Ho Ho Ho

So here I sit, still at my desk on Christmas Eve.

My laptop has been given to Santa's Little IT Helpers so that they can upgrade it over the Christmas break to Windows 7. I think this is so that I can be bemused and bewildered in the new year via a more efficient and cutting-edge platform. Lovely.

The upshot of this is that I am now in this peculiar limbo where I can officially not do any work, but can't go home until the 'surprise' announcement by the gaffers.

But I care not one jot. I am full of Christmas joy and in a few hours I will be heading home to begin the blissful chaos that is Christmas.

Hoping you all have an ace time, my etherborne friends.

NDC

Rules For a Successful Working Day

1. Always be courteous
2. Make sure no-one sees you do it
3. Have an alibi

NDC

Falalalalalalalalaaaaaaaaaa.

Yes, 'tis.

This weekend we have been shopping like feck. We had a gazillion Christmas presents to buy and very little time, so we headed into the sprawling metropolis that is Leicester city centre on Saturday with the intent of knocking off as much as humanely possible in one go.

Now, I think as far as blokes go I'm pretty reasonable at this shopping malarkey. I can quite cheerfully wander round shops selling all sorts of shite that I don't understand for quite a long time in man terms* but I was bracing myself for the hell of mental Christmas people celebrating the season of goodwill to all men by getting irate with each other in huge numbers.

The day got off to a great start, the walk into the town takes us in via one of the less salubrious part of the city, lots of pound shops, pawnbrokers and a pornbroker. I suspect a marketing student from the DMU is working there part time - clicky on the pic if you can't read the sign at right:

We chuckled quite a lot and headed into town.

We shopped,

We shopped some more.

Whilst we were in John Lewis I stopped to have a look at the new Kindle Paperwhite. I'd got it in mind for a christmas present as I liked the idea of the lit screen, but after 5 minutes of prodding it about I've decided it's not for me. the backlight is not enough to justify the pricetag or even make up for the lack of proper buttons to cope with my suncream-coated fingers on holiday. Anyway, here's my ghetto fix for the lack of lighting on the original that has served me so well to date:

Yup that's a Petzl headtorch. I'll run you through the pros and cons.

Pros

• Crystal clear reading at all times with the added advantage of being able to use both hands to hold the kindle.
• No extra weight to hold,
• Nocturnal requirements for taking a leak don't require any lights being switched on. This is fun in a childish kind of way

Cons

• The IMA will, on sight, dissolve into hysterical laughter. Admittedly, this is probably just me but I suspect the reaction from your significant other will be similar.

Swings and roundabouts, really.

And the hordes of mental people in the town? well I think they were busy shopping on line via our tax-avoiding chums at Amazon et al.

NDC

* - Men are often compared to dogs by the fairer sex, which I generally feel quite disgruntled about. However, when it comes to shopping, the comparison bears weight. One hour of shopping for a woman feels like seven for a bloke.

Symmetry

My drive to work this morning was a little earlier than usual, but this unfortunate circumstance was more than made up for by a spectacular sunrise.

To add to my happiness, the illumination of the dash matched the colours of the skyscape beautifully. Somewhere in Munich an automotive design engineer was probably feeling very pleased with herself, but not quite knowing why.

NDC

Happy Days

Sometimes life gets a little tricky. Sometimes there are bumps in the road, the occasional anti-personell mine upon life’s great highway.

Last weekend was not one of those weekends.

Last weekend has been one of those weekends that come along every now and then. The ones that you think are going to be good, but turn out to be ace. I know I’m a lucky man at the worst of times but last weekend was, frankly, fecking brilliant.

The IMA and I were north of the border again and we had a busy itinerary planned for Saturday, starting at 9am in a Glasgow florist, with a million and one people to see and things to do after that. I had to work until 1pm in Corby on the preceding Friday, which meant that we wouldn’t be setting off in the car from Leicester until 1.45pm at the absolute earliest. It’s generally around a 6 hour drive if you’re lucky and given the prospect of the M6 on a Friday afternoon getting more choked up than an X-factor contestant talking about their gran, we made the only sensible choice available to us. We arranged to go for a night out with a couple of the IMA’s oldest friends.

On Friday Night.

In Edinburgh.

It was ace. The hotel room was stunning – this was the view from our bed:

We had pre-drinks like a pair of students in our room, and then we went to meet up in the restaurant. I had a chicken and haggis burger, we drank, we laughed, we went over the road to a pub, we heard tales of accidentally-stolen guinea pigs, we laughed and drank some more. Finally, after a nightcap and a carefully devised plan for peace in The Middle East mainly revolving around pygmy goats (did I mention we’d been drinking?), we collapsed into bed. At around 1.45am. They were lovely people and I had a hoot.

The morning continued at 7am, when I was surprised to find that the Scottish beer had done a pretty good job of making me sound like a cross between Chewbacca and Tom Waites. We had breakfast looking out across the Firth at the bridge. A bleary-eyed drive west got us to Glasgow in time to meet the florist, which was followed by staccato meetings with various other wedding-related johnnies. I did my best to appear awake and I think, by and large, I pulled it off.

Finally at 2pm we rolled up at the hotel where our wedding is to be held. We were there to go through the menu and decide what we were going to eat on the big day. The doorman, resplendent in tartan trousers and geeky glasses (yet still somehow managing to look cool) picked up our bags and showed us to our ‘room’.

Yes, that’s all our room, you can see the IMA gazing out of the East window if you have good eyesight - she was a long way away. If your eyesight isn't 20/20 these days, click on the pic for a larger version. I think the timezones changed somewhere between the dining table(!) and the sofa area(!). There’s also a bathroom containing a bath that probably had a wave machine, such was its size. I have lived in houses with less surface area.

We mooched around for a while, being suitably bewildered. The IMA had a makeup trial whilst I sat and drank espresso from the machine by the Bang & Olufsen TV and read my book.

The menu tasting was yet another eye-opener. Course after course of top-notch food, accompanied by a run-down of the wine choices by a sommelier who was clearly very knowledgeable despite looking like she wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol in the first place. There were samples of reds, whites, roses, champagnes and proseccos plonked in front of us, we tried to keep pace. The service was impeccable. The restaurant manager turned out to be from Nottingham and suggested I borrowed the Leicester Tigers mascot costume to get married in. I laughed, The beautiful IMA refrained from punching him.

Eventually, being suitably fed and having wangled a tour of the wine cellar, where I stood within knocking-over distance of a £2,200 bottle of wine, the IMA got a call from the hairdresser who was scheduled to do the hair trial. We met her outside the room and it soon became clear that she was very much from Derry and very much bonkers. She did a brilliant job on the hairdressing front and also made me laugh quite a lot with her summary of haute cuisine – “Champagne foam? That’s just a load of shoite right enough.”

We collapsed into bed around 10 and slept the sleep of the just. Or at least the sleep of the well fed and beautifully coiffured.

More of these weekends please.

NDC

Shake Your Tailfeather.

Welcome to the whirling maelstrom of various barely-understood tasks and activities that is the approach to my wedding.

I think if Derren Brown truly wanted to convince someone that the end of the world had arrived, he should have just plonked them in a room for a few days with a bunch of women who had been hypnotised to believe they were getting hitched. There is so much stuff to do that even my astonishingly level-headed wife-to-be is starting to crack.

I should have been more vigilant. There were early warning signs that, with hindsight, should have started the alarm bells ringing that the strain was starting to tell. When wedding teatowels were considered and eventually discarded I thought the crazy talk was done.

Nope.

Unfortunately the beautiful IMA has now decided that it is not only possible, but necessary for me to learn how to dance before the wedding in just 5 week’s time.

To say that I am a useless dancer is an understatement of mammoth proportions. I have all the grace and coordination of a drunk tramp, high on crack, riding a skateboard down a flight of steps. I would be more in time with the music if someone Tazered me. I am quite a self confident person on the whole and I am often to be found confusing my intentions with my abilities, but as far as strutting my funky stuff is concerned I am completely aware of my shortcomings.

At least we have Jump Around by House Of Pain on the playlist. Even I can manage that.....can't I?

NDC

Potty Mouth

I expect better from M&S, I really do.