A Child's Christmas in Wales

My favourite Christmas song is John Cale's "A Child's Christmas in Wales" which tends to hold on by a short head from Chris Rea's utterly timeless "Driving Home For Christmas" (seriously).

But Cale's masterpiece isn't really a Christmas song banging on, as it does, about Halloween and murdered oranges and the seduction of doors. Bizarre, unfathomable and utterly beautiful.

With mistletoe and candle green
To Halloween we go
Ten murdered oranges bled on board ship
Lends comedy to shame
The cattle graze bold uprightly
Seducing down the door
To saddle swords and meeting place
We have no place to go

Stick it on between Ella and Eartha during the Christmas meal and frighten the life out the relatives.

Santa Mantra

Must not tell the kids about Santa.
Must not tell the kids about Santa.
Must not tell the kids about Santa.

This is my mantra.

After all these years drumming the No GOD thing into them, this comparatively harmless belief is actually quite difficult to maintain.

Crafted for Christmas

In 1926, Stella Artois was brewed as a seasonal beer especially for the Christmas holiday market. In fact, if the new advertising campaign is to be believed, it wasn't "brewed" at all. It was fucking "crafted".

According to Andreas Hilger, Chief Marketing Twat for InBev UK:
"It (the advertising campaign) will raise awareness of the unique position held by Stella Artois as the quintessential Christmas beer and help retailers make the most of this key trading period"

There's a couple of "take-aways" for us here:

1. By dint of being brewed for Christmas (1926) Stella is now the "quintessential Christmas beer".

Leaving aside for a minute the fact that Stella patently is no such thing, can anyone explain to me in what sense is cold fizzy lager a suitable Christmas tipple? Perhaps a hot rum or some mulled wine could make that claim but certainly not fucking Stella. If it's anything at all it's a relatively inoffensive summer drink to throw back while the kids play in the paddling pool. Presumably by promoting themselves as a quintessentially Christmas brew they'll now admit that their product is wholly inappropriate for warm summer days?

2. Stella are doing this to help "retailers make the most of this key trading period".

In these troubled financial times their campaign will help give a leg up to financially beleaguered pubs and off licenses. It's all about philanthropy it would seem. The fact that they stand to make a tidy profit from the holiday period is only a nice little spin-off to their benign festive generosity.

Why not send these try-hard pricks an extra-special Yule-tide message by ignoring them and drinking warm ale instead. With added twigs and beetles for extra flavour. Now that's what I call Christmas.

Homosapien is Revolting

Including you! Especially you!

But Happy New Year anyway.

Seattle

Twitter
I’ve had no intanet access in these United States of America. Apparently it’s very rare over here. And you wouldn’t believe how much I’ve wanted, nay needed!, to twitter. But I’ve had no twittering mechanism and so many twitterworthy events have occurred. So I’ve just had to keep them all in. Or twitter to real people. That latter didn’t work out so well.

Cookies
We’re staying at a friend's house. They’re lovely people but they’re even lovelier by dint of not being here. They’re in Hawaii and we’re using their house. It’s a great house. A neighbour just came over with some C’mas cookies for us. He handed them over to my wife and then quickly realized that she wasn’t “The Hamilton’s”. So he took the cookies back again. I believe there was a slight tug-of-war but he won out.

If he didn’t give the cookies directly to “The Hamilton’s” he wouldn’t get any cookie credit you see.

Snow
Today my long held belief that I can control Celtic games by having access to them was shaken to it’s very core. I now suspect that it’s a load of old bullshit. I had absolutely no access to Saturday’s game. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it on tv or hear it on the radio. As mentioned, I had no intanet access.

I only found out that we’d won when my mate Brian texted me as I was walking in the snow for coffee. It was still dark and I’d already been up for 2 hours. I was very tired but, not for the first time, my unusually shaped friend had made me very happy indeed. So I threw a snowball at my wife.

Weight
Still tired today despite the fact that, by ignoring the kids in the night, I got much more sleep than my poor, fatigued wife. It’s a shame for her but, as I pointed out to her, there’s more of me. About 2 stones more and therefore I need more sleep.

2 stones more of sleep.

Pope
In the coffee shop this morning – Fuel! – I read that Our Pope – Benedict, I believe – has been saying that humanity needs to be saved from gays. He said, “saving humanity from homosexual and transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rain forests from destruction”.
Perhaps so, but not quite as important as saving the planet from deluded old fascists, I mused before dipping my biscotti into my double tall skinny.

35/31
In the way of jeans, I’m either a 34 or a 36 waist. And the length tends to be either 30 or 32. But, really, I'm none of the above. 34 waist can be too tight and 36 not tight enough. And 30 length can be too short and 32 not short enough. It's a real pain.

So I'm a 35/31, I think, but, sadly, there's no such size.

Or so I thought...

You can imagine my elation then whilst browsing the GAP sale rack to find that very size which heretofore did not exist. I grabbed them quickly and with shaking hands took them to the fitting room. 35/31, I though no such beast existed but I'd found them 'pon yonder rack I tried them on.

They didn’t fit.

SAM
We went to SAM which is the Seattle Art Museum, or SAM.

We parked in space 137 and my bag check number was 737. I thought this was pretty neat. Precisely 600 of a difference. I mentioned this to the coat check girl. Her stare was as empty as a desert.

After staring at some Singer Sergeants and some Hoppers for a while we went to the café. It was called SAM TASTE. As the guy made our lattes I asked him if he could maybe mention to his boss about an idea I’d just had.
Sure, he replied.
I told him that it was my firm belief that the café name should be changed from SAM TASTE to SAM TEAT.

SAM TEAT, I repeated. Geddit? SAM TEAT!!!

$16.95 he replied, already looking past me to the person behind me.

Praying
I read a book about how to pray. It said stop moaning to God. It said that He hates moaners and that You should stop asking Him for stuff all the time and simply feel His love.
I think that’s right. Can You feel it?

Dinner

A tremendous Christ'mas dinner, a right boozy do.

The crumbling beauty of Havana perfectly evoked.

Then retire to the sit oot-erie for port and Mamma Mia.

Mamma Mia, the difference between men and woman. WRIT LARGE.

Up very early for flight to Seattle. My wife said:
What do you want to do in Seattle?

Jump on a flight to Austin, I replied.

I was only jokin'. We get few a few scrapes.

Hallelujah

To X-Factor winner, Alexandra Burke, I would like to say this:

You don't really care for music do ya.

Holiday

It struck me, quite forcefully, this morning, like a snowball thrown by an American soldier, that holidays were a lot like work.

Except the hours are much longer and you have limited intanet access.

Talk

Going out tonight with a few close personal friends. Who I know from the intanet.

We'll sit round and have a few pints and an old chat. We'll take turns speaking and nobody knows what we'll talk about until we talk about it. We make it up as we go along you see.

None of this stuff will be scripted. It's quite nerve wracking.

Smiles

There's virtually nothing in this life that pleases me more than the smile on a child's face. Especially at this time of year.

Yesterday we went to see Santa and then to a magical Winter Wonderland. The children were so happy and were enchanted by the occasion. It was therefore with great sadness that I informed then that, very unfortunately, I had to quit that magical place to go to the pub. To see the Celtic game. It almost broke my heart but what could I do?

As I walked to the pub, my persona very much non grata, I met my cousin Audrey who is a very sensible woman. She hugged me and expressed surprise that at eight minutes past two of the clock I was walking loose on Princes Street rather than being in the pub, watching Celtic, where I belonged. I shook my head and told her how hard it had been to pull myself away from the children and their unbridled yuletide joy. She looked at me sympathetically and gave me another quick hug before sending me on my way to the pub. To see the Celtic.

C&W

One of my daughters, can't recall precisely which one, said to me yesterday,

Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas.

Don't kids say the cutest things?

In saying those words she accidentally recalled the precise title of a song by Alan Jackson. She also triggered a reaction in me which made me immediately set aside Mahler, Aphex Twin and their unremittingly demanding ilk. I realised that this Christmas would be a Country and Western Christmas and that, sadly, I would, indeed, get drunk.

I started this morning with George Jones. The greatest singer of them all. Then straight onto Dolly with her Coat of Many Colours. I even dipped briefly into the arch Big Hat himself, Garth Brooks. I only like one of his songs. I've Got Friends In Low Places. But, yessir, I sure do love that song a whole lot!

Slaid Cleaves and Hayes Carll were quickly followed by the great Lyle Lovett and that's what I have on now. I also have on one of my C&W shirts. Black with white trim. I didn't even mean to take things this far. I just stumbled to the closet and found my cleanest dirty shirt.