Author: Justin Page 23 of 65

Most Christmases end up with me buying presents at almost the last minute and paying little attention to how much it all costs me. Not this year!

This year, partly through necessity, and partly through the magic of #childfree weekends, I’ve been far more on the ball. I sorted out presents for the Kinderbesten back in November, maybe even earlier. After some crises of indecision, I’ve managed to choose and purchase presents for my friends. Over the last week, as you’ll have read, I organised presents for the rest of the family too. I don’t want to even think about how much it all cost, but I’m pretty happy with what everyone’s getting and I’m really happy that there will be no panicked, last-minute Christmas Eve shopping trips.

However, there is a flip side. I’m suffering from present fatigue, which is likely more a symptom of taking a leisurely approach to buying presents this year, than due to the number of presents purchased. It seems that each time I allowed myself a minor celebration at having successfully bought a bunch of presents, I would remember a whole other bunch of people that I needed to buy presents for. It sometimes feels like the last two months have been an endless procession of gift purchases. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy with everything I’ve bought, and I’m happy that I’m in the financial position this year where I can buy everyone presents without worrying too much about the cost. It’s just felt a bit like a marathon.

Next year (I kid myself) I might try that idea of buying one or two presents each month and spreading the load over the year. I gift even wrap the presents up as I get them, so everyone gets a mystery gift for Christmas 2018. Because I sure as hell won’t remember what’s in there …

Today we found out the results of the Alabama Special Senate Election over in the USA–the election where the choice was between someone who is a paedophile, and various other appalling things, and someone who is not.

Fortunately the not-paedophile won. Not by much. But by enough.

I’m only really writing this post to mark the fact that I will never quite grasp how far politics has (visibly) fallen in my lifetime, and that there are people who will look past someone being a paedophile and consider that person suitable to occupy one of the most influential positions in the country.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the right-wing press was screaming hysterically about paedophiles, and that politicians would be forced to resign following the barest whiff of infidelity. Now we’ve reached the point where Donald Trump has sunk the bar so very low that it’s hard to imagine a crime that his supporters wouldn’t forgive.

The ray of hope here is that the people of Alabama got off their arses and resisted. Black voters, in particular, told the Republican party to shove their continuing efforts to take their voting rights away and played the major role in electing a Democrat to serve in the senate. At this point it doesn’t even matter that he was a Democrat; it only matters that he wasn’t a putrid waste of a person. What a choice, eh? Do we vote for absolute garbage? Or do we vote for a regular person? Let. Me. Think.

Anyway, time to go and eat mince pies …

There is something wrong with this week. It’s still only Tuesday. It feels like it should at least be Thursday. This week must be broken …

Speaking of broken things, I endured a triptych of tech fail this evening.

Exhibit A: I get an email advertising 50% off all kids books on a particular website. I think that’s pretty handy, since I have kids and they like books. I click on the link, go to the site, only to get: “Something is wrong. Please try again later”. I did try again later. Many times. And something was still wrong.

Next, I wanted to send my sister -in-law something drinkable for Christmas. I went to a site that sold drinkable things, found something that looked good, then went to pay: “Something went wrong.” I tried again since, yes, a major retail website not being able to accept credit card payments in the lead-up to Christmas did indeed seem wrong. Every time I tried to pay I got: “Something went wrong.” Eventually I decided they didn’t want my money and decided I’d try somewhere else (another day).

Finally, time to buy some drinkables for the rest of the family. This time I could do click and collect, which, fortunately, meant using a different site. Less fortunately, the Kinderbesten decided to be extra unsettled tonight and kept getting out of bed. This, combined with my general indecision over which drinkables to buy, meant that the whole process took about 45 minutes. Finally, however, I filled up my basket and went to pay. This time without any errors. Probably. After hitting the pay button I got presented with a loading screen for about two minutes. Then, I was abruptly returned to the site and presented with the spectre of my basket magically emptying itself. I checked my emails: no confirmation that the order had gone through. I nearly went to place the order again, then decided to check my bank account first. This, finally, revealed that the order had gone through. About an hour later I finally got an email confirmation.

Such fun.

And, after all of that, I didn’t have enough time left over to watch the final episode of Godless.

Christmas is great, right?

Tonight, on easily one of the hottest nights of the last few months, I ended up with both of the Kinderbesten sleeping in my room.

They have an irrational obsession with sleeping in my bed: I mean, given the choice between having a whole bed to yourself, and sharing a bed with someone else, which option would you choose? Anyway, we’ve managed to get things down to a routine: the Elderbeast gets to sleep in my bed on Sundays (unless he’s especially restless, in which case he gets banned for an indeterminate period of time), while the Kinderbeast gets Monday night.

This being Monday night, it was the Kinderbeast’s turn. Unfortunately the Elderbeast was insistent about not sleeping in his own bed. Meanwhile, I was insistent up on the exact opposite. The Elderbeast eventually proposed dragging his [double] mattress and duvet from his room, through the hallway, across the lounge, and into my room, where he was convinced there was sufficient floor space to accommodate his sleeping arrangements. I, naturally, chuckled over this … until it turned out he was perfectly serious.

We eventually compromised: the Kinderbeast being relentlessly determined to sleep on my floor, I grabbed his duvet along with a second duvet for extra padding, and settled him down in a mock sleeping bag arrangement. Somewhat to my surprise, he stayed there all night, even declaring it to be “pretty comfortable”.

I, meanwhile, slept very well on my very comfortable queen-size mattress 🙂

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my new hobbies is trawling the internet for recommendations of hidden gems on Netflix. My choices have mostly erred towards sci-fi thrillers, but I’ve also been on the lookout for quirky comedies. The success rate has been surprisingly high so far, so I’ve been happy to carry on devoting my Sunday evenings to watching films that the internet has recommended to me.

Tonight’s choice was from the quirky comedy pot, and I loved it almost immediately. Carrie Pilby is about an over-educated, over-intelligent British girl living in New York. She is advised by her therapist to create a list of things to achieve over the year, which she naturally resists (“What’s so great about being happy anyway? There are some brilliant unhappy people”) but eventually relents. It’s predictable in parts, but delightful in most others and reminds me a lot of the indie films I used to lap up in my more film literate days (Hal Hartley and Whit Stillman fans will likely be perfectly at home with Carrie Pilby).

Even the Elderbeast loved it, after I virtually forced him to sit down and watch a film with me. And now I can’t wait to watch it again.

Today heralds another #childfree weekend and, with it, my usual determination to maximise my ‘doing nothing’ time as much as possible. This weekend’s strategy started with me getting my food shopping done on the way home from work last night, as is becoming the #childfree weekend tradition. This, in turn, freed me up to plough straight into my other shopping first thing on Saturday morning–and, after finding out that the local mall was opening at 7am each Saturday until Christmas, first thing really was first thing.

Now, I’m not actually insane, so I didn’t get down there for 7am, but I did get down there closer to 8am than most rational people would choose to on a Saturday morning. Naturally most of the smaller shops were closed, but the places I needed to shop at–and, most critically, get coffee from–were all open.

My main task for the morning was to get presents for my team at work. Over the last few years, I’ve gotten in the habit of putting together little gift bags for everyone (mini-stockings, if you will). I already had plenty of chocolates to go in, but I needed some fun trinkets. After a bit of hunting around I found some suitable items, along with the gift bags themselves. I also happened to find that Big W was selling all Blu-rays half price for the weekend, so I picked up a few recent release that were on my wish list: Baby Driver (which I was really excited to see until the Kevin Spacey stuff happened); Wonder Woman; and War For The Planet Of The Apes.

After that, I made it home for a little after 10am for breakfast and a day of chilling out in front of the TV. Awesome!

Tonight’s Friday Night Horror Movie was Don’t Breathe. It’s a film I’ve wanted to see ever since I saw the trailer, but apparently didn’t want to see all that urgently as it’s taken me until now to do so.

It’s an excellent example of a high concept chiller–a movie in which the premise can be boiled down to a single line: a group of teenage thieves burgle the house of a blind war veteran, who then promptly locks the doors and proceeds to hunt them down.

There’s a teeny bit more to it than that, but I love an economical horror movie that takes a simple premise and runs with it. There’s also some clever playing around with the concept of victim and villain here; just enough to toy with your sympathies, but not make you feel too cheated at the way things end up.

A day of odd contrasts.

It was the ‘celebration assembly’ at the the Kinderbesten’s school today. Both of them had songs to sing, alongside the rest of their respective classes, so naturally all the family came along. We go their early, but all the ‘good’ seats (i.e. the plastic chairs lined up at the back of the hall) were already taken. We grabbed a couple of spots on the metal benches (literally outside the back of the hall) but before the assembly even started it was starting to get uncomfortably crowded, so I ducked away to stand yet even more furtherer at the back.

The assembly started. And then just kept going. And going. And going. Class after class got up to do their christmas numbers. Various announcements were made that I couldn’t hear a word of–partly because the speakers didn’t reach beyond the back of the hall, and partly because all the other restless parents had started gabbing.

There was a definite highlight however: all of the teachers getting on stage in front of the school and performing deranged ballet while wearing sparkly tutus (yes, even the men).

Still, after all of it I was exhausted by the endless procession of things I couldn’t see or hear, and generally uncomfortable at the mass of people around me.

Then I returned to work. We’d had a maintenance related power cut that morning, so everyone else had decided to work from home for the day. We also had workmen in fitting a new air conditioning unit. So I spent the whole day being the only person in the office while being surrounded by workmen drilling and bashing all day.

It was strangely peaceful. Somehow I was able to shut out all the noise, get on with work, and enjoy having the office to myself while not remotely having the office to myself.

Last night I had one of those occasional nights where I just couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t overly stressed; I hadn’t drunk a mountain of coffee during the day; it wasn’t even especially hot.

I. Just. Couldn’t. Sleep.

So, of course, today was BRILLIANT!

In something of a remarkable turnaround from his attitude towards school earlier this year, the Elderbeast has decided to try out for a spot as Student Representative for 2018. In short, this means he’s gone from being someone who thinks that school is possibly the worst place in the universe, to being someone who wants to spend the next year actively contributing to that school. He’s wavered a little bit along the way, but I’ve done my best to help persuade him that simply getting up there and giving it a go is an achievement in itself and I will be immensely proud of him whether he gets one of the eight spots or not.

We’ve gone back and forth on the speech a few times, sometimes with a little resistance, but tonight he wrapped it up and it’s pretty darned good: funny in parts; humble and self-reflective where it needs to be; upbeat and positive in all the right places.

Tomorrow he gets up there, alongside 33 other candidates, in front of his school and all the teachers, and gives it his best shot.

(Spoiler: he didn’t get it BUT he came home the day after doing his speech absolutely brimming with delight at the response he got, and talking about all the other kids who had come up to him and said they had voted for him. Hopefully he’ll remember that feeling the next time an opportunity like this comes along).