Everybody ready?

[Dave Rice]

Sat outside tesco waiting to be picked up with the last of the shopping (I hope). Wondering where I’m going to put it all. The meat and veg arrives Friday, this is just the last of the important stuff like cheese, snacks and booze.

[PlaneMan]

I did a early morning run to a quiet Tesco for some bits and pieces that are hard to get other places at the moment namely a duck and low alcohol wine. The place is amazing, not many people remember it’s there so they often have hard to get stuff in stock. It’s also huge. Why it’s still open I’m really not sure.

Other than that I’ve been sorted for weeks.

[Bob Williams]

We went Monday to the biggest Morrisons in our area: Laceby, between Cleethorpes and Grimsby. It’s the biggest I have seen anywhere, just expanded and now “doing a Lidl” – not price-wise so much, as selling clothes, electricals, all kinds of stuff. A 44 mile round trip.

That was the last day I thought I was just tired and suffering from the after effects of the bug we have both had for two weeks.

We had a chicken as always, we don’t like a Turkey so much and for two of us it’s a waste anyway. We love a nice crispy chicken. The only alcohol onboard is a bottle of Port for SWMBO. Tomorrow I have to go out for my prescription and will try to go alone to buy a huge bunch of roses for our Gert. She has really had to put up with some horrible stuff while I have been ill. Credit where it’s due, she doesn’t moan. Well, not much.??

I hardly dare say this, but today was a day without a bleed, so far. I am sleeping as if I fell out of the Sleepy Tree and hit every branch on the way down. Gert says I have stopped snoring and hopes it is not temporary. ??

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

We not bothering, just the normal shop. Out all day Xmas will pop in Tesco on the way home boxing day morning. If they don’t have the food for a roast well eat pizza. Cut it into small triangles and call it a buffet.

Them we are away until I thin Saturday. So that is when I’ll need to do a shop.

This has been the most chilled exams ever. All gifts bought before December and wrapped, bar a tablet I have to set up.

Usually, it’s a mental week, which ends up in a wrapathon on Xmas eve.

It’s like all done. Even the tree went up early. Wife doesn’t like the tree, so she leaves it as late as possible, and she will put it the way the 27th if you’d let her. I got the big ones to put it all up the last day of November .it was great, she went mad. Lol.

[Boris]

Went to daughter no.2 in Portishead today, so on the way back popped into the newish Sainsburys there about 7pm.

Place was almost empty, more staff than punters ?

Never trust an atom - they make up everything !

[RSB]

I am more or less sorted apart from a bit of wrapping. I was hopeful of finishing all my work before crimbo and having a clean slate for the new year. It’s been a very long year and don’t think I have had anytime out worth mentioning apart from a bit of forced time out so this Christmas I’ll be taking a week and à few days out to do my own things and recharge and clear my head before it all begins again.

Plenty of footie on and I’ll be taken some long brisk walks along the Leeds and Liverpool canal possibly boxing day and new years eve day accompanied only by my Bluetooth woolie hat ?

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Ed P]

We are extremely fortunate to have both a traditional butchers and an excellent Saturday market for veg, that plus a cold garage does us for the Saturday/Sunday storage. The kids all arrive on Boxing Day which is when a rib roast of Rudolph will be devoured!

Tofu stir fry on Christmas Day – just to balance the diet and leave plenty of room for the mulled wine and mead.

[Dave Rice]

Thank God for Amazon Prime. House guest arrives tomorrow and the air bed has gone missing!

The 20 litres of Old Rosie should be settled by now, might have to do some quality testing. But this evening is the Christmas Pub Quiz at The Mouse. I’ll be meeting Betty Stogs there for sure ??

[Bob Williams]

Thought I had a lot of Floaters in my eyes, it’s Lee’s snowflakes!??

I am not a Christian and my beliefs involve no supreme deity, so I really do not celebrate Christmas as such. This has caused friction over the years with SWMBO. She is not a believer either, but does not see that I feel hypoctical about a religious festival for a religion I have no belief in. Don’t get me wrong: I take part in the present-giving, card-sending parts, as it is a way to let family and friends communicate and know we are still kicking. I just do not like the decorating part. This year I have been ill and whilst I was in bed for most of a day, the lady of the house decided to strike and put up the deco’s. Ah well, to make for a peaceful life, so I just looked and gave no comment.

Today is actually my day of celebration: it’s the Midwinter Solstice and the day when our ancestors from 5,000 years ago drew circles, put up standing stones all over the country, and arranged them so that the sun shone through a certain alignment at Midsummer and Midwinter. The story is so old that its original name is lost, but the barmpots who call themselves ‘druids’ and dress up in daft white gowns at Stonehenge, are not doing anything that has any bearing on the original. Today I have been to an area not far away which has only the sunken memory of a circle, at sunset. I paid my respects to the Earth and left: I was alone. The name “Henge” btw, is an Anglo Saxon invention. No one now knows what the people who erected them, would have called them, but what my unnamed religion calls the whole event, is Yule, and the first Christian church based their own festival of Christmas around the date. They did this with many other festivals in the Christian calendar, taking Pagan festivals and celebration days into the Christian calendar. “Pagan” comes from the Latin “Pagani” meaning Peasant. It was a sneaky way to gather Peasants into the Church.

However, since I am in a very small minority of a few thousand only in Britain nowadays, I have to pass my good wishes to all forumites in the standard form:

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR GUYS

to you and yours!

And to Lee, who worked to keep us all together:

HAVE A GOOD ‘UN!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

I know where you’re coming from Bob. Stonehenge is only an hour away from me and I used to go a lot, especially when the free festival was still going.

I’ve always meant to go in midwinter but never have. Indeed it’s been a long time since I went at summer solstice. At least they let you in to the stones again these days. It was only Ken Barlow and the Druids allowed in back in the 70s and 80s and the free festival was stopped by the boys from the Met Battle of the Beanfield

I was reading somewhere that Yule comes from an old Norse word for the wheel. Yuletide being the turning of the wheel, another year starting.

[Bob Williams]

Dave, Yule is a word that has a very ancient derivation, morphing through several languages in Ancient Europe and beyond. I have some old writings of my granddad, who visited Wales many times and wrote for several newspapers, including Reynolds News and The Daily Herald. I wish he had lived longer than my 10th decade, because there is a lot more I would have liked to know from him. I just have these old yellowing pages of his notebooks, which I managed to get from under the nose of my acquisitive cousin. Granddad had lots to say about many things: he had a grasshopper mind but was intelligent and curious. Example: ” One day aircraft will fly without using propellers and engines as we know them. Perhaps rockets, larger and better than fireworks?” There is so much more than that. Contrast his mind with that of my gran, who was a Romany born somewhere in Devon, in a caravan. Illiterate, but had so much history of her own people in her head and the origin of my dad’s belief system and my own.

In granddad’s notebooks there is a lot of ancient British history and a lot of inspired speculation on his part. This is what I have been able to make out of his writings about Christmas and its predecessor festivals:

From Brythonic/Celtic beliefs, the world was seen as a wheel – the god Arianrhod was a “Silver Wheel”. In Germanic languages, that was “Wheol“. Gothic “jiuleis” (ywleeis) – Anglo-Saxon “geol”. Old English, which was about 70% Germanic – “Geola“. In Old Norse “jol” It’s easy to see that all the Celtic/Germanic/Scaninavian languages are closely related. Granddad then goes off into a bit of Blue Sky speculation as to  how it would have been pronounced by our distant ancestors, but it’s not easy to make out.

The interesting bit is how gran’s people saw the world: as a Wheel, continually turning with the seasons. Gran always said that her people came from the East. Some years after her death in 1967, I was paralysed for one week and incapacitated for 3 weeks by an injury. I started to look into all this for the first time seriously and wound up in getting Reference books from my local library. I found the origin of the Romany people: they had a bigger Diaspora than the Jewish people. They were a number of Dravidian-language tribes from South India, with a small tribe called the Brahui in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was in line with what gran told me: her people had a folk legend that they had been driven out by others and had wandered the world, never staying long in one place, always being moved on. I found that the Brahui must have been pushed out around 3-4,000 years ago. The origin of the planetwide mistrust and suspicion of Romanies and Gypsies. Their language is recorded as totally different in origin, to other Indian and Asian languages, except for the Tamils and some Malayan peoples. They knew the world was round, when Europeans were still convinced it was flat. Terry Pratchett would have loved that!

So the story is very much more complicated than just Saxon or Norse. It has roots as far back as our own henge-building ancestors. I like to think that my gran would have loved to hear all that.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

Every team had to do a round at the pub quiz last night. I did ours on a Christmas theme and spent a lot of time looking at the different traditions around Europe and then on into the wider world. It’s all pagan at the heart of it with later Christian bits added and some of it can be quite dark.

The Dutch think Sinterklass (St Nicholas) lives in Madrid and returns on the second Saturday in November choosing a different port each year. He rides a white horse and has a sidekick called Black Peter. Black Peter keeps the records on which children have been good or bad. The bad ones he puts in a sack and takes them to Spain for a year to learn how to behave. Yikes!

[Drezha]

Finished work on Wednesday and driving down South this afternoon. Me and everyone else if the traffic news on BBC is to be believed.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[PlaneMan]

I’ve just been informed that some family members that ‘definitely weren’t coming to visit over Christmas’ are now coming boxing day. Perfect time to log into my account on the Amazon app (to claim my free £5) and use the 3rd Prime trial. (I usually order through mum’s account and transfer the money over). At the moment I’m expecting 9 deliveries tomorrow.

Amazon are going to damn busy over the weekend.

[Bob Williams]

Before visiting hospital today I went into Louth to collect the various parts of my senior gson’s pressie. The place was mad: as always in Louth, narrow Georgian streets and one way system designed by a very inebriated Town Planner, means that one single traffic-choked exit, eventually brings the whole place to a halt. I long ago learned how to get out of the place, by taking a definitely illegal cut through a narrow side street, but it does make for a long way round. I am surprised that no one else has found this as I am not a native, but they won’t learn it from me.?

I always have to think of something different for No. 1 gson: this is the IT network engineer with Aspergers and he has so much stuff that I have to think hard. Then last week I was in his flat and observed that his monster desk was absolutely choked, with a tiny lamp hardly able to cast a light across most of it. So I bought him a halogen floor lamp, with a side attachment of a smaller lamp that he can position over whatever spot he likes. Both lamps are fully adjustable. Job done. But it’s his birthday on the 7th of Jan: what next? I don’t give him money any more, he won’t accept it – “Granddad I have a very well paid job and you are a pensioner. Not taking money from you.”

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[dwynnehugh]

Hi Bob,

Your dilemma is easily solved, for Xmas give him the lamps, for his birthday give him the bulbs!

SIMPLES!!  ?????

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[RSB]

dwynnehugh wrote:

Hi Bob, Your dilemma is easily solved, for Xmas give him the lamps, for his birthday give him the bulbs! SIMPLES!!

?

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[The Duke]

Wife sent me Tesco earlier for some bits. She just informed me WE are going tomorrow early to do a Xmas shop.

2 issues

1. Why could I of not got it today?

2. We are away from 11 am Xmas day, so what actual shopping do we need?

I’m gonna palm her off with her mother I think. I ain’t going near town tomorrow.

[PlaneMan]

Don’t blame you at all Steve.

I have to go out tomorrow for supplies to cater for the people that weren’t coming. I’ll be at Asda for 6am. Then home and wait for the many Amazon deliveries.

After about 7am it’ll be nuts around here.

[Bob Williams]

dwynnehugh wrote:

Hi Bob, Your dilemma is easily solved, for Xmas give him the lamps, for his birthday give him the bulbs! SIMPLES!!

I already bought the bulbs and SWMBO knows that.

Bugga!

Actually, he is a very undemanding lad, always has been. The only time he was ‘demanding’ was when he was younger and wanted me to build him a faster PC. Now he builds his own and they get more monstrous with every incarnation. He has a Server array in the second bedroom and leaves the window open, radiator off. Creates virtual servers to test ideas for his company. Gone way past me, but that’s what we want and need: the next generation should know more than us.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Author]

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