Home for a day

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

My parents’ cat

Stopped Clock

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

A stopped clock is right twice a day. The upper block is radio controlled and very accurate (the second hand moves in sync with the pips on’t radio). The lower clock hasn’t worked since Feb and we’ve never quite got around to getting it fixed.

The brick

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

This is the brick that was thrown through our kitchen window on Xmas eve. Police scene of crime have told us to leave the kitchen as is, bar the boarding up of the window, until they can investigate. This means we can’t take crockery, utensils or food from old kitchen to new, and means we’ll be sitting down to beans on toast later on. With cheese if possible.

I haven’t been a big one for Xmas festivities since I was a teenager. I find gift giving and even gift receiving a bit of a fag. I find it really desperately disturbing that a large part of the wheels of the economy depend on the results of the Xmas sales reason. The financial well-being of the nation depends on people buying mountains of unwanted, unneeded tat for each other.

But it doesn’t seem to be possible to opt out without being accused of hum-buggery or skinflintedness.

So I’m not at all bothered by enforced lack of turkey (we’ll be doing that with my parents on Boxing Day). I’m not at all bothered by spending Christmas Day hefting boxes and tidying the old house.

P prefers the kitsch and clamour and isn’t having so much fun: he says this is his second worse Christmas ever, second only to a day in his childhood when he was taken suddenly ill.

Stephen, who readers may know from his appearances on University Challenge, but who I know from umra, appears well on the way to getting his book published.

I mention this because in the comments section on the post, an American reader asks whether us Brits wish each other a Happy Boxing Day.

I quite like the idea, and will be taking it up.

Happy Boxing Day to both my readers!

Meanwhile, the house move continues apace. We’ve been sleeping uneventfully in our new house but approximately 40% of our possessions are still in the old one. The festive season means that our evenings have been as much social whirl as box-hefting. In particular, most of the kitchen is still in the old house. Hell, most of the kitchen isn’t even washed up. So what are we going to do for food tomorrow? We can’t live off nibbles from Lidl, much as I’d like to. I’m certainly not using the new oven for the first time to cook a full turkey dinner!

Hell yeah.

www.fuckchristmas.org

More delightful news from Lord Bonkers, in particular, how he manages his agricultural estates.

Earlier in the year he revealed his insistence on the $3-a-day EU subsidy paid for each cow be paid directly to the cow:

Did you know that each European cow is subsidised to the tune of $3 a day? As a Liberal I insist that this money is paid directly to the beasts themselves, and that has made a great difference to the rural economy in these parts with many cows now owning their own sheds, running small businesses and enjoying holidays abroad. I also touch upon the topic of ‘set aside’: this year I am not growing barley, but in past years I have not grown more exotic crops such as linseeds and lupins. Indeed, people would drive for miles to look at the brightly coloured flowers not growing amid the green fields of Rutland.

In his most recent Diary in Liberator, we are treated to details of the Rutland estate 4-year crop rotation system:

Here on the Bonkers Hall estate I have long practised the rotation of crops: clover one year, wheat the next, then turnips, then a cricket pitch and then back to clover. So it was that during the tea interval of my XI’s last match of the season I gave orders for the pitch to be ploughed up. There were one or two raised eyebrows when we went on to bowl the other side out cheaply, but I am sure all my readers will understand that my actions were motivated purely by a concern for the principles of sound agricultural management.

Subscribe to the magazine. It’s much easier to read than their slightly flakey website.

Is doing something tonight it won’t do again until 2023. According to Reluctant Nomad.

“I think people in British politics will be very pleased because they want a thirsting and thrusting Liberal Democrat party that’s out there making our distinctive case – and that’s what I’m getting on to do.” Charles Kennedy

Charlie, if I were you, I’d be downplaying the thirstyness.