On Boxing Day, the blockage was removed.
So it's here again. Humbug Day. I have visitors for the occasion which means I will look helpless in the kitchen until control of the cooking is taken out of my hands. It never fails. There are a couple of bottle-shaped things with my name on them and I'm pretty sure one is the Penderyn. I have also been dropping very strong hints about that USB microscope Neal Asher had, so we'll see how that turns out.
My vicious perfectionism has not permitted me to put out the next short story book because I want to check, double-check and then check all over again. This is why editors like me. I don't generally leave them with much to do. That doesn't guarantee the stories are any good but it does guarantee you'll be able to read them.
It'll now be after Christmas so it won't need to be purely about Christmas. The print version will have the cartoons. I decided to put the eBook-version cartoons separate as a free file because I'm not sure how it will look on an e-reader. Should be OK as a PDF on a computer screen but on a little Kindle, it might not work so well. It will therefore be free, as an experiment.
Tesco will be closed for the day. The effect was amazing. I was there yesterday evening after the main flock of gannets had been in and there were bare shelves everywhere. Staff trying to fill them and people with bulging trolleys emptying them. You'd think they were closing down for a month but they'll be open on Boxing Day.
When I was a kid, absolutely everything was closed by lunchtime on Christmas Eve and nothing opened again until the day after Boxing Day. Except the pubs. If you had a present that needed batteries, tough. You just had to leave it in the box for a few days. Nobody considered it at all unusual. Now, the thought of Tesco closing for a day induces panic.
Well, time to imbibe. Many thanks to all who sent in donations - I promise none of it was spent on anything sensible. Thanks to all the commenters (yes, even Drippy Doodlebug, for the entertainment) and I swear I'll be relatively sober by March at the latest.
There might be a post tomorrow. It might not make a lot of sense.
Don't forget to make sure the kids are tucked up tight after you've told them that a strange old man with a sack will be sneaking into the house when everyone is asleep. That's why there's so much glitter in your house, kiddies. It attracts old men who like children. Now go to sleep because if he finds you awake, well, we just don't know what he might do.
Ho ho ho.
30 comments:
Don't forget to make sure the kids are tucked up tight after you've told them that a strange old man with a sack will be sneaking into the house when everyone is asleep. That's why there's so much glitter in your house, kiddies. It attracts old men who like children. Now go to sleep because if he finds you awake, well, we just don't know what he might do.
Ho ho ho.
Off course he will have had a CRB check.assen
Happy Xmas, you old curmudgeon, you :-)
Merry Christmas from a US reader. Thanks for making this a wonderful year with your blogsite as it is.
Merry Christmas to you and all your readers.
Tesco stores may be shut on xmas day but they still do home deliveries...if you were quick enough to book one cos they all went within a matter of minutes. I just managed to get one for the 23rd.
Hopefully next year they'll offer more slots and help put the true meaning back into Mithramas.
I wonder if the zealots will be tucking into turkey etc tomorrow? If they are, then they should not be. Jollification is not on.
ALL THIS STUFF - ALCOHOL, FOOD. TOBACCO IS CARCINOGENIC!
Drat! I intended to be non-confrontational tonight, but the fact that it is almost impossible to comment on Frank Davis's site has wound me up.
The Nutter has achieved his objective!
The 'window' which I am typing this comment into is pathetic! It is small and cramped.
This window is beneath you, LI. Kick blogger into touch.
Wordpress is superior by miles.
Merry Christmas, hope you enjoy the midwinter festival and you get all the whiskey you deserve.
Marry Christmas, and I hope you've received all you wished for...
"When I was a kid, absolutely everything was closed by lunchtime on Christmas Eve and nothing opened again until the day after Boxing Day."
I can just remember that, but the Boxing Day sales (no food shops opened) were always a fixture during my formative years.
The horror, the horror...
Do everything online now, with a glass in my hand! Much more civilised. :)
I hope you get the microscope and have much fun with it. Merry Xmas!
Merry Christmas from sunny Athens, Leg Iron. Very best wishes for Christmas and a happy grumble-filled 2012.
Merry Christmas Leggy! Thanks for the ongoing hard work on your blog - "must read" stuff in my household!
Best wishes for 2012!
Merry Christmas from balmy Yorkshire.
If I don't go to the beach tomorrow I will be attempting to corner the market in marked-down plum puddings.
These have a very long shelf life and are excellent back-up dinners. Today's pudding has been in stock for four years, drinking up rum. It is now rum held together by fruit.
I'm looking in to the possibility of drying plums next year to start laying down a stock of home-produced puddens.
Have a great 'drinkfest' LI all the best to you and yours!
Keep up the good work.
This reminded me of your work.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/big-anti-tobacco/
Rgds
Bertie Bassett
Merry Christmas, Leggy! To you and yours and all your readers.
It will all be over soon, and tomorrow starts....what else? More shopping ;-)
My parents tried to buy me some booze from Tesco, but they said that all they could find was Bulmers' Pear Cider.
I'm not complaining. I had to go through that awful annual ritual of trying to wrap presents whilst being male and hungover, though. Does anyone else here hate sellotape?
Merry Christmas everyone, from here in Coronation Street country!
Merry Christmas Leg-Iron. Blimey, this time last year it was -14C, now it's 12+; altogether now
"Must be all that Global Warming!
I remember when Christmas Day was a normal working day in Scotland. It was a quiet day but the children had a present or two and my grandmother or mother cooked a three course special chicken lunch.
New Year's Day was the celebration time. The table groaned with goodies and there was always a wee gift on money for the children.
Happy days. :)
You created the blockage a long time ago as a way to keep out the pain. Generally, it’s the pain of childhood.
But now it’s become a SOURCE of pain.
Your own raw materials – your beliefs, attitudes, and so forth – have formed a blockage in your Emotional Wellspring.
And now you’ve been shut off from your own feelings. That’s what happens when you can’t feel your feelings.
If that were the only problem then it wouldn’t be so bad, because you could get to work on that blockage to end it. But we also develop a secondary blockage that keeps us from even engaging our main blockage!
See, if you could ‘get up close and personal’ with the blockage, you could begin the process of understanding and unraveling it. But because the blockage is painful – and we want to avoid pain at all costs – we actually develop a secondary blockage that keeps us from ever getting close to the source of the problem.
All we know is that we can’t feel much. Or if we do, then it’s too painful too much of the time.
The key to this mess involves first working with your secondary blockage. While you may have many different primary blockages – such as to love, intimacy, intensity, relationships, success, gratitude, etc. – each with their own unique sets of beliefs (and other raw materials) – you basically have only one secondary blockage.
That’s good news. Cause if you get rid of this secondary blockage, then you can systematically deal with each one of your primary blockages, if you choose.
Humbug is an old term meaning hoax or jest. While the term was first described in 1751 as student slang, its etymology is unknown. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to \\\'nonsense\\\' or \\\'gibberish\\\', while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of unjustified publicity and spectacle. The term is also used for certain types of candy.
In modern usage, the word is most associated with Ebenezer Scrooge, a character created by Charles Dickens. His famous reference to Christmas, \\\"Bah! Humbug!\\\", declaring Christmas to be a fraud, is commonly used in stage and television versions of A Christmas Carol and also appeared frequently in the original book.
P. T. Barnum was a master of humbug, creating public sensations and fascination with his masterful sense of publicity. Many of his promoted exhibitions were obvious fakes, but the paying public enjoyed viewing them, either to scoff or for the wonder of them. A famous humbug took place on the arrival of the actress and theatre manager Jenny Lind to America, just outside the showplace of P. T. Barnum, the New American Museum, in 1850.
Another use of the word was by John Collins Warren, a Harvard Medical School professor who worked at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Warren performed the first public operation with the use of ether anesthesia, administered by William Thomas Green Morton, a dentist. To the stunned audience at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Warren declared, \\\"Gentlemen, this is no humbug!\\\"[1]
different game same outcome.
boring disruption.
let the game commence!!
no chats or anything leggy....lol
Well done, Leggy - you've managed to collect both a troll and an Empathic Counsellor (hello, Blockage, Do you know what I'm feeling yet?).
Anyway, I need to go for a lie down. There's way too much blood in my alcohol stream right now...
pat nurse said:
the Dickhead just doesn\'t get that people like you and DP thrive on provoking
obsessive trolls
He\'s been banned from most other sites except those like yours because of the
fun you have in playing with him.
junican said:
Come on, Nutter! Hit me, hit me..hit me quick! Hit me with your rhythm stick!
Leg-iron said:
The lesson has ended? Damn, I was just getting interested.
thats what the three wise men wanted a troll to play with and as i was having such a good time, it seems a shame to finish
I don\\\\\\\'t want you to go away. I enjoyed the time Dirty European Socialist tried his games here and I look forward to our games.
Coal again this year?
Just a click, and the ramblings he put such effort into (ha!) are gone...
If he has anything amusing to say, or an actual argument to put forward, it will stay here.
If he puts up posts full of nothing, one click and the nothing is deleted back into the nothing it came from.
This part is easy.
Hey, I'm a (very dodgy) Christian. Can't we at least be kind to the Terminally Sad at this time of year?
On the other hand, sod that. Dickie, you have been righteously pwned (oh no,there I go speaking in tongues again...).
I once read of a bunch of biology students who glued together bits of different insects and asked their professor what it was.
Yes, he correctly identified it as "a humbug."
WV=cabless. No need to worry. It's only three minutes walk to the pub.
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