Driving Home For Christmas...
I hate that song. I really do. It's been on repeat on the music channels with its truly horrible video of B-list celebrities and T4 presenters faffing around with Lionel Blair whilst all wearing Christmassy jumpers.
I've touched on the subject of "home" before in here, in fact I've written a blog entry about how grumpy I get at Christmas time before, too - it's here
The Christmas grump took over me again this year, too. Everyone trying to enforce happiness on each other as if we'd all stumbled into some hideous worldwide Disney Park where being "slightly grumpy" is banned and smiles are painted on for all to see.
But Christmas is pretty much over now, and we can get the "cheering at an arbitrary number going up by one" out of the way at New Year and then everyone will return to normal. I can't wait.
I'm working between Christmas and New Year this year. Whenever you tell anyone that, they usually respond with a mixture of surprise and sympathy. It's true that one of the main reasons I'm working this year is that I didn't work last Christmas as I'd only been in the job for a few months. But I'm actually looking forward to three days in the office where I can get stuff done without interruption, and can do lots of those tasks which have been sitting on my list for a month or two, and have never been urgent enough to interrupt the ongoing day-to-day.
I think I've written about New Year Resolutions in here before, too. I don't tend to do them. Although if you take a break at Christmas, it's a good idea to take stock of your life and decide to make some changes, it's unrealistic to expect that if you've been smoking for 20 years saying "I'm going to stop now" will be any more effective just because it's January. I can feel the Christmas grump still in me, slightly. It's fading, but it's still lingering, I think.
But whilst I've still got some grump in me, here's a thing - why has nobody cancelled QI yet? It used to be good. For the first series or two, it was new and exciting and - dare I say it - interesting. It's now become some kind of pantomime for Alan Davies to play the jester and Stephen Fry to show us all how clever he is. Somebody stop it, please.
I was watching an episode in this latest series, and Stephen Fry said "I'm going to do a thing which has never been done before" and proceeded to shuffle a pack of cards. That was it. His argument was that because there are so many possible arrangements of a pack of cards (52! is quite big I suppose) that meant that the particular combination he'd come up with had never been seen before. So many shades of wrong.
Stephen Fry is undoubtedly a genius when it comes to language and the arts - but I do wish that he'd either read some maths and science books or stop trying to talk about the subjects - it's frankly quite embarrassing...
There. Grumping done. I'll be happy until next Christmas now...
I've touched on the subject of "home" before in here, in fact I've written a blog entry about how grumpy I get at Christmas time before, too - it's here
The Christmas grump took over me again this year, too. Everyone trying to enforce happiness on each other as if we'd all stumbled into some hideous worldwide Disney Park where being "slightly grumpy" is banned and smiles are painted on for all to see.
But Christmas is pretty much over now, and we can get the "cheering at an arbitrary number going up by one" out of the way at New Year and then everyone will return to normal. I can't wait.
I'm working between Christmas and New Year this year. Whenever you tell anyone that, they usually respond with a mixture of surprise and sympathy. It's true that one of the main reasons I'm working this year is that I didn't work last Christmas as I'd only been in the job for a few months. But I'm actually looking forward to three days in the office where I can get stuff done without interruption, and can do lots of those tasks which have been sitting on my list for a month or two, and have never been urgent enough to interrupt the ongoing day-to-day.
I think I've written about New Year Resolutions in here before, too. I don't tend to do them. Although if you take a break at Christmas, it's a good idea to take stock of your life and decide to make some changes, it's unrealistic to expect that if you've been smoking for 20 years saying "I'm going to stop now" will be any more effective just because it's January. I can feel the Christmas grump still in me, slightly. It's fading, but it's still lingering, I think.
But whilst I've still got some grump in me, here's a thing - why has nobody cancelled QI yet? It used to be good. For the first series or two, it was new and exciting and - dare I say it - interesting. It's now become some kind of pantomime for Alan Davies to play the jester and Stephen Fry to show us all how clever he is. Somebody stop it, please.
I was watching an episode in this latest series, and Stephen Fry said "I'm going to do a thing which has never been done before" and proceeded to shuffle a pack of cards. That was it. His argument was that because there are so many possible arrangements of a pack of cards (52! is quite big I suppose) that meant that the particular combination he'd come up with had never been seen before. So many shades of wrong.
Stephen Fry is undoubtedly a genius when it comes to language and the arts - but I do wish that he'd either read some maths and science books or stop trying to talk about the subjects - it's frankly quite embarrassing...
There. Grumping done. I'll be happy until next Christmas now...