It’s Christmas!

There are some things that I could do without, such as work and the responsibilities that come with being a grown man with a mortgage. And there are some things that I need, such as Christmas TV. Now, that may appear to a little strange to most of you but here is why.

In trying to forget the responsibilities it is nice to try and reclaim childhood. Christmas TV can help me do that. There are new programs such as the Gruffalo, The Gruffalos Child and The Snowman etc. There are also the old programs that I was, almost, forced to watch as a child, Morecombe and Wise etc.All of these allow me to shed the veneer of adulthood and, for the duration of the program, become the child I used to be and lose myself in these fantasy worlds.

 

Over the years I have watched these programs with my own children and now I watch with my granddaughter (soon to have a brother or sister :-) )

Silly games. These need to be played, while supping the Christmas booze. We can play board games till late at night, making up our own rules as we get more drunk! It may have been an eye-opener for no.1 sons girlfriend this year as we played 'Articulate' and 'The Logo Game' late into the night. The laughs that accompany these sessions can be quite stress relieving for a short time, till the daily grind of paying the bills returns with a bang!

But do not mistake childlike with childish, there is a world of difference.

That Special Time of Year

That time has arrived when we are building up to the arrival of of the fat bloke with the beard and the red suit. In a couple of weeks time we will have to leave out a glass of scotch, a mince pie and a carrot. Just in case the mythical character wants to get a little fatter, pissed and feed his transport carrots. By the way, did you know that carrots contain traces of lysergic acid diethylamide? That’s LSD to us mortals. You would have to eat several tons of carrots to get high, but poor old Rudolph must be stoned all the time!

 

Anyway, today was the day that the Christmas decorations would go up. Every year I forget what a trying experience this is. Christmas music, or a Christmas film goes on, and out come the boxes of decorations.

We have, or had, 7 sets of lights for the tree, or wherever we decide to put them. Some go outside and the rest go inside. But of the 7 only 3 were working, or had the power adapters. Now this is something that I do not understand. Last year, and every year, we put everything away in a box. One for the tree, one for the decorations and one for the lights and the bits that go with them. But it seems that every year, during the summer, someone, or something, goes into my attic and rearranges the boxes. Even going so far as to remove some of the contents and hide them. Because this year there were a couple of the power adapters missing. There were also several sets of lights that didn’t work, either completely or partially. When they were put away they worked. So what has happened during the year to stop them working? This must be something to do with the Law of Sod. Closely related to Murphy’s Law, but nothing to do with Coles Law which, I think you will find, is shredded cabbage, carrot and onion with a little mayo.

Eventually we have a tree that is illuminated, the room festooned with tinsel and baubles and 2 empty bottles of wine.

To be completely honest, I wonder whether it was worth the effort.

Regards.

And a happy Christmas to anyone who reads this.

Giant68

Under Egyptian Skies

Disclaimer: All the names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent…

Bugger that! There were no innocents in this story, we were all as guilty as hell, of having a good time, laughing too much, drinking not enough… you get the picture.

Not being able to go to Spain this year and visit Jose the surly barman and all the others, we decided, after careful thought, to go to Egypt and cruise down the Nile. This started off badly due to the fact that the flight was dry. Egyptair are muslim so no booze! Nevertheless, we survived the trip without a glass of red and arrived at Luxor airport where the process of starting to separate us from our money began. Just 20 quid for the entry visa this time.

On the coach and try and figure out just what the rules of the road   are in this country. It seems that after dark it is optional to use headlights, if your vehicle has them. Occasionally, and at random intervals, you will flash your headlights for no apparent reason. Egypt is starting to confuse me!

We reached our cruise ship(?) late at night so didn’t get to see anything of Luxor till sunrise the next morning, but I must admit that the view was stunning.

Having never been out of Europe the baking sun was a bit of a shock to the system, as was the boiled horse that spent most of the day sunbathing, posing, pouting and generally thrusting her sunburnt chest at any man that ventured onto the sun deck of the MS Darakum. I think that she was French, and boy, did she love herself! Strangely, rather than the women on the boat getting bitchy about her it was the men that made more derogatory comments.

From the minute we stepped off the boat we learnt that the locals have one aim in life. And that aim is to separate any tourist and his money. The most used word in Egyptian is ‘baksheesh’ which I think means ‘Hello good sir, would you please empty your pockets of anything of value and give it to me or I will follow you to the ends of the Earth pestering you until you can take no more.’ They will try and sell you papyrus bookmarks, scarab bracelets, scarves, anything that they think a European would want to take home and throw in the bin. If you take a photograph of one of the monuments and they think that they may be in it they want paying. As a tourist your most used phrase will be ‘la shokran’ or no thankyou, even though, after a couple of days you want to say ‘f^<$ off!’

 

The guy above decided that I would take his photo with Mrs Giant68. He wanted paying for the privilege of course, which I duly did. He had a gun.

Next time I will tell you of the towel animals, the sights and sounds, the food, the waiter that looked like benny from ‘The Mummy’ and the friends we made. But now I am just going to look back through the photos I took and remember the really fantastic holiday that we had cruising down the Nile on the Nile on the MS Darakum.

Regards

Giant68

A shameful confession

I have a terrible confession to make. It will make grown men cry and people will shun me. There is a good chance that I will be hounded in the street and persecuted for the rest of my life. But to clear my conscience I must confess.

I have been a science fiction fan for as long as I have been able to read. At school I read novels by Hugh Walters. I watched films like ‘Forbidden Planet’. I listened to Jet Morgan and the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. As I grew older I moved to novels by Asimov and Blish. The Foundation series and Cities in Flight are still some of my favourite reading. When I was 12 years old I went to the cinema and was completely blown away by  film where a starship appears from the top of the screen, energy beams are lighting it up and then a massive starship is chasing it. Star Wars had an impact on my pre-teenage mind. If there were any doubts as to whether I liked the futuristic universe they were gone. Now I read the same stuff, Neal Asher, Peter F Hamilton, Ian M Banks among many. I love it, you will already know this if you read all my blogs.

But here is where it starts to go wrong. ITV have been showing the later Star Wars prequels. When they first came out I went to the cinema to see them and thought ‘Wow!’ But now I have sat and watched them through an adults eyes and thought ‘actually they’re pretty crap.’

There. I have admitted it. I do not like the newer Star Wars Films. The comedy characters, that tit with the big ears for example, spoil it for starters. But they could have been so good. The concept was fantastic but it was let down by the fact that it seemed to be aimed at preschool children. Sorry George, your special effects are some of the best I have seen but you still made three crap films. You should have left  it with just the first three. Please don’t bother to make any more.

Regards

Giant68

The Grumpy Gene

if there is a grumpy gene I think that I have it. I am, it seems, a grumpy person by nature. And now, to prove it, I have started having grumpy dreams!

Now, you know that I am a world class grump from the tone of some of these blogs. I wonder if there is an award for the grumpiest person in the world, a Grumpy World  Cup. Would I win? What would I need to do to win if I wasn’t quite good enough?

I woke this morning from the middle of a dream that was really winding me up. Everyone and everything in it was designed to piss me off. In fact, I was so grumpy and annoyed when I woke up that I had to force myself just to lay there and  calm down for a bit.

For some time now I have been achieving new personal bests in stress levels due to various things happening at work. Mrs Giant68, obviously, gets a bit fed up with way I am but being the saint she is she puts up with it or gets out of the room. Or I get out of the room.  But the last bastion of peace and tranquillity has always been sleep. Now that is being denied! In general, I do not dream. I go to bed, I fall asleep, I wake up 5ish hours later and get up. This is the first dream I have had for a considerable time. It would have been nice if it had been about my forthcoming holiday and the destressing I will be doing. Or fast cars, naked women, that sort of thing, you  get the picture. But no. Lets wake up considerably more grumpy than I when I went to bed.

God help you all today!

Now bugger off and leave me alone!

Giant68

Survival of the fittest?

 

‘Breathe deep the gathering gloom…’

Winter seems to be approaching rather rapidly, today it was pitch black and rather chilly when i set off  for work. And now, late afternoon in early October, it is starting to get a little gloomy. It will soon be time to shut the curtains, put the lights on and get cosy. The heating is on and the house is beginning to feel a little warmer.

But that is not what this is about. You should know by now that I am the one of the grumpiest people on the face of the planet so i must, therefore, have something to complain about. And this time it is Ninja cyclists.

Dark mornings, rain, general gloom. You will see these, if you are lucky, cycling in the road with no lights, dark clothing and no idea of their own safety or vulnerability. Darwin wrote about the survival of the fittest but sometimes I feel that it should be survival of the luckiest! Twice this week i have nearly curtailed the existence of some dim and dim-witted cyclist as they plough on regardless of the fact that while I am in a car with lights I may not see them until the last minute. And that may be too late.

When I am out on my bike I want to be seen. I will festoon myself with lights. I would put a neon sign over my head to drivers where I am. But then I want to survive the trip. To be honest, I would cycle on the pavement all the time if I could.

Also why do the cyclists where I live not use the cycle paths?? I bet that by night they are sneaking around the roads of Southampton trying their hardest to get themselves killed!

Rant over.

Regards

Giant68 (Grumpy old git)

Things to do with food

Yeah, I know. Food is for eating. Not all the time in our household. We have a habit of playing games with it, nothing kinky though, generally the kind of games that involve ‘how many can you eat’ or ‘how fast can you eat’.

How many Jaffa cakes can you eat in a minute? I thought that one was simple. Hundreds? Tens? Nah! I managed to get the sixth one in and start to chew as my minute ran out. Mini Giant didn’t even get that far.

Yesterday was my granddaughters 3rd birthday and as usual there were allsorts of cakes, sweets and other goodies lying around. So there were some challenges to be attempted. As I have already stated, the Jaffa cake challenge was won by me with a poor count of 5 and a bit. Next came the teacakes, those delights of chocolate, marshmallow and biscuit. I managed 1 in 17 seconds. Really poor attempt even if I do say so myself. One of our guests managed 1 in 8 seconds. I think that he just swallowed it whole!

There is one other game that we tend to play at Christmas. And that is the After Eight challenge. What you have to do is place an After Eight mint on your forehead, minus the wrapper of course, and get it to your mouth without the use of your hands. This, obviously, can get a little messy, with participants left with chocolate on their face (and also the floor at times!) It is amazing what people will get up to once they have had a drink or two!!

 

  

Regards

Giant68