I’m just taking a break from work, sipping a coffee, and listening to some music on Spotify. A friend mentioned Eva Cassidy earlier, and she’s been rattling around my head all afternoon. The mighty internet was tasked with building a playlist from her, and it’s turned into a journey of sorts – through Eva, to Fleetwood Mac, then Heart.
The same friend just butt dialled me. I’m taking it as a compliment. Obviously her backside wanted to communicate with me. As the Celestine Prophecy opined – there are no coincidences.
On the subject of nothing being a coincidence, we went to a Christmas market last night in town – or rather a “Christmas Experience”. Given that the country has been cloaked in snow and freezing temperatures for the last week, you might think “how perfect!”. The universe obviously had other ideas, and pointed a finger in our general direction, murmuring “oh no. Not for you.”
It rained. All day. And then it rained some more. And some more on top of that.
By the time we got to the park in town it had more in common with the Somme than a pretty, tinsel laden celebration of all things festive. The fake snow had turned into porridge, the lights flickered on and off in the gargantuan puddles, and people huddled inside the various tents wrapped in knitted jumpers, scarves, coats, and mittens.
I bought the largest hot dog in the known universe for the price of an entire meal from the pub a hundred yards away. Don’t get me wrong – it was a very, very good hotdog. The rest of the family had fun (I think). After an hour of trudging around trying to ignore the sky falling on our heads, we ended the “experience” with a trip to a pop-up cinema, and a screening of “Elf”.
I like Elf. It makes me laugh, and cry – which is strange, given that I don’t usually like Will Ferrell. I think perhaps Zoe Deschanel saves the movie for me. There should be another movie that tells her story – about how she ended up working in the toy department of the store, and so desperately unhappy.
I still haven’t wrapped any Christmas presents up.
I need to buy some wrapping paper. And some more “emergency” presents. It feels like I’ve hardly bought anything for anybody this year. Now the kids are getting older they don’t “need” much any more. Two of them are earning their own money now – so tend to buy whatever they need.
It’s interesting, isn’t it – how the meaning of Christmas changes as you get older – or as your kids get older. When they are little you put money away for months to buy them the big-ticket items that you can’t really afford. And then when they get older, they slowly get less to open, and you lose them half-way through Christmas morning anyway – off to chat with friends on whichever social media app is winning that week.
On about the internet – need to get some popcorn to eat while I catch up with Elon’s latest antics with Twitter. I suspect he never wanted to be CEO, and has butchered it on purpose so he can make it look like the will of the people wanting him out – then he can blame the “team” for anything that goes wrong after he fired half the staff.
Did you know Twitter now flags any mention of mastodon as malware? Now you do. It’s not malware – unless of course you term democracy and freedom as dangerous. Which I suppose it is, if you’re at the head of an autocratic dictatorship and have finally realised “you’re the baddie”.
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