Backwards In High Heels

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone.

I wish you all health, happiness and peace in 2009. If you get those you are wealthy...okay, the gas board won't accept them as legal tender but trust me they are true wealth.

From every angle we are told how awful 2009 will be. It may be the effect of Pollyanna being shown on tv today but I live in hope that sometimes the worst of times brings out the best of people.

One thing I would like to see, or rather hear, is a change of vocab' in 2009. I'm so bored of 'chav', 'gay' and the continual removal of vowels by the under 16s. I would like to see some words I haven't heard in recent years make a comeback, notably: cadswallop, rapscallion, twaddle, huzzah and whither.

And whatever you do, try and do something the Daily Mail would brand as beyond the boundaries of taste and decency once a week. You'll feel so much better...

Twas The Season To Be...

Jolly? Grumpy? Guilty? Which were you?

I managed all three at one point or another. I love Christmas but in recent years they have been difficult mainly due to chest infections and illnesses. But still I cling to the hope that I will get back that magic cheer that Christmas has. Rose tinted glasses rimmed with holly I suspect.

One glorious moment of Christmas cheer was visiting a local church Christmas tree festival. Coming from 'up dale' Christmas trees were banned from our church when I was little. Well the elder aunts from those days, the ones who wore hats in church even if they were there cleaning, would be as appalled as I was overjoyed.

I was expecting perhaps 7 or 8 trees in the church but walked into a veritable wonder land with 82 trees of one type or another crammed in. Each was decorated by a different group. The Brownies decorated their's with homebaked cookie decorations, the local dog's charity had pictures of those dogs looking for new homes. The local children's hospice had rememberances of those who they said goodbye to this year which was heart rendering.

There was tea and biscuits, a raffle and the most wonderfully welcoming congregation.

And from that lovely thought I shall skip to my number one moan of Christmas 2008 - blue lights. So many houses are adorned with blue lights. They are not Christmassy. Red, green, gold and clear lights I will allow but not blue. Blue lights should be left to police stations and colour blind prostitutes.

I Thought I'd Won The War...Then Lost A Battle

Damn, I was being so pleased to have avoided the flu that I didn't see the advancing armies of a cold. Struck in on Saturday and is refusing to budge leading to blocked nose, chesty cough, heavy eyes and bouts of 'poor me'.

So I'm off to try and plough through my exceedingly long and unseasonal to-do list (motor racing in December?!) though I'd rather be here as there is so much in the news I'd like to rant about....