Christmas Tag

I saw this tag blog on Styleaked (great blog Charlotte) and thought it was a great idea so while it's still the Christmas period I decided to have a go.

1. What is your favourite Christmas film?

I'd have to say Scrooge with Alastair Sim - it's something of a tradition that sometime at Christmas I watch this film (I think this year is the first I can remember when I haven't seen it), Alastair Sim does a great job at being Scrooge.  The one with Patrick Stewart is very good too but I have to say that I've not seen this one bettered.

2. Have you ever had a white Christmas?

Not as far as I can remember although it's probably happened, I do remember one winter in the 1980s (1986/7 maybe) when we had loads of snow and it hung around for ages but I've no idea if it was Christmas or not.  Snow seems to come more in January/February nowadays (climate change I guess...)

3. Where do you usually spend your holiday?

Christmas morning is spent seeing family, and then back home for the afternoon for dinner (and a beer!)

4. What is your favourite Christmas song?

The one that comes to mind is "Driving Home for Christmas" by Chris Rea.  I remember in particular listening to that one Christmas Eve, driving along Clive Sullivan Way back home after work.

5. Do you open any presents on Christmas Eve?

No!  I'm quite a stickler for presents being opened on Christmas Day, not before.

6. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?

Um - Rudolph, Blitzen, Flitzen, Lightning, Bing, Zipper, Dancer, Prancer?

No, I can't.

7. What holiday traditions are you looking forward to most this year?

Just having some time to watch TV, read books, play games and stuff.  It's always nice to have some downtime.

8. Is your tree real or fake?

Fake!

9. Be honest. Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts?

I don't think that I could enjoy receiving gifts at Christmas if I hadn't been generous giving them also, so I can't really choose.  Sorry!

10. What would be your dream place to visit in the festive season?

That's tough - I always want to be close to home with my family, but there are places that I'd like to visit.  The German Christmas Markets have always sounded appealing, and I'd be really interested once to see what Christmas is like in Australia, when it's really hot and sunny instead of freezing cold!

11. Do you make New Years Resolutions and do you stick to them?

Not as a rule (although I have this year - see my video!) and the reason that I don't normally is because I don't stick to them.  I seem to recall reading somewhere that you're less likely to actually do something if you write it down, or tell people that you're going to do it, because in your mind these actions kind of feel like you've started doing the thing, and so can put it off.  I'd rather secretly achieve the thing that I want to do, and then announce it as a fait accompli.

That was good fun!  Anyone reading this is free to have a go at the Christmas tag, if you do let me know in the comments that you've done it and where!

Before I go - as I say, I have a new video about my new years resolution (spoiler - it's not to learn how to swim.  Or cycle.), feel free to check it out!  If I don't blog tomorrow happy new year!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, one and all.  I hope 2014 brings you all of the things that you want.

I wasn't keen on 2013, I seem to remember from the last new year.  I didn't like it as a number, I think it was the '3' in it, as I was quite happy with 2012.  But that is all behind us, and we venture forth into a new year!

To celebrate the coming of 2014, I made a video of predictions - a group of people very kindly submitted questions for answering (special thanks to Scott Tumilty, Geek & Sundry Vlogger for his), so if you really want to know the answers to the deep, life-changing questions... this video isn't for you.  On the other hand if you want to know if I'm going to buy someone else a bacon sandwich, check the video out.

Don't worry about the glow in my eyes, it's purely down to the mystical powers of the Pyramid of Mystery, and not bad lighting.  Honest.

New years resolution?  Well for me, to lose weight.  I'm not going to worry about it this week while I'm off work and the house is still full of chocolate, but once that's out of the way, I'm hitting the gym again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an unfeasibly large marshmallow to eat.

Told you.

At this time of year...

...why do we do such strange things?

Eat pate - not paste out of a jar, but pate out of a pack.  Because pate is posher.  And what is the difference between pate and paste?

Lumps.

Pate has lumps in - sorry, texture, I mean to say "it's textured".

Textured with little chunks of fat that gross you out despite the many other things you've already engorged on over the Christmas period.

But you still eat it.

Eat too much chocolate - for eleven months of the year, there isn't such a thing as too much chocolate.  I could happily devour one of those large bars of Cadburys in a single sitting without batting an eyelid.  But at Christmas?  Suddenly some kind of "chocolate limit" kicks in, and despite the piles of tasty-looking Roses and Quality Street sitting there, all I really want is a cracker.

Weird Digestive Crackers - speaking of crackers, what is the deal with those strange digestive-type crackers that you get in boxes of crackers?  They're like a digestive biscuit, and kind of sweet which really messes up the taste explosion of the cheese piled upon it.

Weird digestive cracker AND lumpy pate?!?

Ring people at midnight - this doesn't happen so much now that I'm getting older, but we ring people at midnight on New Years Eve, to wish them "Happy New Year".  This is often made more difficult by the fact that one, or both, parties may be at some kind of social event (be it a party at home, a night club, or a bowling alley) so hearing someone on the phone isn't easy at the best of times.  And because so many people are ringing or texting "Happy New Year" all at the same time, the phone networks crash.

Ringing people at midnight is odd, isn't it?  If anyone rang me at any other time of year at midnight, I'd assume someone had died or was in hospital, or at the very least had got the wrong number and really wanted a pizza delivering asap.

Eat Danish Butter Cookies - I don't actually mind eating them that much, but I wouldn't buy a tin myself.  Except at Christmas, when one (if not two) tins of butter cookies appear in the house as if by magic.

Gold Chocolate Coins - At any other time in the year I could see myself struggling to remove a minute piece of chocolate from a foil casing, because I eat stuff that's bad for me.  But when do we get them?  At Christmas.  When the house is already full of chocolate and other sweeties.

Mmm. Sweeties.

You can always tell that you're out of all other chocolate when you start on the gold coins, and when you do resort to the chocolate coins you'll start with the biggest ones, the ones that look like a big two euro coin, because you get more chocolate for the effort spent penetrating the foil.  But all too soon you end up with just a stack of small, old five pence sized chocolate coins left, and the misery that settles around you as you work your way through these builds up to replace the depression thrown off at the beginning of the holidays.

While I'm blogging, I have a new video uploaded to my YouTube channel - my son loves counting and spelling songs, so I made a counting video, and used a xylophone to provide the tunes.

And Rocked. Out.