A confusion of orange
Back when I were a lad, we were grateful if all we got for Christmas were an orange and a bag of nuts.

Traditionally, winter is orange season and it’s at this time of year that you can get hold of some really good quality orange-coloured citrus fruit. Of particular note is the availabilty of the smaller variety of orangey things: tangerines; clementines and satsumas.

For some reason, you don’t hear of tangerines anymore. This is a shame. As children, we’d always be given tangerines with our school dinners – much easier to peel than normal oranges, with a slightly sweeter flavour, these things were a real good treat for us all.

As I mentioned, you just don’t hear of tangerines anymore. Instead, we get “satsumas”, which I suspect are tangerines, but with a new name. Here are some satsumas in a particularly grotty kitchen:

Tangerines/satsumas are noted for their sweet yet deliciously sharp flavour and their wonderfully saggy skin that makes them a dream to peel. Moreover, they’re generally seedless, so they’re winners all round.

Unlike clementines. Clementines are rubbish fruits. They are too small, their skins are so tight that they’re impossible to peel and they taste too sweet.

However, they’re a very attractive crop because you get a huge yield per acre and the Spanish farmers are rapidly favouring clementines over tangerumas. British retailers are having to beg Spanish farmers to keep producing the crop that we in the UK favour.

Fucking Spanish, ruining our Christmas.

Bastards.

Christmas dos and don’ts

There’s a work’s Christmas do coming to a close right now. A do that I could have gone to, but one that I really couldn’t be bothered with. I’ve never really been comfortable with Christmas dos, and I’m certain that I’m not the only person on the planet who has had bad experiences of them.

In general, the work’s Christmas party is an excuse to relax with your colleagues and enjoy a meal, perhaps have a few drinks and maybe even a disco, either organised as part of the do, or on a club afterwards.

Taking part in such activities is all well and good if you’re amongst your friends, but the problem is that people you work with are not your friends – not all of them anyway. Worst still, there’s usually somebody that you work with who you absolutely detest. On the other side of the coin, there may be somebody you work with who you fancy, but daren’t approach for fear of the ridicule you’d face following a humbling public rejection. Moreso, there’s always the desperate and lonely office minger who just wants a little bit of company so they don’t have to spend another night alone: “Forty two in April and no bra… not bad eh?”.

So faced with this unfortunate mix of people, the workers of the Western world enter the gladiatorial pit known as the Christmas party, with the boss watching over proceedings, mentally giving the thumbs up to some, while condeming others to a metaphorical beheading.

This is the first real weekend of office Christmas parties, this is where it starts to get serious. Monday will prove to be very difficult for some with knowing sniggers greeting some, apologetic e-mails others. Some may still be nursing the bruises from the scrap they had with Phil from accounts.

A long catalogue of Sniffy’s Christmas don’ts
I had many embarrassing Christmas party encounters in the days when I still drank. I enjoyed myself immensely, but while the hangovers subsided after a day or so, the mortifying embarrassment lives with me to this day.

• 1988, Leeds University Union, Doubles Bar, with friends (fellow students): Triples were going for a ludicrously low price, I had my fill – and then some. I blanked out at this one and know nothing of doing the tango with my best friend. I woke up in my bed, fully dressed but covered in mud, the bowl beside me alerted me to the fact that I felt fucking dreadful. My friends told me that I had passed out in the toilets, and had to be carried home, but not without crawling on all fours for substantial distances. I was ill for two days afterwards. Never again!
• 1991, Warwick/Leamington Spa, PhD lab do (postgraduate students, PhD supervisor and his very posh family, post docs): The killer G&T did it. I was given two huge gin and tonics (about 80% gin) by my boss – on an empty stomach. I was a little bit nervous because I was around at his house with is very posh wife and very posh kids. I can’t remember much, apart from mocking his kids, who had been telling “I say, I say, I say” jokes.
• 1995, Manchester, Post Doc lab do (scientists, clinicians, hangers on, technicians, PhD students) – I think I behaved myself at this one. Nobody has told me otherwise, so I must’ve done.
• 1996, Manchester, Post Doc lab do (as above in an Italian restaurant): Pissed out of my head on red wine, we all started a flaming Sambucca challenge, followed by a food fight, followed by more drinks in the pub next door, followed by… I can’t remember…. waking up in bed covered in sick.
• 1997, Manchester, as above: Different restaurant – the “Jacob Marley” incident. Got very drunk, had a row with my equally drunk boss. Exchanges of “fuck off”, and then it happened. My boss had actually left us, but returned to have regular updates, one of which was on the day of our Christmas do. Unfortunately, he’d really pissed me off at the meeting and, tongue loosened by a couple of litres of house red, I told him what I thought of him (or so I’ve been told). Despite the fact that he’d left, he kept coming back for one leaving do after another and this is where the Jacob Marley thing comes from. I said, “You’re just like Jacob Marley you…” And when asked why, I said, “…because you keep coming back!”
• 1998, Manchester, as above (back at the first Italian restaurant): This was actually also a leaving do of sorts, so I got really rather drunk for a change. While I was relatively OK the following day, I couldn’t fathom out why there was a huge red wine stain on the front of my cream-coloured top. A colleague kindly told me that a bearded colleague of ours, who enjoyed getting shitfaced on red wine, had approached me as I was about to leave. He said “I’ve really enjoyed working with you Tina, I’m really going to miss you.” I am told that it was then that I grabbed his head and thrust his face into my cleavage, saying “Not as much as you’re gonna miss these!”

And that was the last Christmas do at which I had a drink. Nothing like going out with a bang I suppose.

These days, things are much more sober and the Christmas “do” is now an afternoon meal. At Base 1, we leave the office at about 1pm and have meal at a nice restaurant in the city centre, after which we can either go home or stick around for a few drinks. This is OK with me because I’m not one for sticking around while people get drunk and enjoy themselves (yes, I’m jealous because I can’t drink).

At Base 2a… Well, that do is so very special that I think it deserves its very own dedicated post.

I have literally hundreds of bloggers telling me how good I am each day; that I am the best at this blogging business. And do you know what? I actually agree with them, I AM the best blogger on the planet.

“Oh no you’re not!”

“Oh yes I am!”

“Oh no you’re NOT!”

“Oh yes I fucking am!!”

“Oh no you’re fucking NOT!!!”

“Oh yes I double fucking bastard AM!!!”

No, I’m not, it was like a bit of a joke to open the door to today’s item in the Sniffy Advent:

The Pantomime

For those outside the UK, here’s an introduction to what panto is all about from a website.

“Pantomime is a curious entertainment – a form of ritual theatre staged around the winter solstice. Originally silent (a form of mime), it is now anything but, with extensive vocalisation from both the performers and the audience.

The stories are generally well-known (drawn from popular folk-tales and similar sources), populated with stock characters, including a principal boy, generally played by a young lady with shapely legs, the heroine, also played by a young lady (which gives an added edge to the inevitable romance) and a dame, played by a man as an exaggeration of a lewd middle-aged lady. Scripts change from year to year, but generally contain four strands of humour: visual, topical, corny and downright rude. In the UK this is considered to be family entertainment.”

We used to get dragged to pantos when we were kids and, as kids, you knew they were fucking dreadful even at that tender age. Imagine how awful it must be for accompanying adults to act interested with participatory shouts of “It’s behind you!” when required.

The thing about panto that gets me is the amount of cross-dressing that goes on. As described above, you get a heroine, played by a pretty actress and a young hero boy, also played by a pretty actress. I always fancied the the principal “boy”, simply because I thought I was supposed to. In the closing moments, hero and heroine get it together for some, well, errrm…. girl on girl action.

Explains a lot I suppose.

Having not been to a panto for years, I can’t really get stuck into them here. However, they do seem to attract the dregs of British C and D-list celebs who, desperate for any exposure, crawl out of the woodwork to appear in panto in Reading, Swansea or Huddersfield. This year, Manchester is blessed with people I’ve never heard of in Cinderella at the Opera House and Peter Pan at the Palace. I won’t be going.

Of course, one panto that I did enjoy (twice), was this:

All the characters from my favourite TV comedy show, the League of Gentlemen, in their own Panto, which I think is very loosely based on Jack and the Beanstalk.

“Oh no it isn’t!”

“Oh yes it is”

“Oh n…”

“Just fuck off!”

There’s something about certain people that makes you wish they’d just go away. They are quite stupid, but they trap you in meaningless, hideously boring “conversation” about something so utterly trivial that you feel your brain shutting down as they go on.

But it’s not really a conversation because you realise that they don’t actually know how to form sentences. There are a few standard phrases that they pick as part of their jobs, or through encounters with other people. They may even be able to recount a tale of what happened when somebody said or did something. But in general, they can’t hold a two-way conversation.

“Tea money, love!”

“I paid a fortnight’s worth last week.”

“Did you, love?”

“Yes, you’ve got the book there, why don’t you check?”

“I haven’t got my glasses with me, love”

Jesus.

Every response ends with “love” (luv) too.

“Yes, love.”

Accompanied with the undertone of a nervous, school-girl laugh.

“Yes, love. Hee hee hee.”

One of my favourite stories involves a neighbour of mine; thick as pigshit and living in a complete shithole. She has loads of cats that she lets breed. “You need to get those cats neutered.”

“Yes, love, I’m getting them done, love.”

She’s got about ten there again after the RSPCA taking thirty away a couple of years ago.

It’s encouraging to know that she’s employed as a cleaner at my local hospital. Despite the state of her own home (squalor), she is apparently a very good cleaner; always extremely thorough, leaving things spotless. While cleaning the floor High Dependency Unit one day, she removed the oxygen or breathing tube from the back of a patient’s ventilator so she could manoeuvre the floor buffer under the bed. The nurses were puzzled by the patient’s rapid and unexplained deterioration, only noticing that the tube had been removed as the patient was about to arrest.

Having realised what had happened, the nurse spoke to the cleaner.

“Agnes, did you remove this tube from this machine while you were cleaning?”

“Errrrm, yes love, I wanted to clean around properly, love.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have done it.”

“Is it not clean, love?”

“Oh no, it’s very clean, but the patient needed that tube to help his breathing and he nearly died. You shouldn’t have taken it off. Please don’t touch anything while you’re cleaning.”

“Yes, love. Hee hee hee.”

And off she pootled, buffering away, oblivous as ever.

The child is a king, the carollers sing,
The old has passed, there’s a new beginning.
Dreams of santa, dreams of snow,
Fingers numb, faces aglow.

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine
Children singing christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
A time for rejoicing in all that we see

A time for living, a time for believing
A time for trusting, not deceiving,
Love and laughter and joy ever after,
Ours for the taking, just follow the master.

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine
Children singing Christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
A time for rejoicing in all that we see

A time for giving, a time for getting,
A time for forgiving and for forgetting.
Christmas is love, Christmas is peace,
A time for hating and fighting to cease.

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine
Children singing Christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
A time for rejoicing in all that we see

If you see it, please destroy it

Somebody please stop this man!

Every year, he tries to inflict himself on the Christmas number 1 slot with some utter shit that can give him the excuse to flaunt himself to the UK.

He thinks he’s IT.

He thinks he is something special.

He is possibly the vainest person to have ever walked the planet. Look at how he simply adores himself.

Our very own “Peter Pan of Pop”, the lifelong “Bachelor Boy” has never wed. But how can a man who loves himself above all others ever possibly share even the tiniest amount of that love with somebody else?

This is the man who hijacked the Lord’s Prayer and sang it to the tune of Auld Lang Syne (how the fuck is that spelt?) to bring us the truly dreadful “Millennium Prayer” in the hope of reaching number one in the charts in 1999/2000. Thank fuck he failed. Wanker.

Each year, he feels it is his God-given right to have that Christmas number one. He is a Christian and therefore, he is also Christmas – nobody else dare encroach.

He is one thing we could do without at Christmas.

“Can you all sort out who is working between Christmas and New Year to make sure that the office is covered during that period? Bear in mind that people with young families will probably want the time off, so try to be fair.”

I take my holidays when I want. I never, ever work a) on my birthday and b) between Christmas and New Year.

I don’t give a shit whether some twat wants that time off. These bastards are off all fucking year anyway for frigging sports days, or Mother’s Day assembly, or Nativity plays (and every day when their little angels are sick) and it’s us who are left covering for them then too. If they think they’re going to have preference over me when it comes to Christmas holidays, they can go fuck ’emselves. Selfish fuckers.

It doesn’t come into that hugely popular single folk, such as myself, might have friends in other parts of the country who they don’t get to see that often and that Christmas is one of the times when we actually get to have a good break together. What about people who don’t have kids, but have older rellies who they’d like to spend that time with before they depart this cold, cold earth?

These twats with kids get to see their little parasites every frigging day anyway, so why do they need more time off over Christmas to be with them? Do they need that time to play yet another game of Buckaroo, to watch “The Little Mermaid”, or whichever Disney shite is this year’s must have, to spend the time screaming at them to be quiet and stop mithering? Or perhaps they need that time so they can drag the little uns round to all the friends and rellies, to see what their demanding little paws can grab in presents from people who can ill-afford to be spending out for other people’s children.

Of course, I blame the employers: all work except essential services should shut down between Christmas and New Year. Simple as that.

A post script about Christmas cards
Some bright spark at Base 1 has suggested that people who want to can put their name to a list of those who won’t be sending Christmas cards, but would like to give the money to charity instead. People say who they are and write down their favoured charity and the most popular charity gets the loot.

The soothsayer in me sees trouble ahead: great discord and friction between those who want to give the cash to children’s charities, breast cancer research, heart disease research. Why couldn’t they just send a fucking card? Or keep their stupid ideas to themselves and just not send one?

Dicks.

Bollocks! Frigging comments aren’t showing up for that last post!

Bollocks! I’ve got to give a presentation tomorrow and I don’t want to!

Bollocks! I also need to think of something festive for day 7 of the Sniffy Advent!

Bollocks! I’ve got to go out tomorrow night!

Bollocks! And Thursday night (League of Gentlemen)!

Bollocks! Bollocks! BolLOCKS!

This is a test to see if it’ll reset the blog.

Christmas card: the first
And here it is, my first Christmas card of 2006. And who should it come from, but that lovely airplane-fixing, lady-loving, first generation Eurotrash-Canadian grrrly-grrrl, Connie?

My usual response to receiving Christmas cards this early is “Fucking scummers!”, but since Connie sent hers all the way from Canada, I’m actually hugely thrilled to receive this one.

I do LOATHE writing Christmas cards though. It’s something that I’m now restricting to people I see on a less than monthly basis. The fuckers at work can arse off, I’m not writing “..and best wishes for 2006, Tina x” loads of times when I don’t even mean it. A waste of paper and ink, and, more importantly, time.

We’ve now got this thing whereby people are “giving to charity” instead of spending money on cards. Liars! Everyone knows that the fiver they’ll save will pay for at least 2 pints (will it? no idea these days) at the Christmas do. Why can’t they just be honest and say that they hate everyone at work and can’t be arsed to write cards to a bunch of wankers? That’s what I do.

Fuck ’em!

I don’t send Christmas cards to my family members either, I’ve never really seen the point. I can shout my Christmas wishes at them: “I wish you’d fucking shut the fuck up once in a fucking while and let me watch what the fuck I want in peace and fucking quiet! Merry Christmas!!”

But back to the good thing about Christmas cards – you see, you get balanced debate here as one half of my psyche wrestles with the other – Christmas cards are a great way to let people who you’ve not seen for ages know that you’re still alive and that you’re still their mate (very handy in case you need a spare bed for the night should you be passing through London, Brighton, Coventry, Surrey, British Columbia…). For these reasons, and there are others too, I write Christmas cards to those people I don’t get to see particularly often.

And back to the card from Connie… Awfully nice of a lass who, we all know is extremely busy with fixing aeroplanes, grinding rust, drinking fish juice (!), and loving her lovely French tickler, to spare the time to send me of all people a card, don’t you think? Indeed, but not only was there a card in the package that was delivered today. No, no, no(n)! The card accompanied the latest items that have been included in the great Canadian/UK cultural exchange.

So what else was in the packet?

And in the packet, there was a bag,

Is that a fucking harpoon??

And in that bag there was a fish,

BUT wait! A bit of fuckin’ delish smoked salmon to accompany That Woman’s pickles (or what’s left of ’em) for the Boxing Day running buffet is all very nice, but still a bit odd to send with a card. So what else was in the package that came all the way from British Columbia???? Get a load of these!

OH YES! Thank you Connie and God bless us everyone!

Right, some points of clarification are clearly (!) needed, since some of you can’t read simple English!

Firstly, the charity motorbike toy run is Saturday 10th December. The ride I had on this Friday just gone was a practice to see if I could handle being on a motorbike.

Secondly, the cake cannot be iced until the week before Christmas because it needs a couple of doses of brandy before then. I will photograph this process in its entirity, including the addition of the comedy plastic snowmen, reindeer and ribbon. I’m tempted to use Rudolph Buckaroo as a cake decoration for added entertainment when mum tries to cut the thing after a few sherries. Sort of booby trap it so it explodes if you struggle too hard with the icing.

Thirdly, errrm supermarkets are utter bastards.

Fourthly, the songs!

OK, the first one continues…

“….Oh yeah,
Oh yeah, you got to get it right.

You can do anything that you want to do,
Put your mind, body and soul to it
Prove it to yourself and say
I want (I want)
I will (I will)
I can do anything

It’s a difficult world and you’ve got to prove
That you’re ready and you can do it
Nothing in this world can stop you
I know
I can
I will fulfil my dream

Don’t stop movin’
Keep it up
Keep on groovin’
Get it right
You got to get it right
Don’t stop movin’
Dance your life
Keep on groovin’
Get it right,
You got to get it right…”

and so on

This was, of course, Living Joy’s Don’t stop moving, which is right up there with Alison Limerick’s Where love lives in the dance classics hall of fame. If you don’t know Alison Limerick’s Where love lives, then you’ve probably never heard of Living Joy’s Keep on moving either. Shame.

The second song:

“‘Bah Humbug!’, no that’s too strong
‘Cause it’s my favourite holiday”

Was indeed Christmas Wrapping, but the British spelling should’ve given it away that this was the Spice Girls version and not the original by The Waitresses. Soz. But, as Living Joy tell us: You got to get it right! Oooh, I’m such a trickster, trickster.

Sixthly, my docs are NOT girls’ docs. They are proper Docs and I have the blisters to prove it. I can assure you that the ankle padding is for decoration, it serves no purpose in protecting the wearer’s lower legs.

Seventhly, something even more appetising coming up for Day 6 of the Sniffy Advent (tomorrow, obviously, it’s not like I’m writing these and just posting them at midnight or anything).