Just discovered this so looks like I’m in a Crystal Palace throwing stones at the Leeds glass house 
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Xmas. Bleurgh. Stay in bed as long as possible. Do my best to ignore the rest of the stupid thing, both the consumer and religious faces of it.
Happy Winterval.
The best response to the grumblers, from the peerless Half Man Half Biscuit:
Now how did I guess
You were going to express
Your disdain at the crane
With the bright fairy lights
And you’d moan at the snow
‘Cos your car wouldn’t go
Oh it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas
You don’t have a tree
And your smile has a fee
All the same, here’s a card
For your boring facade
Jingle Bells, piney smells
All the boys and the girls
Say it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas
Oh it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas
See how we yawn
At your bile and your scorn
It’s a beautiful day
Peace on Earth has been played
Make a noise with your toys
And ignore the killjoys
‘Cos it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas
Oh it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas
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I prefer to be organised at the start so
Christmas eve - prepare braised red cabbage, cocktail syrups for the week ahead and evening meal of fish.
Christmas day - bellini and pastries for breakfast, throw away plan and wing it for the rest of holidays.
I do make a festive playlist each year of new tunes found in the run up and that then gets combined into the general christmas playlist in spring.
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I try and listen to either the Messiah or Amahl and The Night Visitors
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Bob Harris used to play Mary Gauthier’s song Christmas in Paradise just to throw a little perspective from those who haven’t made it on to the Naim ladder.
Her plaintive voice drives the lyrics home. Available on YouTube.
“Peace on Earth has been played”
and yet it never seems to happen.
All the more reason we should continue singing it!
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Definition of insanity: repeating the same action and expecting a different result.
Definition of pessimism: assuming that nothing will ever make the world a better place.
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Well clearly repeatedly singing a silly hymn once a year isn’t going to.
I fail to see how you can be so definitively certain about that, but I detect a degree of perverse pleasure in your responses which I have no desire to disturb, so I’ll leave you be in your current mindset. I hope it works for you.
Meanwhile, I’m going to sing silly hymns to my heart’s content, such as:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
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And a particularly good hymn you have chosen too, right there.
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About 4 years ago and a couple of days before Christmas when all the world shuts down I coud smell gas in the area by the cooker. You don’t mess with that smell so on the 23rd or so all the house gas was turned off. Great!
We were hosting a pre Christmas event so I got our neighbour to ccok the turkey and pass it over the fence.
Got over the two days with a slow cooker and microwave, however we had no gas central heating. Gave me time to think and took the view if a qualified gas engineer disconnected the cooker and there was no gas leak in the house then the supply to the house could be re-connected.
This I managed to do at no small small expense but a least we were almost back to normal.
Note: cheap cookers have or had a short spare supply. After 3/4 years you may as well buy a new one.
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All thse years ago I worked in the City as my job was to service the banks. Based close by the Bank of England it was only a stroll to the other El Vino at 6, Martin Lane just off Cannon Street. In those days there was an acceptable drinking cuture probably now frowned on. Or pehaps not: look at a summer evening outside any pub and its mob handed.
On returning to the office there was always a temptation to visit Farringdon Records in Cheapside. In the basement run by Tony he had a ton of classical LPs. Always helpful when I returned rough quality pressings. The shop is now long gone and Cheapside totally rebuilt. James Michael-Hughes used to be a frequent helper.
Sorry if the above is a bit off topic but I had some great times working there.
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Hello, Douglas, I have only just seen your post, which brings back so many memories!
El Vino in St Martins Lane was a regular haunt of mine a long time ago, as I had a girlfriend who worked in a solicitors’ firm just next to Cannon Street Station. I used to meet her there occasionally for a round or two of sandwiches and a couple of their bottles of dry white (the red was off limits for me, as I had to be awake for New York opening for the day, five hours after us).
And I probably spent a small fortune over the years in Farringdon Records, which used to have a branch on the other side of Holborn Viaduct from my firm’s offices.
Of course, the original El Vino on Fleet Street was the place to go. It was always full of judges, lawyers and newspaper people from its proximity to all the newspapers’ head offices and printing presses (pre-Wapping), the Royal Courts of Justice and the Inns of Court. You could spend hours in there just people watching over a glass or six of claret! As was my wont, if I could sneak a few hours away from my desk!
It wasn’t an easy or stress-free way to earn a crust, but it was a hell of a lot of fun before The City started taking itself so very seriously indeed after Big Bang. (And I can’t imagine that the life of a City lawyer is anywhere near as much fun these days!)
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Hello graham55
Good to hear your comments on life in the City/ Holborn Viaduct.
I think we/us had the best of what was a more “relaxed” time. I go back to the mid 1970s onwards. At that time a lot of overseas companies felt they needed a London foothold which was a benefit to both me and the company I worked for.
The El Vino lunchtime visit labelled by one wag in the office as an LWL = Light Working Luncheon, usually was anything but!
After you had chomped your way through their often pretty basic sandwiches to soak up the wine, the brave might finish off with a glass of Sercial or Malsebury. The perfect sharpener to help in an afternoons’ detailed businnes negotiations.
This wa still the era of the Bowler Hat and seen as the order of the day. How times have changed. The last time I was up there in the evening say 10PM there would be a pizza deilvery for those working probably into the night.
Naim Audio is more fun.
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You’re absolutely right, of course, and I am probably discounting the sheer hard slog that I had to get through, but it was bloody good fun to work in the City, doing what I did, and I consider myself very privileged and lucky to have been there at the time.
You also have to remember that, as carefree as you might feel after sucking up the contents of El Vino’s finest Chateau Batailley (or whatever), the likelihood was that whoever you were dealing with after your largely liquid lunch had been doing the very same, probably in another branch of El Vino.
You sure as hell could not do today what I did then. I always have to remind myself of that when younger parents ask me these days about the prospects for their children of working as a lawyer in the City of London. Which happened to me just last week when one of the nurses in the care home (where I am at the moment) asked me about making contact with London law firms on her daughter’s behalf.
I am no longer a reliable witness, m’lud!
And please remember that listening to Naim equipment is a very serious business, and that fun should have no part in it!!!
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…as can be evidenced by reading too many threads on cables, analogue v. digital etc.!
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Today is Make The Christmas Pudding Day. The recipe calls for Calvados but I will use a strong cider instead. There are some seriously strong ciders out there.
Also the order for the Christmas joint to go in. Only me and my neighbour, so turkeys are safe from us. The original plan was for a free range chicken , but with bird flu, I’m not sure a free range , organic chicken will be available.
So the plan is free range pork (you can taste the difference)