David Colker writes (needs free registration) in today’s LA Times:

How good are the readings? Varied, to say the least. Some are quite good, even excellent. Alex Foster of Nottingham in Britain has such a sonorous voice and gives such vibrant, classy readings that it sounds as if he came right out of a BBC studio.

*Blush*.

List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2005. Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.

Hmm. Might have to go back to my diary for this one.

Harrogate X
Harlech
Chesterfield * X
Near Le Touquet Paris-Plage
Between Arras / Cambrai
Reims
Eparnay
Troyes
Dijon
Geneva *
Basel
Chamonix Mt Blanc
Lyon
Vienne
Nice
Near Perpignan
Vernet les Bains
Not Bordeaux
Saintes
Carnac
Near Villers-Bocage
Paris
Boulogne
London
Blackpool X
Rome
Leominster

Hmmm. Well, unsurprisingly, the 6 week roadtrip around France (in italics) really racked up the places visited. Only visited my parents the once (although they came up here and we met up in other places).

If I hadn’t been on holiday (!) most of my nights away would have been for work reasons (marked X). Conferences in Harrogate and Blackpool. Nights in Chesterfield were mostly because I forgot that the car park I use gets locked if you leave it too late.

(Via)

I feel a little shell-shocked. I just did an interview over Skype with the Los Angeles Times about my work with Librivox. Very flattering journalist saying nice things about my voice.

Will have to look out for the article on Sunday.

I didn’t realise that Ian Ridley was blogging. But he is, has been for a long time, and his most recent post is a piece about the editor of The Liberal. This is the magazine calling loudly for Kennedy to resign, and the magazine that many of us in the Lib Dems hadn’t even heard of until The Guardian and the rest of the Fleet Street pack started to call it our in-house journal. (It’s not, we have Lib Dem Pravda for that, and Liberator if you want something a bit more insightful and less party-line.

Anyway, upstart “The Liberal” has a petition for Kennedy to go, which is dodgy at best for the reasons Ian explains. Hence the need for www.RammMustGo.org.uk.

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!