Yorkshire festivities

Christmas! This year, my dad & step-mum rented a cottage in York, so everyone bundled round there for Christmas day. As you can see, I went as Widow Twanky in best panto tradition. There were 13 of us for Christmas lunch (Dad, Jackie, Jackie's mum, Jackie's sister Jenny, her husband David, their son Charles, my mum, my sister Jenny and her daughter Liddi, my sister Toni and her two sons Benj & Barney and...oh hang on, who have I forgotten? Oh yes, me) and we ate a veritable feast, including a goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with stuffing. Pork I think. We opened an obscene amount of presents as usual, and I had organised a quiz: Family Not University Challenge. It were great. Then the kids and me settle down to watch Starsky & Hutch and then we all watched The Vicar of Dibley. So, your standard Christmas fayre, I suppose. The kids especially enjoyed it:

It wasn't my day today. A combination of traffic, slow tube trains and annoying dawdlers meant that I was four minutes late getting to BAFTA to meet my friend Sarah (she's a member - get her) to go and see The Holiday and BAFTA don't let you in if you're late. I ran hell-for-leather from Green Park tube, up the stairs to the BAFTA reception and asked the receptionist if I was too late. She confirmed I was, so I asked if I could sit on the stairs for a bit because I thought I was going to vomit*...at which point I received a text message from my sister. Let me explain: it's my nephew Barney's 18th Birthday today. He didn't want presents because he's saving for a computer so I sent a card with some £40 in it - probably should have sent a cheque but...well, I didn't. So the text from my sister was asking if I meant to put a cheque in with the card? Yes, you've guessed it, the cash was nicked in the post. The card had been re-sealed and apparently looked untampered with, no idea how do they did it. The fuckers.

After a few minutes of me sobbing on the stairs, the receptionist kindly told me there was a nearby toilet I could clean my face up in...

Anyway, I did what any sensible woman did when they are depressed. I went and had a hot chocolate and bought myself a small glass lobster.

Later, Sarah & I went back into BAFTA to see Infamous, the as-yet unreleased film about Truman Capote which, although covers similar ground to the recent Capote, is by many accounts a better film. To be fair, I haven't seen Capote, but can confirm that Infamous is fabulous and the portrayal of Truman by English character actor Toby Jones is astounding (he was there for a Q&A after the film and was a very articulate and interesting bloke). Tragic that he won't win an Oscar for it, because Philip Seymour Hoffman already did. It has the most amazing cast and both Sandra Bullock and the terribly 'now' (and rather gorgeous) Daniel Craig deserve a most honourable mention. Oh do see it, really do.

*I had told Sarah to go in if I didn't get there in time so she hadn't just abandoned me

Spam with neighbours

I went to see Spamalot last night. Now, I've realised over the years that I'm really crap at writing reviews - they normally boil down to 'it was great' or 'it was rubbish' - but I'll have a go.

A re-working of the classic Monty Python & The Holy Grail, Spamalot has much to offer lovers of the original film as well as those who are coming to it with fresh eyes. A host of hilarious new songs sit alongside the more familiar 'Knights of the Round Table' and the inevitable 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'....oh bugger this. Play = great. Tim Curry = excellent. Jokes = funny. View = bit rubbish, because we were quite literally up in the Gods. In fact I was sat between Thor and Zeus*. Anyway, highly recommended.

eBay has come up trumps again. Today I received my PVR - a 'personal video recorder' for those not technically-minded. Basically Sky+ without the Sky. Freeview+, if you like. I didn't exactly mean to buy it, but it's great nonetheless. The story goes like this: last week I got a bit carried away and ended up bidding on something that I thought was a DVD recorder, because, to be fair, it was in the DVD recorder category. The auction was about to end and it was going cheap...well, you know the rest. It was only after I won the auction in a flurry of excitement that I double-checked it and discovered that I had a PVR instead. Anyway, thems the breaks, and anyway, for a rather good price I've got a very nice bit of kit which enables me to pause live TV and will record Neighbours for me every day without having to be asked! What more can you ask for?

*I'm well aware that Thor is a Norse God and Zeus is of the Greek variety. I'm just hedging my bets.

Oh, meant to say, I also made stock from the chicken carcass. STOCK I tells you. I'll be making meringues with left over egg-whites next.

Inappropriate Cleaning

So picture the scene: you have your dad and über-clean step-mother coming round for Sunday lunch in 1 hour's time. The roast is in the oven but the rug has trails of cat litter on it and the piles of paperwork on the coffee table need sorting through. The washing up needs doing and then your face needs a bit of a re-work. This is the exact time you develop a compulsion to do a round of 'inappropriate cleaning'.

Girls will, I'm guessing, to be sexist for a moment, recognise this phenomenon more readily than my dear gentlemen readers. It is while getting the vacuum cleaner out that you realise you absolutely HAVE to reorganise the storage cupboard. And clean the shelves thoroughly to boot. Or you pop into the bathroom for a quick wee and discover that the inside of the window frame needs a good wipe down and BANG! Five minutes before they ring the doorbell you find yourself covered in mould and mildew remover with the cleanest inside bathroom window frame you could wish for...and a flat that still looks like the 'before' bit on How Clean is Your House? Or you go to create an ambient light-scape (a.k.a. switching on a few lights) and spot just how grubby the underside of the light switches are! Quick, get the vinegar and a j-cloth and let's tackle the top of the door frames whilst we're at it...

I find myself getting more and more 'Monica' as the years go by. But only - only - when I have guests coming round and don't have time.

Goodbye to the Normals

Who said English kids can't act? Well, me, to be fair, but I'm revising my opinion based on the impeccable performance of this little ginger.

Lights and action

Finally - finally - got to see Borat this evening. I have never found anything so painful to watch in all my life and actually only got to see half the film because I had to watch most of it through my fingers. Still, any film which has two naked men running into a Mortgage Advisors' Conference chasing each other with a fist-shaped dildo has to be purest genius. Even without putting Pamela Anderson in a sack.

In other news, the light fitting in my bedroom blew in a most spectacular fashion a few months ago and the metal part of the lightbulb remained firmly wedged in the apparently burnt out remains. Haven't got round to doing anything about it, obviously. Well, I returned from work today to find that David had fixed the whole thing using only a potato. Honestly, those Irish can do bloody anything with a tuber.