Why do people hate to write Christmas Cards?



Christmas Cards....a necessary evil? All written listening to old episodes of the ARCHERS

 I know it is becoming unfashionable to write "Christmas" cards........what with the infamous nature of political correctness (GONE MAD!!!)  forcing people to "save paper" and the please all society refusing us Brits NOT to wish people "Happy Christmas" but to concentrate our card writing to wish everyone a non religious a more general  "happy Holidays"...perhaps sent in an e mail....

But, I must say, I have always enjoyed writing Christmas Cards!
It a ritual that takes time, discipline and effort.
True..it can get just a little boring when you have to pen a little "original"ditty to great Auntie Betty, but for the most part I quite treasure is the whole experience of putting pen to cardboard! In this day and age when no bugger I know can actually write a proper letter, a brief sentence on a Christmas card is perhaps the nearest we all now get to actual hand written correspondence!

 A Hand written card, to me, means effort and thought.( which I guess panders to my ego)......that's why I like receiving cards.....they make me feel.....well. liked and remembered! and more importantly...worth more than a just a quick typed email or God Forbid a bleeding text!!!!!! 

ps Nige...your pressie is in the big brown envelope

Love In

Molested by a bulldog

Blog Reality

Dan at (http://allthatcomeswithit.com/)

This afternoon fellow blogger Dan drove over from West Yorkshire to collect a handful of the runner ducks as a present for his kids. He is the first person from the strange world of blogland that I have actually met, and I must admit it felt just a little weird actually meeting someone whose words you have read over months and months of perusing the more interesting of online diaries.

Blogging has all of the benefits of reading a good book. Your imagination takes flight and all of those connecting "holes" in the narrative are filled with your own creativity and invention, so the reality of meeting a blog character, could well be a bit of a challenge to one's mental image of that person and indeed to the reality of the place they choose to show you through blog photographs and imagery.

I have mental images of.most of the  blog writers I have chosen to follow, even though I already know what some of them look like.
Maura,Kim and Dia in my mind, all have a look and the warmth of someone like actress Emma Thompson; whereas someone like  Tom leaves me with an impression that he is a kind of impish Nigel Havers......Jim, I am sure resembles everyones' favourite uncle and Tracey MUST have a bit of a young Joan Rivers about her......sigh, I could go on and on ........suffice to say that Dan, well just was  like I thought he would be, affable and down to earth.

Anyhow the rest of the short and cold day, I have been catching up with coop cleaning and field tidying. The fox is back as the the remains of the young cockerel that survived the snow last week was dotted near to the turkey enclosure. He must have been late back to roost on Saturday when I was away! I couldn't find him on Sunday when I returned!...turn your back for one minute and ALWAYS something happens eh?....I told you that he was on borrowed time

Albert watching the quail VERY closely as William looks on

Silent Monks Singing Halleluia

I just HAD to steal this video from fellow blogger Dave at
http://anothermilemarker.blogspot.com/ it is absolutely wonderful!
Another big up for being a University Student!
Enjoy!!!

Matt Cardle sings She's Always A Woman - The X Factor Live Semi-Final - ...

You'd thought I'd forgotten my Matt hadn't you?
Oh no...I just couldn't overlook the sexy Essex warbler!
Under par..... and full of man flu.....he's still in the game and I wouldn't mind mopping his fevered brow with a hankie!
No other news today......Chris is battling nicotine withdrawal....I am battling kitchen dirt.......and Constance, fed up with the cold weather pissed herself in her dog bed!!!
Yeap a normal day in paradise

A Winter Wedding in Sheffield



One of Sheffield's newer city centre Buildings

  Sometimes you just know that the warmth of catching up with old friends is well worth the effort,time and expense of a winter's journey.
Yesterday in a surprisingly easy trans Pennine rail trip, I descended into a somewhat snowbound Sheffield, to catch up with old bud Mike and to attend "Bel-Ami's" daughter's wedding "do".


The Christmas Tree in front of the Town Hall

  Despite my country wellies and woolly hat, it was  delightful to be back in my "home" city...and even nicer to have the briefest of vacations from animal husbandry and village claustrophobia!
I got to Sheffield at 3pm, checked into my hotel ( a treat from Chris), then had a mooch around the city centre as thousands of Sheffielders now free from the week's blizzard conditions, literally did the same.

The Christmas lights at Tudor Square

 I absolutely loved being "one in the crowd" and ambled around the Winter Gardens and the  Peace Gardens before stopping for a coffee in the  Millennium Galleries. I perused the books at Waterstones in Orchard Square, did a circuit of John Lewis and then, fully re urbanised went to meet up with Mike in All Bar One for wine, gossip and much chuckling

 At 8.30pm we caught a taxi to the Kenwood Hotel in Netheredge and arrived fashionably late for the wedding reception!
Weddings by definition are highly good natured affairs, and last night's "do" didn't disappoint . I caught up with more old friends , drank too much gin and woke up this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed and very happy after a rejuvenating "touching of bases"
It was lovely to see Mike, John (aka Bel), Bev and of course the bride...the gamine Elizabeth

Mike, Bel Ami,Filo, and fat bastard me

Part of the city centre this morning

The weather West of the Pennines was glorious this morning and the early rail journey home  was enhanced by a group of nine university students who embarked on a lively, intelligent and interesting debate on the merits of drone warfare in the seats behind me.
Polite, informed, opinionated and bright these young things  gave me an abject lesson in the positivism and optimism of youth......it was a welcomed change to listen to them talk----especially as the conversation was free of the usual vulgarities, celebrities and sex....subjects usually discussed by your average teen!
Who says a university education doesn't pay eh?

Anyhow now its back to normality.....to farting bulldogs, messy footprints in the kitchen and a field full of chattering beaks to feed............sigh!

Operation Wedding Reception

The  trains are getting through to Sheffield , so with trusty wellies on feet

Operation Wedding reception is on!!!

The Mist Revisited

The Walking Dead is Frank Darabont's tv remake of The Mist ( with Zombies taking the place of scary monsters) and with the series drawing to a close, I must say that I have really been caught up in this bleak journey into apocalypse.
The Mist is an interesting and underrated movie which took a cross section of  the American public and documented just how they fared when faced   with the deadly threat of supernatural monsters ( the monsters being an obvious metaphor for the terrorist threat post 9/11)

In a similar vein the few Atlanta survivors of the Zombie threat in The Walking Dead have to face their own demons, prejudices and sense of self as a result of disaster.(though the characters are not quite as defined as they were in the movie)
The survivor group  comprises of rednecks hunter and cop  Norman Reedus  and Jon Bernthal , moderate career girl Laurie Holden and liberal old guy Jeffrey DeMunn  as well as the usual mousy housewife, obligatory nice black couple and couple of cute kids and it is slightly unfortunate that we don't see quite enough of the psychological hoops the cross section of this American population has to jump through when faced with a terrible non homegrown threat.

I will watch with interest how this cracking and at times terribly tense tv series will turn out in the newly commissioned second series.................hummm if the same thing happened to me...I would be the soft as butter East Coast Liberal hiding behind the redneck holding a crossbow!