Eat, drink, be merry
The celebrations related to Christmas generally have the objectives:

• Eat as much as you can stuff into your face
• Drink constantly

I’m not sure about anybody else, but I wouldn’t be feeling particularly merry if I was constantly stuffed to the point of feeling sick and drunk on top of it. Well, mildly tipsy would be nice, but I’m only allowed to sniff the sherry trifle and have a small slice of my booze-soaked Christmas cake.

In “way back” times, when people were poor and food scarce during winter, this mid-winter blow-out was a justified treat and it probably only lasted for a day. Now, in the modern western world, we’re a bunch of over-fed, privileged fat bastards anyway AND the celebrations last for at least a week. But it’s almost impossible to not grab another handful of peanuts, or another couple of chocolates from the selection box, or another sausage roll from the buffet table (especially when guilt-trip Mother is stood around, reminding you how long it’s taken her to prepare it all).

In years gone by, I’d take responsibility for supplying a fair bit of the booze for the Boxing Day running buffet and party. I love sherry and I’d buy a litre of the stuff to sup on (as well as the wine and beer that I’d also consume by the case-load). It’d really piss me off when guests suddenly decided that they also liked sherry too and I’d have to grudgingly pour them a glass as I got myself a top-up. Sherry is one of those drinks that everybody jokes about, pretends not to like, but they all guzzle the fucking stuff when it’s on offer!

Fuckers.

With drinking out of the question these days, I just stick to ensuring that there are enough cocktail sausages for the buffet. Just because you kick a habit, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a problem. So when people ask me if I’m OK with them drinking, or more specifically, whether I’m OK with having a huge glass of wine near me at the dinner table, the answer is always “Oh yeah, it’s fine”, when actually, it’s hell and the smell of it wafting up at me knocks me for six. But you can’t begrudge people having a drink and enjoying themselves. What you can get pissed off about is when they realise that they’ve had enough, that they don’t want to drink anymore and so they move on to drinking…. MY PEPSI MAX!

That is taking the piss.

When you run into a theme of posts (Sniffy advent), you tend to forget what you’re really about. Not that I’m implying that my blog has anything as grand as a “theme”, but whatever Cakesniffers is has been lost a little bit over the past few weeks.

Does it matter? Does it bollocks!

I guess if I hadn’t posted recent things under the Sniffy Advent heading, nobody would’ve noticed any difference and I wouldn’t be concerned about my lack of creativity or inspiration. Let’s face it, at this time of year, people are busy preparing for Christmas and Christmas is all-consuming. You have less time to post to your blog and what comes out is what has been on your mind during that day, i.e. Christmas stuff.

Anyhoo (I’m going for Canadian citizenship and I need to start learning the language), what else has been going on or interesting me during December? Not much in all honesty.

About the most exciting thing was the moon as it rose in the sky ahead of me on my journey home this evening: it was HUGE. Apparently, it is the largest we’ve seen it in the UK for nearly twenty years and, my word, I was pretty moved by it all.

It strikes me that we go through our lives without noticing or really appreciating the things that go on around us. All sorts of amazing things are taken for granted. Could you imagine if the moon suddenly disappeared? What excuse would the cats have for going mental each month?

Put your hands all over my body
A suggestion has come through to post about erotic dreams. I don’t think I ever have them, I’m sure I’d know about it if I did. I have plenty of dirty thoughts though.

It’s not often that I remember my dreams unless they are nightmares, which I seemed to have frequently and recurrently when I was a child. The strangest thing about being on antidepressants (apart from them giving me narcolepsy) was that I suddenly started noticing my dreams. It was very worrying to realise that these drugs were altering the balance of your brain chemicals; the things that affect the way you think, act, live. I don’t recommend them to anybody.

Farts

I seem to have been quite gassy these past couple of days. This is now becoming rather distressing since I seem to be followed by a cloud of shit-smell a la Pig Pen from Peanuts.

Some photos of Manchester
Just thought I’d throw these in.

I still can’t get Mistletoe and fucking Wine out of my bloody head.

Always Coca Cola
I bloody HATE Coca Cola, but I really, REALLY detest their sanct(Santa)-fucking-monious advertising at Christmas. “Holidays are coming, holidays are coming… Always Coca Cola.”

Whether it be polar bears, Father Christmas, train things, whatever shitty advertising they use, I bloody hate it with a passion. Polar bears drinking Coke? Are they fucking stupid?

This year’s advertising on the radio features “World music”, which I hate even more than Coke. I particularly detest that sort of African sound (you know like from Paul Simon’s “You can call me Al?”) and of course one of the adverts features this type of music with the singers clearly delighted that the Coca Cola brand has reached their community and the factory in the nearby town is sucking all the water supply while crops fail because of drought.

Fuckers.

Coca Cola – Official sponsor of Christmas.

In addition to all this, the fucking Coca Cola “Holidays are coming” song is now living in my in my head. It’s driving me mad. Still, it’s a change from “Mistletoe and wine”, which seems to have been coming and going in cycles for the past few days.

Must get a different Christmas song in my head, I can’t cope.

I’d like to thank the road planners in Warrington for their excellent road layouts, lane markings and road signage that all contributed to me looking a complete and utter twat this evening.

All traffic from the M56 motorway heading towards Manchester was diverted because the road had been closed. After two hours of crawling in first gear, I finally made it to Warrington town centre. Through absolutely no fault of my own, I repeatedly found the lane that I was travelling in would be diverted off and that I’d have to queue jump to get back into the lane I was supposed to be in. No signs, nothing. Utter fuckers.

Why was the motorway shut? Some tosser was running from the police and ran onto the motorway where he was hit by a car and killed. Thick fuck. Can you imagine the thought processes? “Oh, I really don’t want to get caught by the rozzers and face up to 3 months in prison. I’ll run away from them onto the motorway and get flattened instead.” Stupid twat. I feel sorry for the poor lass that hit him; she was injured in the incident and will have that awful memory with her for a very long time.

I don’t understand why they had to shut the fucking road for so long. They should’ve either left him there to get ground into a pulp and absorbed by the tarmac, or just shut the motorway for long enough to drag the body to the verge. Why did they need to shut it for over three hours? Especially when they knew that lots of traffic would divert through Warrington and get road raged for accidentally being in the wrong lanes at roundabouts that have no signs.

During this epic adventure, I luckily had a can of pop with me for the odd sip of refreshing caffeinated goodness (while stationary, in neutral with handbrake applied of course). I may have been able to quench my thirst, but I couldn’t do much to prevent loss of visual accuity due to my, now legendary, contact lens failure. But this wasn’t the worst thing about the ordeal, oh no. The worst thing was the fact that I was trapped in an enclosed space while doing the most horrendous toxic farts. They’re still working their way through now. It’s horrible.

It’s all good fun on “roads that I know and love” today. In another incident, a four foot-deep hole has appeared in the main road near Base 1. The traffic reports on the radio stated “A four foot hole has appeared and recovery personnel are currently trying to remove a taxi from it”.

Stuffed
At least I could be thankful of having a hearty lunch today; my usual cup-a-soup and fruit, wouldn’t have been enough to see me through the journey.

So what of my lunch? It was pretty nice and I was suitably stuffed afterwards. Thank fuck the mince pies were horrible or I’d have eaten a load of those on top of the preceeding three courses.

Why do we feel compelled to eat so much? I think a lot of it is comfort eating; this may help you understand why:

Yeeee Haaaaaa!!!!

And they were asking ME why I was dressed normally??? And yes, those reindeer antler deeley-boppers were musical too.

Still it was fun and I managed to procure an extra pig in blanket. This is a task I set myself at each of these things and I have quite a good success rate. I think people have learned that if they don’t give up their little sausage, there’s TROUBLE! I’ve not quite progressed to burning people’s houses down, but I’d certainly consider it if met with resistance.

The Christmas dinner
This has got to be the best meal of the year. Given a choice of last meal of a woman condemned to death, I reckon the Christmas dinner would be right up there at the top of the list. From July onwards (just after the last sprout from the previous one has fully digested), I start thinking of my Christmas dinner.

Fuckin’ delish!

In the Sniffy household, we wake up on Christmas morning to the smell of the turkey cooking in the oven (if the oven timer has worked properly). All the veg are prepared on Christmas Eve, so it leaves things fairly relaxed. However, our dinner is a mix of traditional English and also Italian food, so we start off with a portion of lasagne before digging in to the turkey.

On Christmas morning, diners Chez Sniff are invited to relax to the sounds of carols on the radio while availing themselves of a variety of savoury and sweet nibbles that are distributed about the house.

During this time, the turkey undergoes its final crisping in the oven, accompanied by roasties, and the veg are cooked. The turkey is removed from the oven and replaced with the ready prepared lasagne.

Tina picks crispy bits of bacon off the back of the bird and generally gets in the way while Connie starts to panic.

In the relaxed atmosphere of the dining room, with the Queen in the corner, the guests enjoy a portion of lasagne and the pull on a cracker. The wine starts to flow. Mum returns to the kitchen where the main course is dished up. This consists of:

• Turkey (with whatever remains of the crispy bits of bacon)
• Turkey sausages
• Stuffing
• Sprouts (just on the turn from firm to soft so as the sweetness has started to come through*)
• Orange and white stuff that I don’t touch with a bargepole (carrots and swede I think)
• Boiled potatoes
• Roast potatoes
• Roast parsnips
• Gravy

Fucking top notch delish. We do NOT go for bread or cranberry sauce since these things are fucking horrible. Bread sauce? I’d never heard of this stuff till a couple of years ago and then I saw some: you ain’t puttin’ nuttin’ dat looks like puke on my Christmas dinner table, fool!

*There used to be a bit of a joke about Mother’s sprouts being too soft; they’re not, they’re lovely. I hate it when people just blanch their veg so they’re almost raw. Sprouts are too bitter unless they’re cooked just the just beyond firm stage. Served with butter – and lots of white pepper of course – they are delish.

Pudding takes another three courses:

• Christmas pudding (with cream)
• Panettone
• Mince pies

At this stage, you have consumed about 4,000 calories (at least) and that doesn’t include booze. But it is lovely, it is the BEST meal of the year.

Today is my first Christmas dinner here at the hospital canteen and I’m really looking forward to it; we have a great canteen here and they do an excellent Christmas dinner. I see this as a sort of trial run so that I can prepare my digestive system for the main assault that lies ahead on Christmas Day.

Yum, yum, YUM!

A post script: Keep that fucking shit off my plate!
There’s no frigging way I’ll accept any of the following on my Christmas dinner plate:

• Carrots, turnips, swedes
• Cranberry sauce
• Bread sauce
• Mange tout
• Broccolli
• Spinach
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Peas

Some of these I won’t touch under any circumstances, some I love, but they’re just WRONG, WRONG, WRONG as accompaniments with my turkey.

Cars are great.

They provide a convenient and comfortable method for personal transportation, carriage of bits and doings in the roomy boot, entertainment even with their CD stereos and the like. Not like buses, buses are shit: full of diseased, retarded scumbags, buses at least triple the A to B journey time.

My car is essential. With a 30 mile commute half the week, there’s no way I’d be able to complete the journey within 2 hours and with my sanity intact. Apart from the expense of road tax, insurance and petrol, driving is still the most economical way to do this trip.

…Until it costs me £280 in fucking servicing and bastard repairs the week before tossing Christmas when the road tax is due at the end of the month as fucking well! All the brakes wore down at the same time and all the pads had to be replaced today. Fucking shiting cunting arseholes.

The youth of today
On my drive down to the garage this morning, I passed a number of schoolchildren as they were walking to school. Actually, they don’t really walk, do they? They sort of push and pull each other around in circles in a gradual forward motion that’s sort of in the direction of their destination. Others skulked, heads down, kicking whatever was under their feet along their paths.

A group of teenage girls strode elegantly along the pavement. They were taking their time, the lessons could wait. It struck me how short their skirts were and I remembered that, apart from the Culture Club/Duran Duran phase of the early 1980s, ALL schoolgirls simply HAVE to have the shortest skirts possible. I didn’t because my legs were foul, but my classmates did. What also struck me this morning was how much better the girl in the dark woollen tights looked compared with her friends, who were somewhat cheapened by their leggy displays of flesh.

Christmas wrapping
What a tedious task! I took advantage of being house-bound and got most of my wrapping out of the way. All that time, the ribbons, gift tags, all for something that will be destroyed in a matter of seconds. The bastards can have vouchers in envelopes next year.

Friends reunited
Fuck that. There was a time when I used to be on the register for Friends Reunited. I thought it’d be nice to find out what former schoolmates were up to, perhaps rekindle some old friendships. Looking down the list of names registered for my secondary school, I realised that I hated most of them and wanted nothing to do with them.

I don’t know, it seems that there are reasons why people lose touch with each other, but the main one is that they didn’t really care that much anyway.

They’ve just sent me the same e-mail twice! I need to unsubscribe I think.

Oh tanenbaum….

Yep, the tree is up.

The rest of the decs get sorted today I reckon.

It’s now that the serious business of Christmas begins. There’s only one weekend left to get things sorted and then we can start to relax and enjoy the festivities….

….Or can we?

One thing about the Christmas decorations being up is that you soon get used to them. It’s somehow very comforting to have the room semi-lit by the twinkling lights on the tree and the odd candle. Shame about the TV ALWAYS being on to add to the ambience.

The tree, the baubles, the lights. All are very attractive and you can find yourself getting hypnotised as you study the patterns as the lights chase, fade, twinkle. You search to see whether a particular tree decoration has survived yet another year. Yep, there it is, the pom-pom snowman you made when you were nine.

Oh yes, and that lantern thing that Mother claims to have had in her family home when her folks were still alive. Each year, there are new additions, but the original decorations from way back are always the favourites.

The newer ones are there to act as decoys, sort of sacrificial lambs to the slaughter as they become victim to Otto’s wild desire to seek and destroy all that dangles. Otto loves the tree, he likes to climb it, knock things off it, hide under it. When it’s a bit nippy for him to go outside, we bring the outdoors in for him! From now until the 6th of January, Otto is not allowed unsupervised access to the living room.

It’s odd that the other cats’ reactions have always been bemused boredom when they realise that the stupid thing has reappeared in the corner of the room. The others just ignore it.

Still, these things all add to the fun. By the evening, the picture will be complete: the tree will be surrounded by presents that I’ve wrapped and the remaining decorations will have been placed strategically around the house (thrown wherever we can be bothered to chuck em).

People make mistakes, some people spout off about things without getting the facts, people can be wrong. There is nothing wrong with admitting to our errors.

WRONG!
Apologies to Tesco for slagging them off about their lack of pickle awareness at this desperate time of year. Having enjoyed an unparallelled week of social activity, I could think of not better way to cap things off than by enjoying a trip to Tesco on Saturday night. Wandering around the aisles, I came across this:

Absolute pickle heaven. Despite not needing to, I bought two jars (just in case). At £1.48 each, this is a bargain compared to the £1.05 each for the smaller sized jars.

Of course, I still blame Tesco for having their pickle section split up across the store. This whole mess could have been avoided if their layout wasn’t so confusing at times. They have half of them on top of the freezers, then another load of prime pickles stashed around a corner. Stupid tossers.

WRONG!
I was very wrong in thinking that I could eat half a jar of those things without feeling sick.

WRONG!
What the fuck else was I going to go on about? I was wrong to get a Samsung mobile phone; they are shit, totally and utterly shit.

WRONG!
I thought I’d put my contact lenses in and, unable to see, was struggling to straighten the left one. No matter what, I still couldn’t see, so I took myself to the bathroom to take it out, give it a wash and try again. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get the thing out and then something dawned on me: looking closely in the mirror, I realised that it wasn’t there! This prompted a scramble round the dusty bathroom floor, where I found the thing, covered in fluff and rapdily shrivelling up from the heat of the nearby radiator. Quick rinse sorted it and it was right as rain.

Magic.

All I want for Christmas….
…Is YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, baaaaaybeeeee!!!

This is probably my saddest confession to date, but my favourite Christmas song of all time might just be scriking bitch Mariah Carey’s All I want for Christmas is you. How bad is that?

Today’s Sniffy Advent looks at that great money maker: The Christmas song.

Perhaps the definitive Christmas song is White Christmas, which I suppose is OK, if just a little mind numbingly boring. There’s a strange point in the Advent period when Christmas songs suddenly switch from bringing about a response of “Oh, just fuck right off, you fucking shithead fucktards!” to “Dingalingalinga ding dong ding!”.

This happened for me today.

Tonight was the Carols by candlelight service at Manchester Cathedral. Mother (awwww), Anna (grrrr) and a couple of her friends were going and I was giving them a lift into town and then having a pootle around. I thought it’d be nice to have some Christmas tunes on in the car, so I pulled a compilation together and stuck it onto a CD.

And these are the tunes that made it onto that CD. Some are shite and I’ve no idea why they’re on there, but others are ace and they really make me feel very Christmassy.

1. Let it snow – Dean Martin
2. All I want for Christmas is yoooooooooooooou – Mariah Carey
3. Santa baby – Marilyn Monroe
4. Sleigh ride (dingalingalinga dinga ding dong ging!) – The Ronettes
5. Fairytale of New York – Pogues with Kirsty MacColl
6. In dulce jubilo – Mike Oldfield (shite)
7. Santa Claus is coming to town – Jacksons
8. Last Christmas – Wham!
9. Rocking around the Christmas tree – Ronettes (I think)
10. Jingle bell rock – no idea
11. I believe in Father Christmas – Greg Lake
12. The power of love – Frankie goes to Hollywood
13. Mary’s boy child – Boney M (top fucking notchamundo!!)
14. Winter wonderland – Jewel (eh?)
15. I was born on Christmas Day – St Etienne
16. Mistletoe and wine – Cliff Richard (YAY!!!!!)*
17. Have yourself a merry little Christmas – Frank Sinatra
18. Christmas wrapping – The Waitresses
19. Merry (it’s) Chrisssssssssssssssssssssstmas!!! – Slade
20. Do they know it’s Christmas? – Band Aid

There are loads that I’ve missed, and before anybody goes on at me, I HATE that “Merry Christmas, war is over”, it is bollocks. I haven’t included some more recent ones that are quite good.

*At the said carol service this evening, there was a Cliff Richard impersonator (yes, Cliff Richard impersonator …. in a place of worship) singing Mistletoe and Wine. Not a dry seat in the house (due to bouts of incontinence as the congregation pissed themselves laughing).

Oh yeah, and I do promise to do a proper post when I get chance.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without decorating the house with bits of fake foliage and sparkly, glittery things.

I don’t quite know the history and tradition around turning our homes into bizarre grottos, but I love it. Without having any exposure to these traditions, if somebody asked you to bring a tree into your house, to decorate with lights, tinsel, baubles and stick a fake fairy (or star) on top, you’d tell them to, with all due respect, fuck right off. If you were asked make garlands out of ivy and other winter greenery and drape these on your fireplace, or down your staircase, you’d think there’d been an escape from the local mental hospital and that you were conversing with escapee numero uno.

Utter insanity.

I guess it’s all to do with Yuletide and shit like that, celebrating the midwinter and stuff. Fuck knows, it’s just fun and there can’t be much harm in that (unless you’re a Labour local council and you have people who you wouldn’t want to offend, but don’t bother to ask them and just ban things to offend the majority and cause resentment all round).

Ahem!

So, today marked the start of the Sniffy preparations for bringing Narnia to our living room. A tree? In the living room?

A tree?

Living room?

Well, not a real tree, obviously. Ours is a fake one that has served us well for about seven years now. For eleven months of the year, the tree and the rest of the “winter festival” household adornments (“Christmas decs” to normal folk) live in the attic. Items designed to decorate and bring joy for a couple or three weeks are consigned to a part of the house that resembles a hostage cell. Because of the shape of the house, this cell is in a side attic that’s accessed through a little door that’s hidden behind a huge wardrobe in one of the bedrooms:

Skanky doorway to doom

So after the “Oh my God, the wardrobe’s going to topple over!” trauma and the doorway to doom has been accessed, we’re (I’m) met with this sight:

So, covered in dust, dirt and deadly spiders, you emerge with binbags of baubles and boxes of branches for the “assemble-it-yourself” tree. Some of the decorations are getting on for fifty years old, and they look it. I was tempted to go out and buy a whole load of new decs so as I wouldn’t have to face the loft of doom. But there’s something comforting in unwrapping the tissue-covered items each year and exclaiming to yourself “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that!” or, “I remember making this Miss Kershaw’s class at primary school”. Each item has its own particular place in the history of the Sniffy Christmasses past.

And once the tree is assembled and dressed with its assorted accoutrements. Once entering the living room makes you think that you’re walking through an enchanted wardrobe into a land of perpetual winter, then you know that Christmas is well and truly on its way.