1797: Holiday Season

It was my last day of work before the Christmas holidays today, and I am very ready for a break.

Once again my mind is drawn to the fact that Christmas has become a less enjoyable, less meaningful event in my life with each passing year. The day itself normally ends up being fun — at least the part up to and including opening presents and eating lunch, after which comes the slightly uncomfortable part where no-one's quite sure if it's socially acceptable to go off and play with their respective presents — but that excitement that I'm sure used to be there is no longer present.

Perhaps it's to do with the fact I tend not to send cards any more. I haven't done for several years, largely because it seems like a whole lot of hassle for not a lot of gain. Or is that even true? It's certainly nice to receive a card from people who have made the effort — particularly those who are overseas, who oddly seem to make far more of an effort than my friends closer to home — but I haven't felt the motivation to write any of my own cards for years now, and I don't tend to receive all that many either. (I'm not sure many people do any more, to be honest, though I could be horribly mistaken and actually be some sort of social pariah, which isn't beyond the realm of possibility.)

Cards used to be an exciting time, though, particularly back at school. I'd get one of those big bumper packs of cards, mentally sort them from "best" to "worst" (and within "best", into "funny" and "vaguely romantic; suitable for people I fancy") and set about writing a significant number of them over the course of an evening or two. I'd then proceed to hand them out, either by hand or using the "post" service that the school sometimes ran around Christmas time, and then wait to get some in return. Then there came that magical moment where I'd open a card, see that someone I quite wanted to get off with had written "love" (perhaps with kisses) instead of just "from" and I'd get all excited, my mind firmly in denial as to the fact that they'd probably written it in everyone's cards, not just mine. I'd ensure, if I hadn't sent them one already, that they got one of my "best" cards in exchange.

I don't know. Maybe I'm missing a trick here. Cards are often cited as a good opportunity to remind people you care about (or at least think about occasionally) that you still exist. With the fact that I've been feeling a little bit isolated over the course of the last — few months? Few years? Certainly a while now — perhaps it would be in my interest to use cards to try and reach out to a few people I haven't seen for a while.

Or perhaps it's a futile gesture, encouraged as a means of card manufacturers to squeeze more and more money out of us every year as we're convinced that we have some sort of obligation to send small rectangles of cardboard to as many people as possible around this time of year, when in fact all we want to do is be left alone in a bit of peace and quiet to enjoy our turkey and presents.

One or the other. Either way, I'm happy it's the holidays, and hopefully the Christmas period will be a restful, relaxing time for everyone.

1442: Yearly Wasteland

We've reached that peculiarly barren time of year — it's no longer Christmas, but it's not quite New Year either. Some unlucky people have to go back to work for a few days — Andie is one of them — while the rest of us bum around, twiddling our thumbs and wishing we had more presents to open. (Actually, we will have a few more presents to open on New Year's Day, which is nice. I think I know what mine will be, and if I'm right I'll be very pleased with it.)

I feel a bit frustrated by the holiday season at the moment. I miss the "magic" it used to have when I was a kid. I'm not sure quite when it stopped being exciting and fun, but it'd be nice to get that back.

I've mentioned before my curious inability to express genuine-seeming outward signs of excitement, surprise or anything like that, and I have a feeling that may be something to do with it. I love opening presents and getting cool stuff, but I hate the pressure there is to look pleased with what you got. Everyone who buys you something is almost inevitably looking carefully at your face to see if you smile, grin, laugh or look disappointed at the things that have been purchased for you, and given that I feel enormously self-conscious about getting excited or joyful, my reaction often appears to be somewhat more "meh" than it actually is. I generally do like presents, whatever they are — because I'm not an ungrateful twat who returns gifts that other people have bought for him — and I am always appreciative when someone thinks of me and buys me something nice. It's just sometimes a bit difficult to show.

Same with New Year's. Everyone builds it up to be some kind of massive big deal, so when the time comes to actually say "Happy new year!" to people I feel very self-conscious and stupid. It feels like a cliche to say it. Well, it is a cliche to say it, but surely there's no better time to actually say "happy new year!" to someone than at one minute past twelve on New Year's Day. Garrgh.

One day I might get over all these stupid neuroses. Sadly, that day is not today, so if you are, by any chance, hanging out with me for New Year celebrations at any point in the future, I apologise in advance for my seeming lack of enthusiasm about the year increasing by one.

We're off out to a party at my friend Tim's tomorrow night to ring in the new year. There will be sausages. And no, that's not a euphemism; the plan is actually for there to be lots of sausages. This is a situation I am absolutely fine with.

There will be one last post of 2013 before the new year — that will hopefully be before midnight, if I remember — and then it's onward to 2014 and great things. Or just the same things as usual, but with a different number in the "YYYY" section of forms.

Anyway. Happy holidays or whatever.

1437: Merry Christmas Again

Well, I hope you all had a nice Christmas with lots of presents and too much to eat and all that jazz. As I said yesterday, Andie and I had a nice quiet Christmas with just the two of us (and the rats) — I'd seen my parents shortly before Christmas, and we're going to go see Andie's family on New Year's Day.

Not a lot else to say, really. There were presents, there was food — Andie's first time preparing Christmas lunch, and it was great — and then there was sitting around doing not very much.

I got a couple of board games as presents, and we tried one of them out. It's called Tsuro: The Game of the Path, and it's a deceptively simple little affair where you take it in turns to lay tiles with lines on them down on the board, then move any pieces that connect to the lines until they can't go any further. The aim is to be the last piece standing, either by causing all the other players to crash into one another, or to fall off the board. There's some sort of mystical Chinese theme about it all, but it really doesn't matter — it's a super-quick, simple but very clever little game that will serve as an excellent "filler" on board game nights, either to start the evening or as a palate-cleanser after something more substantial.

The other game I got was Android: Netrunner, a two-player card game that was originally a Magic: The Gathering style CCG, but which has now been transformed into one of those fashionable LCGs. (For those who don't know the different, CCGs are customisable card games, where you buy a base set and then add to it with blind booster packs and other expansions; LCGs are living card games, where everything you need to play is included in the base box, but there are also regular expansions — unlike CCGs' blind booster packs, though, LCGs' expansions always have the same cards in them so you know what you're getting.

The game itself looks fairly complicated but enjoyable, and I like the cyberpunk/hacking theme — it looks like it'll be an interesting and asymmetrical game for two players. Now I just have to make sure I can get people to play with!

On that note, it's nearly 4am since I accidentally Final Fantasy XIV for a bit, so I'd better go to sleep. Andie and I are going to pop out and perhaps spend some of our Christmas money tomorrow — I've certainly got my eye on Super Mario 3D World for Wii U, and potentially some other things besides.

I hope you had a thoroughly pleasant Christmas and some peaceful time away from the chaos of everyday life. Enjoy it for a bit longer before it all kicks off again!

1436: Merry Christmas

Technically this is my post for the 24th, but it's past midnight so I can probably officially say "merry Christmas" to you all. And possibly again tomorrow.

Christmas

Andie and I are having a nice quiet Christmas in our own place this year, with no-one having to travel anywhere. It will be nice to have a fairly chilled out day.

One thing we will sort of be missing out on a bit though is the fine art of the "family tradition". Everyone's family doubtless has their own little traditions and routines for Christmas Day, and when you're not spending said day with your family you either have to come up with your own ones, or adopt the ones you've known for the rest of your life by default. (That or attempt to ignore Christmas altogether; I did that a couple of years ago, not entirely through choice, and it was not altogether pleasant.)

The "traditions" Andie and I will be adopting once we get up later this morning will doubtless be a blend of both of our families' typical way of doing things. We've already done the "open one present at midnight" thing that Andie insisted on (a copy of the board game Tsuro — thanks Michelle!) but we will more than likely open presents in the morning, as is Davison family tradition, rather than in the afternoon, as is Capes family tradition. Because come on, presents.

Those who have been following this blog for a while will know that I haven't really had my heart in Christmas for a number of years now. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I have a feeling it's something to do with my own inability to express genuine-seeming excitement or happiness when put in a situation where it's expected. I really hate being put under pressure to "be happy" or "act more excited" because, in my mind, I picture an "excited" thirty-two year old Pete as an overexcited five-year old Pete with everyone laughing and chuckling at how adorable he is to be so excited. I of course know that this is completely stupid and that it's okay to be excited, but that doesn't stop me from feeling really embarrassed at the prospect of being excited and demonstrating anything more than a Fluttershy-style "Yay".

Still, even if I don't really show it at times, I am at least appreciative for a pleasant, enjoyable and peaceful festive season — and I hope all of you reading this are in the process of enjoying the same thing.

Have a thoroughly merry Christmas, everyone, and here's to a happy 2014 when it eventually decides to show its face.

1072: Christmas Day

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a good one. Mine was nice and quiet and relatively relaxing, which is, I guess, what it should be. There were no kids in the house (despite Andie and my parents' worrying obsession with the Santa NORAD tracker thingy) so it was pretty restrained.

Like I've said before, I sort of miss that feeling of excitement, though; that knowledge that on December 25th you'll have something awesome to unwrap and then spend the rest of the day scattering over the living room floor to play with. I had some pretty great presents over the years when I was a kid, ranging from a Super NES (unbelievably exciting at the time — and which I still own to this day, I might add) to a toy called "Manta Force" that was actually a giant spaceship filled with smaller vehicles and little dudes. On a subsequent Christmas, I got the Manta Force Battle Fortress, which complemented the main Manta Force set with a mountainside base that had working guns. That was awesome, though I never managed to get hold of a Red Venom (the "bad guys'" equivalent of the main Manta Force mothership), which was a shame. Still, the Battle Fortress was great fun to have two-player face-offs with.

This Christmas, I had a few cool goodies. Andie got me the world's biggest My Little Pony poster, which I'm looking forward to assembling (yes, it requires assembly, it's that big) and sticking on the wall of my new study. I got some books and some chocolate and a nice throw for our sofa that won't fit in our flat. And lots of money which I am looking forward to spending — the Wii U I acquired shortly before we came away will doubtless be getting some new game love (I'm thinking Mario at the very least — I haven't played a Mario game properly since Mario 64, I don't think), and I fully intend to pick up a copy of 999 for the Nintendo DS because I really want to play Virtue's Last Reward and everyone says I should play 999 first. So I will.

I've spent a bit of time rediscovering how lovely a piece of kit the Vita is, too. I downloaded a few demos and had a fiddle around with them. LittleBigPlanet for Vita looks lovely, for example, but still has floaty jumping that annoys quite a few people I know. There's a fun "brain training" game called Smart As… that features John Cleese on voiceover duties that seems quite fun, too, so I'm contemplating grabbing that as I always used to quite enjoy the old DS brain training games. (It is £20, though, which feels like a lot for that kind of game in these days of cheap crappy 69p apps, but I understand it has a healthy amount of content in it.)

I've resisted the Steam Sales so far, with a couple of minor exceptions — playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed got me in the mood to replay the Dreamcast Sonic Adventure games which I remember being praised quite highly back in the day (and enjoying a great deal) but which everyone seems to hate these days. I also have to play the rest of Sonic Generations at some point, which genuinely is good.

But anyway. I am just rambling away a load of bollocks now so I will curtail that forthwith and simply wish all of my readers a very merry Christmas, and a pleasant holiday season onwards towards the New Year.

1071: Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve. Technically it's almost Christmas Day. Exciting, huh?

I've noted this for the past few years, but I find it tough to get really excited about Christmas these days. I'm pretty sure this is fairly common for people once they get beyond a certain age, but it's felt particularly pronounced for the past few years. I'm not sure if it's because I've had a few Christmases that haven't been particularly merry, or because I've had a few years where my life hasn't been exactly what I'd call "on track", but eh. Whatever.

This year, theoretically, I am enjoying a Christmas where my life is getting back to where it should be; to where I want it to be. This is good. It still feels a little difficult to enjoy it though, to find it easy to lighten up, chill out and just accept that things are nice. The holiday season doesn't magically make your anxieties and worries go away, sadly, as these are things that stick with you through the best and worst of times.

But let's try not to be overly negative about the whole thing. Tomorrow is a day for eating to excess, for opening presents, for relaxing and doing as little as possible. It may lack that childish excitement over whether or not there's, say, a Super NES under the tree (largely because I am now old and affluent enough to purchase myself the modern-day equivalent the Wii U if I want one) and it may lack that particular "spark" that believing in Father Christmas involves, but it's a time of peacefulness, of trying to set your worries aside, and of enjoying good food and good company.

I'm sure tomorrow will be fine. And once the holiday season has passed by, we can really start to look forward to whatever it is the future holds. Hopefully the things that the future hold are good, and I can start enjoying life a bit more. That'd be nice. I would like to enjoy life a bit more.

Merry Christmas to everyone reading this. I hope you have a thoroughly pleasant day tomorrow, and eat your fill of turkey, stuffing, those little sausages wrapped in bacon and sprouts. (My fill of sprouts is "no sprouts". It is not hard to eat my fill of sprouts. Sprouts are disgusting.)

#oneaday Day 706: Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Well, actually, where I am, it stopped being Christmas Day about 38 minutes ago, but we'll let that slide for the moment.

I hope you all had a pleasant day out there and there weren't any family arguments around the Monopoly board. (You should all know by now that Monopoly is rubbish and you should never play it, not when there are so many good board games out there.) Much food and drink was doubtless consumed by all, and most of you (in European timezones, at least) will, if you have any sense, be tucked up in bed, thoroughly stuffed full of meat and, err, stuffing.

Some of you may, of course, be playing with whatever presents Santa decided to grace you with this year. And this is, of course, a perfectly acceptable way to spend the end of Christmas Day as Boxing Day comes along.

I had a good haul this year, which was pleasing. As I noted a few days ago, this was my first Christmas away from my own family for some time (disregarding the one I spent completely alone, tucked up in bed, ill) and so it was both nice and interesting to do things according to a "new" schedule. My family typically get up early, maybe have some breakfast and then get straight to opening presents, then have lunch and generally then spend at least part of the afternoon down at the home of local friend and Deep Purple keyboardist Don Airey. Meanwhile, Andie's family get up, have breakfast, maybe watch some TV, then have lunch and only then open presents. It didn't take as much adjusting to as I thought, and it made the anticipation of said presents rather pleasing — helped along by the opening of "stocking" presents the night before, which seems to generally involve a large bag full of food and silly little things. We now have enough Jaffa Cakes in our house to feed a small army.

As for the presents themselves, I had a rather good haul. I had a selection of board games, including the full four-player version of Blokus; cooperative and nightmarishly difficult disease-curing game Pandemic and its expansion On The Brink; and zombie-bashin' B-movie-inspired adventure Last Night on Earth (one of the only games I know that comes with a soundtrack CD). I also got a copy of Ready Player One, which I've been wanting to read for a while. And there was a Minecraft creeper T-shirt, so I can now publicly endorse Mojang's creation while out and about. There were other bits and pieces, too, including an iTunes voucher which I'm looking forward to spending, and a number of digital gifts from a variety of sources, which I shall enjoy investigating when I can tear myself away from both Minecraft and The Old Republic, both of which are proving enormously entertaining at the moment.

Star of the show for the day, I believe, though, was a Kindle from Andie. I've been pondering whether or not I want one of these for quite a while, as I also want an iPad. The Kindle is, however, 1) cheaper and 2) considerably smaller and lighter than an iPad, so it has its own benefits — not least of which is a well-established infrastructure in the form of the Kindle Store. Having used it a little bit today, I can confirm that it is a very nice device, with a lovely readable screen — the only real downside to it compared to an iPad (when looking at it purely as an e-reader, obviously) is its lack of backlight, meaning you can't read it in the dark. However, this is counterbalanced by the fact that it's much easier to read in bright light than the iPad or iPhone is. I've already bought my first book on it — Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek, which seems to be highly entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time, much like the man himself. I shall look forward to doing a lot more reading now I have a device specifically designed for it and no longer having to rearrange the bookshelves to fit new acquisitions on.

In summary, then, I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas. I certainly did. Here's to 2012 being a year of great things.

#oneaday Day 705: Jingle All the Way

Having just endured the annual musical ordeal that is Top of the Pops 2, I feel it would be remiss of me to not mention the phenomenon of the Christmas single.

They're… Well, they're not very good, really, are they? Even the well known ones. In fact, especially the well known ones.

Or perhaps they aren't. After all, everybody knows the offerings from Slade, Wizzard, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Pogues and Mariah Carey. The songs are certainly memorable. But does that make them "good"?

I'm not sure it's possible to really judge any more. Modern TV and radio exposes us to these songs on such a regular basis every year around the holiday period that it's difficult not to feel jaded by hearing them so often. And it's not as if they're the only Christmas songs around, either; in recent years we've had a spectacularly depressing offering from Coldplay; a monstrous collaboration between Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber; and an actually quite good (if self-consciously ridiculous) piece by The Darkness. So why don't we hear these other ones more often?

I'm not sure I have a definitive answer, save for the fact that it's a vicious cycle. Slade, Wizzard, Lennon, Carey et al are all regarded as the canonical "classic" Christmas songs, so they're the ones that get trotted out every year. In some cases, of course, these songs have been around for years, so they have something of a head start on more recent offerings.

This means it's entirely possible that in twenty years' time we'll be hearing nothing but Chris Martin's maudlin caterwauling and Carey and Bieber's horrifyingly creepy collaboration at work Christmas dos.

That's a frightening thought. Perhaps the dull droning of Christian hymns and carols isn't so bad after all.

Merry Christmas everybody. 🙂

#oneaday Day 703: Ding, Dong

I think there's something to be said for "ceremony" and "ritual". Not in the creepy hooded robe "I'm going to sacrifice you to Mara the penis monster" sense, but particularly with regard to Christmas.

I say this upon some reflection on my own lack of enthusiasm for the festive period which I've been suffering for the past few years. At least some of this general sense of ambivalence towards the holiday season can be attributed to my depression, I'm sure, but perhaps it goes deeper than that. Perhaps it's the fact that for the last [x] years, I just haven't really "celebrated" Christmas as I used to when I was younger. I rarely bother with cards, considering them something of a waste of time and money; I don't go out carol singing; I don't write letters to Santa; though I must confess I do enjoy giving presents.

Perhaps I should re-adopt some of these pre-Christmas rituals to get me into the spirit. For example, I fondly recall the whole Christmas cards thing from my schooldays. It was a time to quite literally take stock of how many friends you had — and back in those days we didn't have Facebook to make this process easier. No; you had to sit there with a notepad and a Tesco pack of 5 bajillion cards, writing each of them by hand and saving the "best" ones for the people you quite fancied. The following day at school, you'd give them out to people in person or, for those people you didn't really care about that much (harsh, but true) you'd put them in the school's "post box" system for some poor year 7s to come and collect and distribute later in the day. Following this, you'd eagerly grab every card you received, inevitably reading far too much into the fact that the girls you quite fancied put "love" in their cards while conveniently ignoring the fact that they'd put "love" in their cards to everyone, not just you.

And the whole Santa thing, too. The whole process of writing a letter listing all the things you'd like for Christmas, ending it with "I HAVE BEEN GOOD" while trying not to think about the thing you got told off for last week, leaving it by the chimney, eagerly awaiting a reply and then leaving a mince pie and glass of sherry by the fireplace on Christmas Eve; all that gave the whole experience a degree of magic that just isn't there as an adult. I'm not saying we should all start believing in Santa Claus (or perhaps we should?) but I am saying that Christmas as a kid was clearly better.

It was, though, wasn't it? You could always think of awesome things you'd like to get as presents. There'd be a "big present" to unwrap, possibly with smaller presents providing clues as to its identity. And you'd sit there smugly, thinking that you'd got the "best" gifts. (If TV is to be believed, you'd also have burst into tears if anyone had bought you a Soda Stream, but possibly not for the reasons the advert implies.)

So how to recapture that magic? I don't know. I'm spending my first Christmas with the girlfriend's family this year, and they have their own set of interesting rituals and ceremonies to take on. Will it be fun? I'm sure it will, but I doubt that magic of Christmas as a kid will ever be there again.

We'll see!

#oneaday, Day 2: Flubag

I can always tell when it's the holiday season. Because the holiday season is the Time To Get Ill. Almost without fail every single year, at some point around Christmas/New Year, my body goes "Nope! Had enough. Here's some snot. Happy Christmas!" and buggers off for a few days.

This year is no exception. I thought I'd escaped, because for the whole time I was over in California visiting my brother for the holidays, I was fine, despite everyone around me gradually sinking into a mire of barking repeatedly like someone with Spatchcock's Ever-Coughing Syndrome. Including the dog. Who was actually barking, not coughing.

On the plane ride on the way home, though, I felt the illness hit. Several other Spatchcock's sufferers on the flight coupled with yummy delicious recycled air being pumped around the cabin meant a breeding ground for germs. And sure enough… "Had enough. Here's some snot. Happy Christmas!"

Well, you're late, illness glands. And, you know, you really didn't have to get me anything this year. I just got you a bunch of pills, and I know you don't really like them that much.

The most irritating thing about suffering with Spatchcock's Syndrome is how difficult it makes sleeping. When you lie down in bed with Spatchcock's, you are constantly in one of two states: mouth-breathing, or coughing.

The mouth-breathing comes because your nose is so full of juicy snot that if you didn't mouth-breathe you'd suffocate and die, and suffocating and dying because of snot would just be embarrassing. If you do happen to get to sleep whilst in the mouth-breathing phase, your snores will qualify as some of the most disgusting noises on the planet and will probably involve bubbling. If you are sleeping with anyone at the time, this is a sure-fire way to find out if they really love you or not.

The coughing usually comes when you manage to clear your nose a little bit, and inevitably brings up more snot to join the party. The noise and the irritation in your throat wakes you and anyone in the same building up, and once it passes you're back to mouth-breathing again.

So you probably end up not sleeping until your brain is so devoid of power that it goes into laptop-style hibernation mode and fails to wake you up until lunchtime the next day. And because you slept at a weird time, you end up feeling crappy the next day, which compounds the whole situation further.

Eventually you just decide to not sleep any more until this dratted pox departs your system, during which time you gradually slip into a hallucinogenic fantasy which you can't quite decide whether is good or bad or somewhere in between and then you die. Possibly.

I am grateful for one thing, though: at least it's not full-on achey joints flu, which I've only been struck down with once at a time that happened to coincide with a Christmas I was set to spend alone in my house due to holiday retail work commitments and the rest of my family doing other things. Elsewhere. Without me.

Remind me why I want to get a job again?