Christmas wrap up 2021It’s all over, all over again. Time to walk round the house with a bin bag collecting the wrapping paper and hope you don’t accidentally bin the presents too.
I got some nice presents this year, and I hope you did too. One of mine was shared with Kate and was one of the most unexpectedly brilliant presents ever. We had a bricklaying lesson.
Here are the bricks we laid.
Happy new year everyone. May 2022 be filled with joy and nicely pointed with good strong mortar.
The history of ChristmasI don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s nearly Christmas. There are very few signs to warn you of its approach – it would be handy, for example, if everything you saw and heard in the media for the last two months had involved a Christmas related song, perhaps – but I have checked and it’s coming at the end of this week.
We all know what that means. There will be trees and presents and cake, and the law will turn a blind eye to breaking-and-entering offences committed by overweight bearded pensioners in unlikely red outfits. But where does Christmas come from? You don’t know, so prepare your thanks because I’m about to tell you.
Christmas is the eldest child of Father Christmas, born in December 1955 in Lapland. Father Christmas himself is, of course, the nephew of Zeus. After spending a happy childhood in the snowy reindeer-filled northern reaches of Finland, young Christmas left home and travelled to Liverpool in the hope of landing a role in Brookside.
The lack of an authentic scouse accent prevented that dream from becoming a reality, and a few years later Christmas was working in a branch of M&S where a toy sale coincided with the accidental delivery of too many frozen turkeys. The marketing opportunity was obvious. Parents were persuaded to get their kids some knock-off toys and treat themselves to a slap-up turkey lunch (pictured) by Christmas’s dad, whose booming voice and hypnotic catchphrase “ho” entranced the crowds at the Uttoxeter department store.
Today those traditions have spread far beyond Uttoxeter and the surrounding villages of Willslock, Dagdale and Spath. Now we can all enjoy the warm glow of buying some knock-off presents for each other and eating a type of meat that, at any other time of year, we’d avoid in favour of something that didn’t have the flavour and texture of teatowels. Hurrah.
In celebration of the big day, which is definitely some time this week but I’m not 100% sure when, please enjoy this Twitter thread of dreadful Christmas dinners. Thank you.
Even more old newsEveryone – and by that, I mean I assume everyone without having actually checked with any of you – everyone enjoyed my previous forays into old news, looking back at what had happened on various days in May and January. Since I’m low on posts this month we’re coming to the end of another year, this seemed like a good time for a look back at December 19 in the personal history of one Christo M. Fury.
Given that we’re just a few days adrift from Christmas, I was surprised to discover that my camera roll from this day in years gone by does not contain as many Christmassy things as I expected. Let’s see what’s in here.
Enter the Collector – Part 2Sarby Pluto (?) here comes ma surly choke guts for another round of preening.
Yes, you heard, the Collector has returned to make you all jealous for another eight billion years. How do I do it? Where do I find the time and money to hoard things nobody cares about? Are you saying that you wouldn’t want a mint condition copy of ‘Vampire Dog’ on DVD, the greatest family film ever made? I don’t think you’re in your right mind, brother.
Into the vault we go, crimsonly like a chick stepping between some other sleeping chicks that aren’t early risers. What delights await us? Avert your eyes, puny human, you’re not ready for the sheer wonders in hand. For now, to wet your whistle (or shistle as I wanted to type) wash your ojos over these:
It’s another limited edition one of one set of Pouring Beans postcards that not only detail the exploits of leading science master and window enthusiast Kevin Hill and horse botherer and French dweller Christopher Marshall but when placed in the right position they depict a map. It must be a map to a magical item, like a wireless abbab with theoretical babs. Perhaps it’s a humongous drinks cabinet that you can climb inside when you get too wasted. Given how awful the weather is at the moment I guess we’ll never know; I’m not going outside.
Enter the CollectorLook at me and weep, mere mortals, for I am the Collector and I have the THINGS you can only dream of.
I can see you eyeing up my two copies of ‘Winback’ for the PS2 and, no, you can’t borrow them. What was that? You’ve been looking for ‘Milo and Otis’ on DVD for years now and you’re desperate to watch it again? Well think on, chumperino, because that case isn’t going anywhere.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, life is good.
Delve deeper into my collection and you come across the real deal. The top dogs. David Dickinson’s eyes would pop out if he saw the things of things I’ve got hiding in the back.
Take a look at these nuggets of joy:
Back in 2010 I had the privilege of receiving a dozen postcards from Messrs Hill and Marshall from their antics of romping through the fields of whatever it was they were doing at the time (I don’t know, I’m too important to read any of them). Something involving cows? Driving? I guess we’ll never know.
I therefore present to you a one of a kind set of official Pouring Beans postcards. Best throw these into the mausoleum, I mean museum of delights we call a website.
Smidge in writingSmidge Manly is one of the UK’s most famous interviewers, entertainers and northerners, so it’s no surprise that YouTube is bristling with videos of him in action, doing all the things he does best.
What you might not know is that, nowadays, YouTube automatically generates subtitles for videos. It does this by running the soundtrack through a speech-to-text programme and putting the results up on the screen. It’s done this for all Smidge’s work.
Unfortunately for Smidge, YouTube hasn’t yet got the hang of his accent.
Making NostalgiaLet me take you back, way way back. Back to when times were a lot simpler and, as it seems, so were the people.
We all know little Ian was a bit of a weirdo. I could tell you right now about half a dozen stories of instances where I did strange and unusual activities. Being the youngest of four meant that half the time all of the attention was on me and the other half was on the other three (I know the maths doesn’t really check out but that was how it felt three quarters of the time). I must have been under ten, possibly six or seven years old.
Following on from my award-winning post about my first mobile phone, let me present you with a genuine attempt to create nostalgia.
This actually stems from something my brother used to do. He would eat a packet of crisps then empty out the leftovers and flatten the packet in one of the many comic book, Beano, Dandy or other annuals we had lying around. It wasn’t really Christmas without some kind of bumper collection of comic nonsense filling up a suitable space in your stocking. Why did he do this? I don’t know, I could message him now and get an immediate response but no doubt he will be feeling tired somewhere given it’s a Sunday.
I decided to do the same thing because I wanted in on these absurd shenanigans. I remember chowing down on a selection of different crisps and then flattening them straight away. About a week later, little Ian went back to his flattened packets and looked at them. “This isn’t the same as John’s,” he thought to myself, “it doesn’t look as good.” I was doing exactly the same thing and yet for some reason my brother was much better at applying pressure to small plastic bags. Clearly my self esteem was very low even at such a young age; Freud would have a field day.
Looking at them now, yes, why on earth was this something we did? I don’t think my sisters were involved, they were too busy making up dance routines to New Kids on the Block and Mel and Kim songs. The pre-internet days are becoming something akin to the wild west where hobbies, interests and general activities were so different to what is the norm now that I personally don’t really know what is considered to be normal anymore. Is there a normal? Probably not, look what counts as music these days (that’s my grumpy man comment for this post).
If you indulged in something a little left field when you were a kid please help me out by sharing here. I want to point at you and laugh.