Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

... It's getting embarrassing. Up til yesterday I hadn't written a single card, and since Thursday they've started pouring through the letterbox. Including a hand-delivered one from people whose address I don't know*, and even one thrust into my hand by a mate in town yesterday morning. As usual, they are getting blu-tacked up across the mantelpiece, as I never quite get round to putting up ribbon or Sensible Stuff on which to affix them.

So today I set aside the Whole Day to do nothing but write cards. Not that I'm writing that many, its just that they won't stand a chance of getting anywhere in time if I don't send 'em tomorrow. Obviously that freed me up to have a pyjama morning, catching up on blog-reading. And having a few more mince pies. Then it looked quite nice and warm out so I threw on a heap of garments from the pile on the floor and headed out into the garden to put the bulbs in.

     

That may be a tad late, but not as late as New Year's Eve which was when I got round to doing them once. Yep, I'm all about the optimism that post-December 22nd means we get longer days again, and it'll only be 6 weeks or so before some snowdrops and daffodils start poking through.

While I was out there prodding about with the bulbs the 12 year old asked if we were going anywhere - erm, no. Though we could go out for a walk if he wanted... he decided he didn't want, and miraculously the 14 year old came out with me instead. He's just started back at school again, and is being confident about doing things again. I suspected that conning me into upgrading his phone to a blackberry had something of the ulterior motive about it... whereas him having internet on his phone now gives him no reason not to visit our relatives over the christmas holidays. Win-win.

*Before we went out I wrote 2 cards and put in my handbag, just in case, including one for the people whose address I don't know. And strangely enough, who did we bump into on the way home...

Oh Heck .... Two Weeks To Go

Well, what a surprise it is to discover that I am Quite Behind With Things this Christmas. So unlike me...

We've got the tree, Glittery Mary and Bertram, and various other sparkly draperies about the place. We've now had two consecutive weekends of eating mince pies. Which is very slobbish behaviour, and is setting me up to want to hibernate a bit, watch rubbish films, that sort of thing. Not to clean the house or do lists, or any kind of silly rushing about.

In fact, apart from some fairly random, and not completely comprehensive, online purchasing of presents, I've been looking for more Marys online - wooden ones, that might smell of churches. Or even fabulous waxy, plastic ones, all the way from Argentina. They are apparently very In Demand for Christmas and going for £££. I blame the Treasures From Heaven programme Andrew Graham-Dixon, Love God of the Reliquary, did the other night http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012248j


           
                 


Yesterday, while I should have been Busy Doing Other Things,  Singing In The Rain was on tv. I was getting quite annoyed by the clipped, hurried way the lines are delivered, but ended up finding these adorable posters:

     

Glitter And Grit

Thank you for all your lovely comments about Bertram, Norris and Glittery Mary.... they probably WILL end up hanging around way past January ;)

Heaven knows what anyone will make of my blog if they end up on it after searching "Paperchase".

(Mightily pissed off, and not able to find what they were looking for,

if the non-rise in followers yet ever varying and odd search phrases in the stats are anything to go by). 

****************

On non-glittery matters, I am banging on doors of routes to help the 14 year old, and have spent much of the day on forums and on the phone - tomorrow I have to write to the director of education outlining the many and dismal failings so far for which he/she has to take responsibility, in order to snowball this thing.
And the jury is out about getting a social worker involved, but I'm doing that too.

B is for.....

.....Bertram!

Who has come to live with us for Christmas. But then again a red flock reindeer isn't just for Christmas is it. And it won't need to go walkies at stupid o'clock in the morning...

While New Things were creeping into the house, I realised I had always wanted needed a good ol' bit of Catholic Kitsch. Look who was waiting for me in the window of Paperchase. A glittery Mary!!!

Um, can anyone see a 2nd reindeer?

The John Lewis Christmas Advert

The New John Lewis Christmas Advert (remember "Ellie Goulding" last year???)...........



It went live mid-morning today on Youtube, and Twitter's going A Bit Mad over it. Whole offices of people are blubbing at their desks.......

*************** SPOILER ALERT ***************

BUT....

Don't read any further


if you want to see it first!!!!!

********************************************

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/3939224/Little-shop-of-horrors.html


Prevailing Twitter Thinking, apart from A National Outbreak Of Blubbing (and a few disagreements over The Song Whose Royalties Will Now Get Morrissey Out Of A Fix) seems to be that the film Seven has been a subliminal influence - the boy could possibly be giving his parents a box containing his sister's head. As a thoughtful Christmas gift...

And I'm just trying to figure out what exactly it could be that John Lewis sell that would be big enough to require a box yet be pocket-money price.

So This Is Boxing Day, And What Have You Done?...

Yeah, I know, I should be padding around the kitchen, with 19 drunk relatives sprawled across sofas, and patting my mince-pie-induced spare tyre, but...Christmas this year has been, well, kind of odd:

• The boyfriend is at his own place for the first christmas in several years, as he has his kids up here, so their first christmas with dad. Our kids do not get on, so we are not "conjoining" our christmasses
• I/we are not at my mum's - also for the first time in several years - as she has A BOYFRIEND now, gasp - and this is their first christmas "as a couple"
• Very stupidly I do not drive, so am stuck here
• The 13 year old wanted to spend christmas at home, and declared in advance he would only eat pizza on christmas day
• Raging pmt manifested itself on the 24th - always a great time to be afflicted
• I had sort of forgotten to buy any booze - in view of the above, a bottle or three of red would have been timely

During the week I had felt compelled, by pmt energy it transpired, to race around the house, changing beds, doing unfeasible amounts of laundry, taking unwanted magazines down to the doctors surgery, hell, even painting plant pots... and of course left wrapping up the kids' things til Friday night.

The 13 year old had just had another episode of staying up on Runescape for 36 hours, and so woke up and came out of his room at 5 minutes past midnight Christmas Eve. Great. The last minute.com wrapping had to be done stealthily and quietly under the duvet, but was eventually done. 2 stockings stuffed with chocolate and sweets (what was I thinking of???) were sneaked into their rooms, and I went to sleep....

Christmas morning was largely all fine and dandy, apart from the 11 year saying he felt sick first thing and would therefore not be wanting any of his chocolate, the presents went down well, a mad game of charades erupted somehow, phonecalls were made and received between us and other family members, the 13 year old accidentally hit the sous-chef in the eye with a metal bottle opener out of a cracker...

Then me and the 11 year old cracked on with cooking lunch, to a loose deadline of 1.30. The bottle-opener injury did not deter him from mixing up the stuffing, grating sprouts in butter, but hands were stabbed in the making of the apple sauce... As this was the first time I'd cooked at home at Christmas, it became evident that the oven was not going to accommodate a full-on roast AND a pizza... things came out of the oven, grew cold, went back in again... made a mental note to get a microwave.

By late afternoon I was blankly watching The Gruffalo and wishing I'd bought a magazine to retreat into. Ronnie Corbett was on, yet again, which was kind of nice, because who didn't love Saturday nights and The Two Ronnies. Although I'd intended to watch Dr Who, I felt a break for solitude and a therapeutic bout of dipping saucepans in boiling hot water was what I most needed. I came back in for the last 15 minutes of Amy Pond saving the world and got to grips with the backwards and forwardsness of the ghosts of christmas past, present and future without much difficulty.

And then it was time for the Christmas Strictly! The BBC did not pull the show, as Vince Cable had not lost his job this week, and his elegance on the dancefloor points to it being perhaps a good idea that he ditch politics and change career. There were quite a bit of Baker Backflips. There was a lot of John Barrowman's American Teeth. And he won. Which can only be a bad thing for his over-inflated ego.
Although the overriding impression of the whole show was Gavin, in a beard and white jumpsuit, looking like a lost member of the Bee Gees.

Mild Christmas Panic And Trout Pout

My wonderful plan to pick up presents as and when the "right" thing smacked me between the eyes is starting to fail....

All presents have now been bought, and stashed away, and miraculously, some have even been wrapped, plus excelling myself entirely last week.... some have even been posted too!

The flaw in the Plan To Buy Early is that I've lost one!!!! In the depths of my miniscule house, there lurks a 22cm by 22cm metal sign saying "Hand over the chocolate". Not easy to mislay, at that size, but mislaid, nay, even LOST, it is. My 13 year old just looked at me, and in perfect seeing-the-world-through-his-eyes style, asked if I had actually bought it. Must admit, I did then check the ebay account, just to make sure. So, my mum's partner has a measly tin of scottish biscuits and a 24 hour window for me to either turn the house upside down to find it, or come up with plan B....

Am nearly in a spiral of panic as it is.... we then have to navigate a central portion of England by rail tomorrow. I am not entirely optimistic that all will go smoothly... several extra layers, charged-up ipods and Sensible Sandwiches seem a Good Plan. As is watching 10 year old pantomimes on itv2, marvelling that Patsy Kensit, in her former Mrs Liam Gallagher incarnation, has now finally seen sense and has stopped having collagen lip injections... Can you tell that I minded a teensy bit that she married Jim Kerr?

Finding Things To Do On A Monday Morning

Its so still. Very post-nuclear. From here indoors, it seems very remote that people can possibly be busily doing what they must be busily doing. Am having a not-doing-anything-much morning as I'm meeting everyone from the World of Work for some nosh at lunchtime... until then I'm just noodling about, trying not to eat mince pies.

Have just watched a documentary on the Beatles - black and white, very apt for the landscape we have now. Got to say there's something just so much better about the late 60s than the early 60s - messier, pre-punk...

And during the ad breaks, I stuck the camera into some fested-up corners of Trashsparkle Mansions...

The Mantelpiece Is Finished!

...the one that featured a few posts ago as a lump of wood covered in 19 layers of paint.

I put it up last Friday - it was to be home to the silly big red reindeer, but as the baubly wreath looked better on the wall the reindeer is still in limbo.

You'll have to trust me when I say the star lights are "boiled sweet" scarlet. Despite what they say, my goddamn camera lies all the time instead of showing what is REALLY there!

Loose Ends

 Spent yesterday feeling downright unrelaxed - most unlike a Sunday.

In the end, I went to the new Mr H. Potter performance. What a joy - the spooky music, the dark, cavernous interiors full of black gothic furniture, barley twist four-posters, higgledy-piggledy staircases... couldn't decide if I liked Sirius Black's, Luna Lovegood's or Bathilda Bagwotsit's gaff best - but as usual, some nasty, menacing swirl of cgi nonsense destroyed most of them anyway. Hermione has an excellent handbag - a marquee was produced several times from within. Severe doubts remain about Daniel's acting ability - oh, how the cinema erupted at his dad-dancing. Mr Radcliffe - surely Strictly must want him?

Inhaled a most unsuitable amount of paintstripper fumes to reveal the 1880's Victorian glory of my lump of wood that shall be the mantelpiece. A bit more jiggling with sandpaper, and you can almost picture the candles and tealights all a-glowing, festively, on top of it. Nearly finished but not quite.

A nasty draught comes from the gaps inbetween the newly sanded bathroom floorboards. Have decided its bugger to the jar of sawdust I'd been saving to mix with pva - am wedging strips of old toilet roll tubes in them gaps. Nearly Finished But Not Quite.

Strangely, people are starting to ask if I've done all my Christmas shopping yet. But there's still 25 days! So, that's another NFBNQ to deal with...

The World of Work is totally convinced we shall be CLOSED for the forseeable future as of tomorrow due to all this envisaged snow.... daren't hope how much that will help me to catch up with myself. Then some of this "nearly finished" nonsense can get QUITE, COMPLETELY and TOTALLY finished. Until I start another mad project...

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Have been a bit on the go this week - hoorah! And here is the proof...

The red wall in one of the recent posts - behind the chandelier in Trashsparkle's Homemade Home - has now become grey (dulux's urban obsession), so this little fella can sit up on the mantelpiece soon without being camouflaged. And hey, yes, he is sitting on the first piece of the mantelpiece I was contemplating last week. A sawn-down fence post....

..... and this is the other part of the mantelpiece, a piece of salvaged victorian door architrave from when the kitchen got knocked through. Still a long way to go, seeing as I woke up to find the paintstripper had failed to magically do its job overnight (thought that trick they do with cornices and shrouding in plastic

would work).

And inbetween these mucky little projects, I realised on Thursday how cold I was, even in my hat. So I started to make a big, weatherproof one that evening... Voila!

Trashsparkle's Triceps, Tea and Televisual Treats

Morning bloggers! Some tea, some free-range egg'n'fakey bacon sarnies, Nina Simone and Blondie, and all is well in Trashsparkleland this fine and dainty Sunday morning...

...apart from the still-disturbing image of the big canary wandering out from behing the curtains last night. Ann's big mistake was to refuse Anton's suggestion of doing Improper Moves, and thus diluting their samba down to another Queen-Mother-Wanders-Round-Chelsea. Not sure about their choreographical intentions, but I strongly suspect she'd had enough by the end and lay down on the floor, leaving Anton to improvise wildly by having to drag her around like a defeated floorcloth. Where have we seen that before?

Another dodgy samba was Scott and Natalie's. Not that bad, but, in Strictly-Speak, far too much "gapping" during that forward roll thang. Has Scott gone off Natalie's perfume or something? I felt myself almost shouting "forward" to make him move his feet nearer to her.

Which is something poor Sheryl Gascoigne had to do to urge The Big Wimpy Vegan that is Gillian McKeith through the blindfolded cave of horrors experience in last night's slice of "I'm a Celebrity..". Sheryl played a blinder when Gillian freaked again at another hanging cobweb... "Its only a Christmas decoration". Genius, Gascoigne.

Meanwhiles, in the land of my Disgracefully Unfinished House, I have temporarily put down the knitting and entered phase 2 of sanding the bathroom floorboards. Did a couple of hours Friday and got half the room done. Just the other half to go, then. Full of optimism that it SHALL be finished Fairly Soon, I shelled out some quids for a tin of yacht varnish. Very good for one's triceps, this floor-sanding malarkey...

And in the spirit of Winter Decorations, we are soon to become Proud Owners of a red reindeer. Not a Beryl Bainbridge-style taxidermy one, but a huge wooden advent calendar. T'is for the kids... It will go over the mantelpiece in the dining room. The mantelpiece that I have yet to source and install. There are high hopes that the planed piece of floor joist lurking in t'shed shall be fashioned into such.  Also, in the spirit of Planning Ahead In Effort To Avoid Haphazardry I have invested in some new red decorations. Some tin and wooden decs - but disappointingly, they turned out to be not scarlet as imagined, but sort of rustic-red-oxide. Think I will leave the Gisela Graham look alone in future...

We are also recovering from a visit from Trashsparkle's mother yesterday. Hence lurking lazily on here, writing, and admiring other people's creations and findings. Yesterday, mum did not get as enthused as me about the bathroom floor - she merely asked when I was getting the doors sorted, and tut-tutted as she passed the bombsite that the 11 year-old sleeps (and hides his clothes) in. As for the lovely knitting, well that just made her sneeze. Although she did atually love something - the pie'n'mash I made for lunch. A small victory...

Pasta Telegram and Other Dreadful Side Effects of Chocolate

Have been 'festing up the house a bit this week in honour of the non-stop combo of sparkliness and fizz that is Diwali and Fireworks. The sparkly corner I showed in the last post is, finally, now bedecked by a string of multi-coloured lights. Damned gorgeous, although I say so myself.

Have been snaffling up bits and pieces to hide away for presents for the Winter Festival aka Christmas. Not usually this sensible, but it seems wrong to give people things that you've bought in a tearing hurry, at the last minute, getting all hot and grumpy in a shopping mall, boiling over to the point of resentment. Have now decided that if I see something that is "right" I will buy it, there and then. Which gives me carte blanche to go into shops A LOT. Which can be dangerous, but so far I have found 5 Very Suitable Things, and today managed to be Very Sensible in TK Maxx - ok, what's a little Charlie'n'Lola calendar here and there? T'was only £3.99, and it's for the house, not me..... and it will make me happy every day throughout next year. Bargain. And I am secretly 47-going-on-4 years of age...

Last night I rediscovered how utterly weird your dreams get when you eat chocolate in the evening. There I was, in the post office, asking for a bowl of pasta, telling them off for putting brussels sprouts on it, and trying to send it to someone in order to sort out what I was doing at the weekend. Bloody Yorkie bars - I swear they've put something in them.

Am thinking that the post-Halloween versions of Strictly are going to be a bit, well, just not vampy enough. I really think Matt the macho farmer should adopt the guyliner fulltime, and not just for showbiz. He just looked a bit too well-scrubbed without it on Claudia the other night. Come on BBC makeup ladies - the nation needs YOU. But it does not need Alice Cooper to be hidden away, obscured by cavorting Professional Dancers. What is the point of that???

All I Want For Christmas Is - part 2

...items 3 & 4 on the Christmas list (after Keef's book and the non-purchasable vintage rock'n'roll dolls) are these!


... a yummy, yummy typography book to drool over


and..............






...Molly Parkin's autobiography - because she's been there, done it all, and good god, she's still here!


And this week, the household hysteria has mainly ensued from Strictly's Frock Reveals - pleather ???? - and from us all staying up Quite Late And Being A Bit Cultured last night to watch BBC2's Review Show... all was going very well, until it ended with a cellist. Seems it is not enough to just use the fingers, the face has to work Very Hard Too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vmxz2/The_Review_Show_29_10_2010/
Watch this from 40:30, and do try not to fall off your chair.

I'm Starting My Christmas List!

All I Want For Christmas (so far) Is:

1. Keef's autobiography, of course
2. This!!!! http://www.dollreference.com/showbiz-babies.html
Oh, I can sooo feel a collection-addiction coming on! You can get Mama Cass, Bobbie Gentry, The Monkees...
(numbers 3 to 99+ on The List will, of course, appear over the next few weeks...)