Category: Moaning

I probably do this a lot

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

I may have mentioned it before, but I have a spreadsheet for Chistmas.

It’s colour-coded and everything! BLACK is for presents ordered; RED for received; and BLUE for wrapped. Earlier this week, and at the risk of sounding like a football manager, I was looking at a rather daunting 9/21/3 formation. (Sick as a parrot, yes.)

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-21.jpg

That was until yesterday, when I spent a long time in the bedroom turning things blue (as it were). Now EVERYTHING is wrapped apart from eight blacks which are, let’s be honest, cutting it a bit fine.

I heartily approve of what seems to be ‘a thing’ with some online deliveries, that they come with a pack of Love Hearts. In the interests of fairness I’ve left one in situ (so if anybody shakes the box to determine what the present is, it makes a misleading rattle) and I’ve eaten the other. (WOW, smiley face, WINNER, and two ALL MINEs, in case you’re in the least bit interested.)

On the other hand, although I didn’t at this late stage in my ramblings expect to start moaning (he lied) I don’t approve of how many ‘Made in China’ labels I saw while wrapping. Can’t we even knock up a pair of slippers or a decent card game anymore?! (Oh! Spoiler warning – somebody’s getting slippers for Christmas)

That’s not an ‘isolationist’ rant, I know UK businesses sell into China, so inevitably the reverse must happen. But I don’t like, and this seems to be eBay in particular, when products aren’t advertised as such, it becomes apparent only when they arrive. I certainly have much more sympathy now for Grandpa saying “buy British” than I ever did at the time.

So, that’s ever-so-slightly made me see red – but I’ll try not to get blue about it! 

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-21-sweets.png

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

When I got into the office Thursday morning I discovered my colleague had switched our ‘background radio’ from Radio 2 to Radio 1. (I’d only taken a couple of days off, you see how quickly anarchy can descend!)

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-20.png

Friday afternoon I realised they were doing the Top 40 Countdown, and my heart sank at the prospect of a never-ending parade of the sort of bass-y, incomprehensible, occasionally sweary, modern music that leaves me cold.

It wasn’t like that at all, thank goodness. This being the chart of the week before Christmas, it was filled (naturally enough) with Christmas songs. Familiar songs – I nearly said ‘proper songs’ then – like Wonderful Christmastime, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, Driving Home for Christmas. Etc. Etc.

The big news of the day (at least according to the DJ, who mentioned it what felt like every ten minutes) was the race for number one, the main contenders being Wham (of course), Mariah Carey (of course) and upstart newcomer Kylie. (Spoiler warning! – Kylie ended up on top in that three-way (and yes, that sentence did sound better in my head)).

It occurred to me then, listening to Brenda Lee Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree (1958) and Nat King Cole doing The Christmas Song (1946!) that the modern chart doesn’t rely on there being a physical record on sale. Now that there’s downloading and streaming, and all that other stuff I don’t understand, ANY song can get to the top of the charts.

Given which, surely, we should all agree in eleven-and-a-half month’s time to put all our energies into getting a proper Christmas song into the number one spot.

Sorry Kylie, but in 2026 I want to be having a Wombling Merry Christmas. The campaign starts here!

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-20-wombles.png

Advent #17

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning, Money

I don’t really enjoy Christmas Markets.

I accept that’s probably my fault rather than theirs, I don’t much like shopping in general (and I’m certainly a very inept browser). But setting that aside, I have concluded that the best way to go to a Christmas Market is EITHER when you’ve already done all your Christmas shopping so you don’t have any pressure to buy anything; OR when you’re sufficiently well-off that you can, and in the words of Jessie J (ooh, look at me getting down wid da kidz) forget about the price tag.

We went to Exeter’s Christmas Market yesterday and as always there was lots of great-looking stuff. Putting aside my inner Ebenezer, I have nothing but admiration for the people who make jewellery or clothes or decorations or… well, or whatever it is they make; and then turn up day after day in all weathers to sell it.

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-17.png

But we all baulked, for example, at a range of gorgeous multi-coloured fleece coats which were priced at over £200 – at every turn, dare I say, there were prices which I think many, if not most, people would have to think twice about. Even the food stalls, which looked to be doing the roaringest trade of anybody there, seemed expensive. But given that, as Napoleon said, an army of shoppers marches on its stomach, I guess they had a kind of ‘captive market’ thing going on.

I moan about going every year but despite that, I wouldn’t want the place to close down. Still, in these times where most people seem to be more and more battered by the cost of living, I worry. It would be an awful shame if all those creative sewers and silversmiths and artists ended up pricing themselves out of the (Christmas) Market. 

Advent #15

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-15.png

Our edition of A Christmas Carol also contains a story called The Chimes which I must confess I’ve never felt the urge to read. I’ve never once heard it mentioned either – like hot towels on airplanes and the Tokyo tower, it exists but is never discussed.

Having recently (finally!) read it, I can see why.

I don’t claim to have read a lot of Dickens, but what I have read is very… wordy. An odd criticism of an author perhaps, but he takes a long time to say anything. I can remember Dad once observing, of the “It was the best of times” opening to A Tale of Two Cities that if one of us had put all that in an essay the teacher would have red-penned through it and told us to get on with it!

I appreciate it’s something of a nerve criticising not just one of England’s finest writers but also one of its finest citizens, but I always get the suspicion he has a contract saying he’s paid by the word, and is determined to make the most of it before his publisher catches on.

The Chimes has plenty of words, but the story they tell is a pale imitation of A Christmas Carol. Toby Veck (no, me neither) is visited by the spirits of the church bells; he sees a horrifying vision of his daughter’s future (she’s unmarried – terrifying stuff); and then, erm, he wakes up and it doesn’t happen after all and everybody lives happily, if inexplicably (and presumably still overworked, poor and starving) ever after.

Our edition of A Christmas Carol (and The Chimes!) is also labelled ‘Volume 1’ – it turns out Dickens did three more festive stories after this one.

So there may well be more words on the subject next year!

Advent #1

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: xmas25-1.png

Sometimes Christmas creeps up on you slowly. Mince pies for sale. Annuals in the shops. Even just that certain tingly thrill in the air.

Sometimes, however, it punches you hard in the face without warning at quarter past eight on the fith of November which was exactly what happened this year when Radio 2 decided that was the day to premier Kylie Minogue’s new Christmas song.

For the avoidance of doubt, this isn’t some sexy clubsound floor filler, over which a wily producer has cynically added a few sleigh bells to cash in on the season – it’s a full-blown, full-on, unashamedly Christmasy Christmas song. It is called, in case there remained any uncertainty, X-M-A-S. And apparently it’s just one of FOUR (!) new songs on the updated re-release of Kylie’s 2015 Christmas album, one of the others being called “Office Party”. The mind boggles (and what even rhymes with ‘photocopier’ anyway?).

Much, much too early – and yet somehow, in some way, the floodgates opened then and there. Within a week I was getting emails from Waitrose promoting their Christmas food (one came with the ever-so-slightly-menacing subject line, “Mince pies are just the beginning”). By the following week there were not just trees in people’s houses but outside lights too, and I found myself ordering from the Christmas menu at Wetherspoons. By the time Doctor Who was celebrating its 62nd Birthday (23rd November (of course)) even my brother had his Christmas tree up.

The upshot of all that being, I guess, never mind “it’s December 1st, here we go”  – the countdown to Christmas has been going on for almost a month already!

As for Kylie, is X-M-A-S catchy enough to net her the coveted Christmas number one slot…?

She should be so lucky.

A Stupid I.D.ea..?

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

I have to assume Keir Starmer ISN’T an idiot.

I appreciate that there are countless examples of people in high positions who are patently unsuited to their roles, but Starmer was on top of his brief as Shadow Brexit Secretary, he was formerly Director of Public Prosecutions… Surely he CAN’T be stupid?

But he does make it awfully hard to believe that.

The latest idea to bubble to the top is Digital ID Cards, something not even in the wind Wednesday, rumoured Thursday, and announced Friday. Setting aside the “is he or isn’t he a thicko” debate, I admire his willingness to announce schemes that NOBODY wants. Freezing the pensioners, playing swapsies with the French, and now this.

Digital ID Cards are absolutely essential (apparently) to crack down on illegal immigrants, by preventing them working in the UK. (We presumably have to set aside the implication that therefore he’s giving up on stopping them actually getting here in the first place.) Because employers will need to check ID before employing anybody.

I mean, yes, I guess, on the face of it, maybe, that does sound reasonable. But alas, only if you are (as suggested above) a stupid idiot. Because he would surely only announce such a scheme if he was somehow blissfully aware that we already have the National Insurance number. That is, a UNIQUE number for EVERY person, used by every employer for every employee on the PAYE system.

In the old days, I’ll accept, it would be pretty easy to fake that – we all know the format so giving your new boss a credible number would be child’s play (they don’t call me Mr AM 44 51 28 C for nothing). But for at least the past decade each time an employer runs their payroll they have to submit it electronically to HMRC.

In other words, it is now easy for HMRC to check that ALL the numbers on ALL the payrolls in ALL the UK are correct. Not just correct, it should also be easy to check that each NI numbers is only being used once. Being a UNIQUE number it would be pretty easy for an exceptions report to highlight any number linked to a worker in Dumfries AND also somebody drawing a pension in Sidmouth, or signing on in Maidstone. The optimist in me would like to think there’s ALREADY such a report (because in a sense, if nobody is actually checking anything, why are we submitting payrolls to HMRC in the first place?) but even if there isn’t, I suspect any half-decent programmer could get one knocked up in a morning.

The problem with the system, presumably, is that (shock!) sometimes employers DON’T put people through their PAYE system. Or, less illegally, maybe they use self-employed workers. Self-employed workers do of course also need an NI number for their tax returns. But at the risk of being branded a cynic, if I was working illegally, in a country I wasn’t supposed to be in, I probably WOULDN’T bother submitting a tax return.

At a time when we’re constantly being beaten around the head with the fact that there’s not enough money for repairing schools, recruiting dentists, heating pensioners, it constantly surprises me how much money apparently IS lying around for what feel increasingly like another of Homer Simpson’s “crazy schemes”. If checking up on illegal workers really is a big thing, then it’s surely cheaper & quicker to make the current NI system work properly, than to implement and enforce a whole NEW system. And if the reason is that they can’t make THAT system work, why on Earth do they expect more success with a NEW one?!

It’s almost a secondary point but the other puzzling thing is that, despite it being so vitally important, the intention is only for the Digital ID scheme to be in place by the end of this parliament. To me “I can get it done in four years” doesn’t smack of urgency – but it does slightly have the feel of, if there’s any problem with it at least it won’t be MY problem.

Hmm. Maybe he’s NOT so stupid after all.

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Moaning

It’s just an opinion, but I think the tide may have turned against the Christmas card.

Don’t get me wrong, ours have been sent out as usual (both of them). But we’ve only received three, which is less than previous years. I’m choosing to take that as a positive (as opposed to an “are we sending one to that old grump this year?!”). Not necessarily a positive in the sense that finally people are coming round to my way of thinking, but at least in the sense that in the modern age when we’re worried about natural resources and we have other means of communication, maybe the humble Christmas card (humble in isolation, not so humble if Google is correct in telling me the UK sends over a billion (!) each year) has had its day.

I appreciate there’s a lot of employment generated by the greetings card industry. And yes, true, it keeps the Post Office and the Royal Mail busy. But apart from that, what have the Romans ever d– Sorry, no, what has THE CHRISTMAS CARD ever done for us?

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: card-1.jpg

My cousin and her wife have rather brilliantly side-stepped the whole knotty problem, and their ‘cards’ always arrive in the form of decorations of some sort. This year’s, for example, is a stylised Christmas tree. Or at least, it is now we’ve got the hang of the assembly instruction and put it together properly (there may have been just a hint of Celia Imrie and Victoria Wood’s, “apply to bracket D with flange channel outermost” to proceedings). After Christmas it will join its predecessors, and go back in the box of decorations ready to be reused next year. Brilliant.

Anyway – that’s quite enough rambling on from me.

I wouldn’t want you to get card-bored!!

Advent #16

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: 12days.jpg

It’s time to get something off my chest. Namely, the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like the tendency for people to sing “GoldEN rings” instead of “Gold” – I don’t like the debate about whether twelve is drummers drumming or lords a-leaping – and I don’t like novelty celebrity versions. No, not even Julie “And a de-li-cious chocolate éclair” Andrews.

I mean, I probably OUGHT to like it. The song is just a list – and I’m a Doctor Who fan and we LOVE a list. Oh, but except that it isn’t just A list is it? It starts off as a list of birds (other than five, for no fathomable reason) but then at about seven or eight the author ditches that and starts yammering on about maids and pipers instead. A bit like the ‘play within a play’ business which Shakespeare totally forgets part way through The Taming of the Shrew.

But what I most especially dislike, is this modern trend of claiming that the poor benighted recipient gets TWELVE partridges (in TWELVE pear trees). OK, at a push I will accept that IN THEORY the song says that – but we surely haven’t spent all these years patiently explaining to the fundamentalist Christians that it might actually be an allegorical tree and that there never was a talking serpent; just to get all militant about the wording of this wretched carol.

In the old days, it was taken as read that this was a daily recap and that there was only ever one partridge, all the way up to only one batch of twelve drummers. And only five, NOT forty, golde– gold rings.

Anyway, I’m now off to take some deep breaths. And that’s all I have to say.

On the sixteenth day of Christmas.

Advent #7

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Christmas, Family, Moaning

Not to knock our local shops, but as a rule if we need to do any ‘serious shopping’ we go up the road to Barnstaple – although I’m old (and grumbly) enough to think that, without Menzies, without Woolworths, it’s not what it used to be.

At Christmas however, things get even more serious and we go to Exeter. Exeter doesn’t have a Woolworths either (obviously) but it does have an HMV, two Waterstones, and a Partri– sorry, no, and an outdoor Christmas Market.

Oddly, given that it’s no further from us than Exeter, we never shop in Plymouth.

We did venture to Plymouth at least once when I was young – possibly just once,  given that my Mum recalls it as a fractious and largely-unsatisfying Christmas shopping trip. I don’t remember it at all, so either it was actually perfectly fine and she’s worrying over nothing – or it was so bad that I’ve blotted it out. Either way.

Maybe there’s something about Plymouth that makes it forgettable (I mean, maybe it’s my poor memory but sure, let’s blame Plymouth instead) because likewise I remember almost nothing from another Christmas shopping trip there, during mine and bruv’s ‘hilarious flat-share comedy’ era.

This was in December of 1993 and I can be certain of the year because of the only thing I remember about the entire day (having forgotten why we went, where we went, what we bought, what we did). Which is that our friend Colin came with us and bought the Mr Blobby single on cassette and although we surely CAN’T have had it playing all the long way home (can we??) it very much felt like we had.

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: blobby.jpg

Ironically, given how traumatic an experience that was, I haven’t managed to forget it at all. Blobby blobby blob!

Advent #4

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: humbug-hat.jpg

I have a Christmas jumper.

Well sort of. Leastways, it’s more Christmassy than my non-Christmas jumpers (or ‘jumpers’). I was considering wearing it last Saturday to the big Christmas light switch-on. But below a grim-faced Darth Vader (as opposed to, what, the flirty, playful-faced Darth Vader you usually get on jumpers?) it says ‘This Is My Jolly Face’ which I concluded was not quite the right tone after all. In similar vein my wife has a Santa hat, but in black and with ‘Bah Humbug’ on the front. (My apologies to any Victorians reaching for the smelling salts due to my shameless use of the H-word on a public forum.)

Taking things to another level, my daughter’s neighbour has an inflatable Grinch outside their house! Well, they did on Sunday afternoon. Monday, it was gone. But yesterday it was back again – which is why I inadvertently found myself saying “Hurrah, the Grinch is erect” (a thought we could all have done without):

The Whos down in Whoville

Were peaceful and placid

But the Grinch on the mountain

He was anything but flaccid, etc

There’s certainly a place for this ironic, ‘pretending to be grumpy about Christmas’ sort of schtick. But there are also people who AREN’T pretending, and genuinely DON’T like Christmas – which is fine, just as there are people who don’t like it when the World Cup is on, or Glastonbury is all over the BBC.

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: darth-jumper.jpg

What irritates me is when they try to inflict their displeasure on everybody else, as if nobody should enjoy it. We can’t all like the same thing, but even if you hate Christmas there’ll be something along soon that you CAN enjoy (January probably).

In the meantime, grit your teeth and accept that some people like it.

And, er, may the Force be with you?