Where do jamjars go at Christmastime?
Dec. 24th, 2024 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaUm, hi. If you're here, you might know I've not been around much this year. Life has been getting in the way quite spectacularly, some of it good, some of it bad. I even managed to go to Glastonbury this year, but failed to write it up here (something future-me is going to be quite cross about).
But, you know, traditions is traditions. I am:
(a) at my parents' house
(b) in front of a real fire
(c) not with a pint of beer, because there was the end of a bottle of red wine that needed tidying up.
I have, of course, blanketed all the pigs for tomorrow's dinner. Mind you, the streaky bacon my mum had bought was the thickest thick-cut streaky bacon I have ever seen. And we have full-size pork sausages instead of chipolatas. So these are the most hench pigs in blankets you can imagine.
It's not been the most Christmassy Christmas Eve, in many ways, as quite a lot of it was spent driving from ChrisC's parents' house to my parents' house. My parents had got most of the decorations up before I got here; I just got to do the fun part of putting baubles on the tree. The tree is a re-use from a previous year, but had grown slightly too much to fit through a space it needed to fit through. Long-time readers who remember the days when every major Christian festival in this household involved a reciprocating saw may be disappointed to learn that apparently my dad managed to prune it down with just secateurs.
This year, I almost managed to stick to one of my Christmas-present-buying tenets: do not buy people round presents. They are a sod to wrap and never look neat, however hard you try. Books? Books are great. They make lovely neat cuboids, and you can put pretty ribbons round them. And once they're unwrapped, you have a book at the end. Genius. See also CDs, if anyone remembers them.
However, my uncle asked me to get him a very specific bit of exercise equipment for Christmas. Unfortunately, the name he sent me did not, according to the search engine gods, appear to be an actual thing. After a lot of very bewildering messages, I eventually demanded he send me a photo of the broken one that needed replacing, and tracked one down.
Sadly, it did not come in a box. And I did not have a suitable box. And the shape meant it was going to be A Fair Bugger to wrap. Eventually, I decided just to lean into it and use up all those weird little strips of paper that I had ended up saving "in case".
I have, since taking that photo, added a bit of ribbon for dramatic effect.
I've taken to buying cheap rolls of recycled "brown paper"-style wrapping paper, which is an aesthetic I quite like. However, the paper can be quite thick and stiff, so wrapped presents have a bit of a habit of unsellotaping themselves. I have, in recent years, developed a knack for wrapping presents using only paper and string/ribbon (to help out a family member whose manual dexterity is no longer what it once was - the goal is "undo bow, present unwraps itself"). I may have to start using this more widely, as string seems better at oppressing springy, opinionated paper.
We've never been a presents-under-tree household, just because the location of the tree doesn't really lend itself to such things (in particular, it's not in the same room where we usually hang out on Christmas day - six of us is quite busy enough in that room, without introducing rogue foliage). So, in the morning, having cleared as much space in the front room as possible, I'll bring down the things I've wrapped and distribute them to their agreed locations: dad's presents in front of the most easterly bookshelf, mum's presents in front of a cupboard still known as "the office cupboard", even though it's many years since she had an office job. My presents go down the side of the sofa, and get all rummeled up with ChrisC's because we had run out of corners before he came on the scene.
Is Christmas all about presents? No, of course not. But I'm in the fortunate position of having enough spare money that I can buy presents for people, and I enjoy doing so. And my family has a tradition of giving each other multiple small gifts rather then one large-and-significant one. So tomorrow, we'll all likely have a little pile of things to open. And what with popping out to peel spuds, and pausing to admire things other people have got, and wandering off to make coffee, the process will likely take quite a lot of the morning.
If you're giving gifts, I hope they're well-received. If you're unwrapping your own, I hope you find something lovely, or unexpected, or wished-for. If you're doing neither, then enjoy whatever you are doing. Happy Christmas ;)
And, since it's been a while... a non-Christmas update.
Headline news: still living in Ealing, with ChrisC, not much has changed in any significant way.
Fun ways in which I have been busy of late:
* Still doing the sword dancing, I belong to one regular team and one occasional team. The occasional team is a new one, and had its first real outing (to Belgium) in October.
* Since posting regularly here, I've also joined a morris team. This isn't Oxfordshire hanky-flapping morris, it's a north-west UK tradition that involves brightly-coloured costumes, clogs, and (in our case) a shitload of drums.
* I'm still writing regularly, and still getting stories published occasionally (I have a proper website for that now, though please don't link back here from there). Recently, I had my first standalone book published - a horror fiction novelette ideal for those nostalgic for late 80s home taping. If you're interested, you can find links to the e-book version from the publisher's website. The p-book links there don't work outside the US, but it is available on UK Amazon.
* As a side effect of writing a lot of very short stories, I did a daily podcast for the month of October. Obviously, it's not October any more, but the episodes are still hanging around if you want to have me read to you :)
* I still do a batch of Christmas puzzles every year. This year, they're a bit simpler/less involved than usual, mostly due to having been scribbled out in odd moments on account of the busy. If you'd like some puzzles, let me know. At least two major errors have been fixed since the "final" PDF was mailed out late last night...
But, you know, traditions is traditions. I am:
(a) at my parents' house
(b) in front of a real fire
(c) not with a pint of beer, because there was the end of a bottle of red wine that needed tidying up.
I have, of course, blanketed all the pigs for tomorrow's dinner. Mind you, the streaky bacon my mum had bought was the thickest thick-cut streaky bacon I have ever seen. And we have full-size pork sausages instead of chipolatas. So these are the most hench pigs in blankets you can imagine.
It's not been the most Christmassy Christmas Eve, in many ways, as quite a lot of it was spent driving from ChrisC's parents' house to my parents' house. My parents had got most of the decorations up before I got here; I just got to do the fun part of putting baubles on the tree. The tree is a re-use from a previous year, but had grown slightly too much to fit through a space it needed to fit through. Long-time readers who remember the days when every major Christian festival in this household involved a reciprocating saw may be disappointed to learn that apparently my dad managed to prune it down with just secateurs.
This year, I almost managed to stick to one of my Christmas-present-buying tenets: do not buy people round presents. They are a sod to wrap and never look neat, however hard you try. Books? Books are great. They make lovely neat cuboids, and you can put pretty ribbons round them. And once they're unwrapped, you have a book at the end. Genius. See also CDs, if anyone remembers them.
However, my uncle asked me to get him a very specific bit of exercise equipment for Christmas. Unfortunately, the name he sent me did not, according to the search engine gods, appear to be an actual thing. After a lot of very bewildering messages, I eventually demanded he send me a photo of the broken one that needed replacing, and tracked one down.
Sadly, it did not come in a box. And I did not have a suitable box. And the shape meant it was going to be A Fair Bugger to wrap. Eventually, I decided just to lean into it and use up all those weird little strips of paper that I had ended up saving "in case".
I have, since taking that photo, added a bit of ribbon for dramatic effect.
I've taken to buying cheap rolls of recycled "brown paper"-style wrapping paper, which is an aesthetic I quite like. However, the paper can be quite thick and stiff, so wrapped presents have a bit of a habit of unsellotaping themselves. I have, in recent years, developed a knack for wrapping presents using only paper and string/ribbon (to help out a family member whose manual dexterity is no longer what it once was - the goal is "undo bow, present unwraps itself"). I may have to start using this more widely, as string seems better at oppressing springy, opinionated paper.
We've never been a presents-under-tree household, just because the location of the tree doesn't really lend itself to such things (in particular, it's not in the same room where we usually hang out on Christmas day - six of us is quite busy enough in that room, without introducing rogue foliage). So, in the morning, having cleared as much space in the front room as possible, I'll bring down the things I've wrapped and distribute them to their agreed locations: dad's presents in front of the most easterly bookshelf, mum's presents in front of a cupboard still known as "the office cupboard", even though it's many years since she had an office job. My presents go down the side of the sofa, and get all rummeled up with ChrisC's because we had run out of corners before he came on the scene.
Is Christmas all about presents? No, of course not. But I'm in the fortunate position of having enough spare money that I can buy presents for people, and I enjoy doing so. And my family has a tradition of giving each other multiple small gifts rather then one large-and-significant one. So tomorrow, we'll all likely have a little pile of things to open. And what with popping out to peel spuds, and pausing to admire things other people have got, and wandering off to make coffee, the process will likely take quite a lot of the morning.
If you're giving gifts, I hope they're well-received. If you're unwrapping your own, I hope you find something lovely, or unexpected, or wished-for. If you're doing neither, then enjoy whatever you are doing. Happy Christmas ;)
And, since it's been a while... a non-Christmas update.
Headline news: still living in Ealing, with ChrisC, not much has changed in any significant way.
Fun ways in which I have been busy of late:
* Still doing the sword dancing, I belong to one regular team and one occasional team. The occasional team is a new one, and had its first real outing (to Belgium) in October.
* Since posting regularly here, I've also joined a morris team. This isn't Oxfordshire hanky-flapping morris, it's a north-west UK tradition that involves brightly-coloured costumes, clogs, and (in our case) a shitload of drums.
* I'm still writing regularly, and still getting stories published occasionally (I have a proper website for that now, though please don't link back here from there). Recently, I had my first standalone book published - a horror fiction novelette ideal for those nostalgic for late 80s home taping. If you're interested, you can find links to the e-book version from the publisher's website. The p-book links there don't work outside the US, but it is available on UK Amazon.
* As a side effect of writing a lot of very short stories, I did a daily podcast for the month of October. Obviously, it's not October any more, but the episodes are still hanging around if you want to have me read to you :)
* I still do a batch of Christmas puzzles every year. This year, they're a bit simpler/less involved than usual, mostly due to having been scribbled out in odd moments on account of the busy. If you'd like some puzzles, let me know. At least two major errors have been fixed since the "final" PDF was mailed out late last night...
