosmopolitan friends either.

Our modest little Christmas will be as it always has been, full of good cheer, good people and tried and tested favourites that might not make an impression on Masterchef, but grace my table year after year.

Frozen Planet

A fantastic series, make a cuppa and pop you're dressing gown on, you're going to feel the cold.

Comfort and Joy

Here we are again, my friends, another year drawing to a close. That paranoid and panicky season when we feel compelled to rush out and spend money we do not have on crap we do not need.

We agonise over gifts for people we don't even like and for what? A badly spelled and grudging thank you? (By email, the ability and desire to use a pen slowly dimishes with each generation)

Add to this the current economic climate (a phrase I hate, considering I am in no position to predict or change the weather patterns) 2011 brought with it a recession, financial crisis in Europe and pay freezes across the public sector. We will have to pay more into our pensions in order to get less out and everyone working in retail will be made to feel grateful to still be employed rather than mourn the demise of the Christmas bonus.

Is it a Tesco value chicken and oven chips for dinner this year?

And yet as Christmas approaches, the footfall increases, the queues lengthen and the patient tempers fray as they have in previous years. The snow has held off another month later than last year, giving people a wild eyed look as seige mentality overtakes them. They won't be caught out this year, they will have a fridge and larder stocked to apocalyptic levels and they will trample or trolley barge anyone who comes between them and their emergency turkey.

And once again I shake my head at the madness.

We have a new addition to the family this year, a little sister for our princess who will be eleven months come Christmas and these girls, these two glorious, happy, healthy girls are all the Christmas cheer I will ever need. Their grins on Christmas morning when they open what, by today's standards,will be a modest amount of gifts will lift my spirits for the coming year.

I don't care that I've pulled the Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve shifts this year (someone has to work them) I don't care that hubby and I don't have the spare cash for gifts for each other. I wouldn't care if it was oven chips for dinner (be less washing up - don't put the idea in my head)

I am certain my Christmas will be full to the brim with joy.

Black Friday

Like most other American traditions such as Wal-Mart (cleverly disguised as Asda) Halloween hay rides and covering your entire house in Christmas lights to confuse low flying aircraft, we who have no reason to celebrate Thanksgiving are being exposed to the idea of Black Friday.

To us Brits Black Friday is traditionally the day Jesus was sent to the cross, giving his life to save humanity (from the original sin his father gave us in the first place - don't get me started on that shit) but anyone who browses Amazon looking for cheap DVDs will have seen the special deals this week.

A pre-Christmas chance to grab a bargain seems like a good idea (in these strapped economic times) until I read about the woman in America defending her discounted xbox with pepper spray. Twenty people were directly affected, including seven children.

I would like to think this is an isolated incident, one slightly unhinged woman who forgot to take her Citalopram that morning but I fear this may be a symptom of the growing hostility we have for our fellow human beings.

Don't get be wrong, I have occasionally stood at the crowded tills in my local supermarket and thought how much easier things would be if a dose of Captain Trips wiped out half the dithering idiots in my way. I once ran over a woman whose spacial awareness has deserted her (with a cumbersome pram not a car) but crowd control should be left to those who have received the appropriate training.

As for the xbox lady? Happy Holidays you f**king nutjob!

Children in Need Bake Sale

Chocolate chip shortbread

125g softened butter
55g caster sugar
180g plain flour
25g dark chocolate chips

Another Year Wiser

Another year, another birthday.

As I creep slowly toward my mid-thirties I realise that I am aging quicker than I think. I have occassionally struck colleagues dumb with a pop culture reference from before they were born, or started a conversation with 'do you remember' to find that no one did. I often look at young women in the street and think 'did your mother let you go out dressed like that?' Last week called my phone a 'blueberry'.

Are these the actions of a vibrant young woman with her finger on the pulse? Am I suddenly out of touch with anyone under the age of twenty-five? I fear I am and yet I find the idea comforting.

I am a child of the eighties when there was no broadband streaming the answers into our homes. We did our homework the old fashioned way, by walking to the library, finding a book on the subject and paying 5p a sheet to photocopy it.

I bought CD singles at Woolworths, knowing by money counted toward something.

Today we have British Safety standards for side impact protection car seats for all children under thirteen. Back in my youth we had the wheel arches in the back of a Ford transit that you clung to with white knuckles while you avoided loose tools rolling at you on roundabouts.

We didn't have birthday parties at Krazy Kingdom, two hours of chicken nuggets and soft play. If you were lucky you got a lopsided homemade cake, a bag of chips and got to choose which video to rent that week.

We didn't have ethernet game consoles, wi-fi or apps. We had a Spectrum 64 with a tape deck and 'outside'. If you didn't want to play 'outside' you were given jobs to do like tidying your room, or topping and tailing a bucket of gooseberries. Heaven forbid you ever complained that you were bored. Being bored meant you were given a task that began with you putting your wellies on and fetching the wheelbarrow.

We had Sindy dolls, Star Wars figures and our imagination. When it rained (and it had to be bucketing otherwise you were given a cagoule and told 'it'll clear up') you had to play Connect Four on a towel on the kitchen table.

The highlight of the week was a Supermousse.

I look back on all these things with affection and hope that in some small degree I can bring to life these simple pleasures for my children. Sometimes we sit at the kitchen table and play dominoes, or play bagsy with the Argos catalogue not because it is all the entertainment we have, but because it's fun.

I am proud to be the age I am, otherwise look at what I might have missed.

Bitches, Please!

Devil's Chocolate Cake

The secret ingredient to this dense, moist cake?

Beetroot.

You read right, beetroot, don't ask me why it works but it does. This recipe came from the Asda magazine and will be a favourite for the spooky party we have on Halloween every year.

175g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate
250g cooked (not pickled) beetroot
3 large eggs
100g cocoa powder
225 SR flour
200g caster sugar

Durham Light Infantry

My maternal grandfather served with the Durham Light Infantry during the Second World War but, like many who survived the unimaginable horror of trench warfare, he didn't like to talk about his experiences. As his granddaughter, born seven years after his death, he is a man I would have liked to have known and it was important to me, my brother and my mother that we have more to remember him by than his tattered medals and a generic postcard from France.

We got in contact with a man compiling information, photographs and stories of the DLI and, using his knowledge and contacts he was able to fill in a few details for us. We now know which battallion my grandfather served with, his rank (a Lance Corporal) and have had some old photographs restored of him astride a motorbike on the front lines. We have also requested his service records from the MoD.

This quest for information led us to a full family tree search, something that various members of the family have attempted over the years to varying degrees of success. After ploughing through birth, death and marriage records, the census from 1851 onwards and even tromping round graveyards, we have traced one branch of our family back seven generations.

Some useful links for anyone interested in doing the same:

www.newmp.org.uk
- the website of John Dixon, the man compiling information on the DLI. He is contactable directly through the email address on the site and would welcome any photos or stories about the DLI during WW2

http://county.durham.gov.uk/sites/dli/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx
-the DLI museum and art gallery, Aykley Heads, Durham

www.findmypast.co.uk
- one of the better family tree creators I have used, this site allows you to view the census, birth and death records at a reasonable cost (£6.95 for 60 credits, giving you 90 days access and costing an average of 5 credits per record that you can print out)

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/ContactUs/ServiceRecordsEnquiries.htm
- from here you can print out the form to request the service records for deceased service personnel, you do need to be next of kin and there is a charge of £30 and a possible waiting time of 6 months.

Droids

Austerity Measure

We are currently in the midst of a financial crisis.

Not just the banks, squandering away our savings on risky ventures, or the government borrowing from other governments in order to lend to other governments, but we, generally and specifically, are up shit creek.

For years we have been spending more than we earn, subsidising our lifestyles with loans, credit cards and overdrafts in a twisted game of economic Buckeroo. Did we think this would go on forever? Did we think we would never have to pay that money back? Money that was never ours in the first place.

So the bill has finally landed on the doormat, the catalogue man is at the door demanding his money and we stand, empty handed claiming we can't afford to pay.

Bullshit!

Our lifestyles have been bloated out of proportion, blurring the line between want and need. It has become too easy to have things we shouldn't be able to afford on our meagre salaries and feel that we have earned them. We gripe about an increase in council tax, something that pays for the collection and desposal of our rubbish, the maintenance of street lights and roads, yet we pay £40 a month for Sky, so we can watch reruns of crap we didn't watch first time around.

We NEED to pay the mortgage, light and heat our homes, feed and clothe our kids, however we CHOOSE to shop at Next and Sainsbury's rather than Aldi and Asda. We WANT Sky + with movies, a 52" plasma and a fortnight in Spain every June.

There is a word that describes us: spoilt.

The truth is we could live cheaply if we wanted to but we are addicted to everyday privelages that our grandparents would have considered gratuitous luxuries. Yes, we live in the modern age and have access to these benefits, our wages are tenfold those of our forefathers who struggled to feed a family of nine with nothing but a ration book and two threadbare hens. We are strides ahead of our grandparents and still feel we have the right to complain, strike and riot (many dropping a day's pay to do so) because no matter what percentage of the collective debt is our doing, we will stamp our feet, pout our lips and refuse to pay a penny of it back.

I have gone from feeding and clothing two on a double wage, to three on a wage and a half, to four on what barely amounts to a single wage. I shop at Aldi, clothe the kids in George and occassionally reach for a needle and thread rather than replace. I plan, I budget and more importantly, I think.

My advice to the masses? Quit bitching, grab and oar and start paddling.

Back to the Mill

This week marks the end of my maternity and although I am sorry to come to the end of this time off with both my elder daughter and the new baby, I am also glad to get back into a role other than that of wife and mother.  Don't get me wrong, I love my family and strive hard to look after them to the best of my ability but I need a break from the endless school run/nappy change/food shopping/nappy change/school run cycle.  I need to feel that I am useful for tasks other than wiping snotty noses.

I am also in desperate need of adult conversation.

Conversations with my hubby (who is an adult - most of the time) consist of him telling me about his meeting with high rollers from head office, implimenting new stategies for dealing with complaints and bringing new people onto his team.  My side of the conversation consists of the BOGOF offers in Tesco and the size, shape and colour of the contents of the baby's nappy today.

I have begun to loose my identity as a person.

It began when I started refering to myself in the third person.  I have become a fantastical creature capable of dealing with any problem, righting any wrong.  No matter how tricky, fearsome or gag-worthy the mess is 'Mummy will fix it.'  It is as if I no longer have a given name nor wants and desires of my own.  I have given over everything that I am to the three most important people in my life and the time has come to claw back a little of the old me.

Therefore, with only a little trepidation, I am lookng forward to returning to work.

Scruffy Looking Nerf-herder

Proves It Was a Decent Paint Job

Birthday Boy

Hubby's Birthday cake

If Only . . .

Android

Reigning Men

British Actors worth the licence fee

1) Colin Firth
2) Alan Rickman
3) Anthony Hopkins (Sir)
4) Derek Jacobi (Oh, look, it's the Ninky Nonk)
5) Jason Statham
6) Ian McKellan (Sir)
7) Christian Bale
8) Daniel Craig
9) Dougray Scott
10) Gerard Butler

Closure

Happy Easter

Our entry to the school Easter Egg competition - Sonic the Hedgehog won

When I Grow Up

As a child I had many fanciful career aspirations, mainly influenced by the hours of American tele we used to watch on Saturday afternoons, including a stunt man, a helecopter pilot and a soldier of fortune.

Join me in my reminescence and name the show.

1) Colt Seavers
2) Stringfellow Hawke
3) Francis Poncherello
4) Templeton Peck
5) Jonothan Higgins
6) Devon Miles
7) Rosco P. Coltrane
8) Dr Jonothan Chase
9) Wilma Deering
10) Jesse Mach

Quick

Here's Your Problem

One Born Every Minute

This documentary, following the maternity ward of the Princess Anne hospital, Southampton was of great comfort to me during the final trimester of my second pregnancy. It reassured me in the weeks leading up to the arrival of our second daughter that no matter how tiring, troublesome or painful delivering this baby was going to be, I would not turn into one of those weeping, wailing women that make maternity wards sound like a field hospital during the Crimean.

I knew this because . . .
a) I have already delivered a 8lb 15 oz baby with no more than gas and air and a bottle of contraband orange squash (granted a hour or so before she was delivered I told the midwife to come back tomorrow as I needed some sleep)
b) I knew I had the full support of the eager father to be who will not spend my entire labour texting on his phone or eating a bag of chips.
c) My chosen mode of transport to hospital was a retired police officer with over 25 years of pursuit driving experience.

Although the naivete of some people never ceases to disturb me, I wonder what these women were expecting. It's a baby, it's head is going to be the size of a grapefruit (if you're lucky) and it's coming out the way it got in. It can't stay in there indefinately and no amount of screaming is going to hurry up either the baby or the midwife on standby with a heavier painkiller.

Women have been giving birth since we emerged from the trees and ran accross the savannah, medicine may have advanced, survival rates for complicated births has risen dramatically but we as a specie have learned nothing.

Our daughter was born on saturday afternoon, at 9 lbs 1 oz, just in time for tea. If I was relatively calm for the birth of my first daughter, I was even calmer for this one. In fact the midwives were ready to send me home, unconvinced that a woman who was calm and intelligible was actually in full blown labour.

The primary midwife assigned to me was newly qualified, she sent me a thank you note.

Too Much, Too Young