Reboots

In recent times, meaning the period in which social media has risen and conquered the recording of history present and past, along with so much else (also known as the New Dark Ages among the enlightened and the Knew Dark Ages among the wits, so called because of the effect that social media has had on truth and by extension knowledge), the time of year associated with rebirth has shifted, from New Year’s Day to Midwinter’s Day.
This is in part because of the association of Midwinter’s Day with the longest period of darkness, meaning that once the Shortest Day is over, the days start getting longer and lighter and generally better, until the wonder that is the Clock Change arrives and everyone is back to commuting in darkness again until summer arrives in England, usually scheduled for late August.
There is something undeniably rebirthy about Midwinter’s Day, the Shortest Day, call it what you will.  Oddly, few if any refer to it as the Longest Night.  This is probably because there is an ancestor-memory aversion to contemplating extended periods of darkness, doing so will lead one to Google cures for Seasonal Affected Disorder, and also give rise to an odd compulsion to light fires in caves, or inconveniently the modern equivalent thereof - normally an airing cupboard, or paint the walls with pictures of woolly mammoths.
There is no doubt that days getting longer and lighter are a good thing, good for those who like to sport shorts, good for those who enjoy outdoor stuff, bad for vampires yes but, you know, everything comes at a cost and since the Brexit referendum those Transylvanian bloodsuckers, literally, can bugger off back to their own country.
What hasn’t happened, yet, is the moneytisation of Midwinter’s Day, with the exception of the National Trust who treble the cost of parking at Stonehenge that day.
New Year’s Day, however, now that’s all about the rebirth.  It’s all about the Brand New You, because the Old You is fucked, let’s face it.
First of all, you’re too fat.  You must be, given the huge number of diets that launch in the New Year.  Possibly the problem is down to the increasing use of fats and sugars in our processed food and food manufacturers not being as transparent as they might be about what’s in the food, while food sellers push two for one deals on unhealthy stuff and fizzy drinks but rarely on lobster.
In addition, let’s be honest, you have just come out of a Christmas where you, as an adult, had an entire selection box for breakfast at least once, and have, if you have the means and are lucky enough, have not stopped eating leftovers since 3:15pm on Christmas Day.  Let us be quite clear, there is no upper limit to the tolerance of the average British male to a turkey sandwich if he is offered one.
Second of all, you’re too stupid.  That’s why at New Year you will be offered the opportunity to begin collecting partworks about WWII, HMS Victory, or Elizabethan knot gardens (free seed packet with first issue).  You may think that you could educate yourself by watching the ‘Yesterday’ channel, a lot, but the real scholar recognises that only by buying what is essentially a collection of Wikipedia articles, printed out in 200 separate weekly magazines, will you become an authority on any subject.
Know a male by his strata of literature.
Lying on his bed, a paperback by Stephen King.
Under the mattress, Razzle (other mags are available, I am given to understand).
Under the bed, 74 copies of ‘History and that’ or similar, collection abandoned when interest waned because they had covered all the good stuff by issue 12.
So the new year can be a time of rebirth or, this being the Century of the Fruitbat, reboot, or even reimagining.
G&P has been on a two year sabbatical, more or less.  There have been some specials, some more special than others, but bluntly there is so much going on that one feels it is almost a moral duty to write blog posts that nobody will ever read.  Time to reboot.  Up the arse.

Happy New Year

It’s New year’s Eve and, once again, a time of traditions.  Traditions have changed over the years.  Once, you may have gone out to a pub, or to a succession of pubs, before pubs started ticketing people to allow them entrance to a public house, thereby sucking much of the joy out of a pub crawl in exchange for providing a sandwich platter of the sort more usually encountered at the more desperate kind of civic function, or siege.  Pub crawls on a New Year’s Eve have a special tension all of their own, as the perennial pub crawl dilemma of ‘should I stay put?  We have a table and the place is OKish.  But maybe we could be having a better time somewhere else?’ (a dilemma solved on all such occasions by having one more beer and then taking the decision) is amplified by the social pressure of starting New Year’s Eve by having a good time.  Having a good time is mandatory on New Year’s Eve, with a societal expectation of euphoria when the clock strikes midnight.

As New Year follows New Year, you might decide to go to small social gatherings on NYE, or to an organised event.  This will probably be at a golf club and will involve fireworks at midnight.  This is tremendous fun, even if you don’t get to let off the fireworks, drunk, yourself.  And they will restrain you if you try.

There will probably come a time when you have your first NYE either on your own or with your significant other, just the two of you together.  This is what ‘Hootenanny’ was invented for and why it keeps on being broadcast, year after sodding year.  Of course the best way to enjoy ‘Hootenanny’ is to open the first bottle early, send everyone you know a text about 10:30pm wishing them all the very best for the New Year, then go to bed.  Stir briefly about midnight when various neighbours and golf clubs set off their fireworks, drunk, then wake up in a new year.  Perfect.

Some people make resolutions for the new year and if you are the sort of person who needs to make a change to their life to improve it based on advice you read in a magazine with a glossy front cover showing somebody with improbably white teeth looking toned, then 1 January is probably a good time to start doing something, like going to the gym, or stop doing something, like eating the huge amounts of cheese and chocolate that have been a glorious eature of your diet since Christmas Eve.

In the spirit of making changes, it’s time to make a change to this blog.

Recently, the blog has comprised of two entries a week for most weeks, those entries being 700 words long.  This was largely, well, wholly, an experiment in determining if I could crank out the quantity of material that appears, on a regular basis, in the printed media, the sort of thing that this blog frequently takes aim at, with a trebuchet full of flaming badger shit.

This has led to a couple of conclusions.

The first is that 700 words is not enough to explore a subject.  That’s why many recent entries are just starting to get going when they stop.

One needs time to warm up to a full on rant, when the swearing come hot and fast and the indignation seethes from every phrase.

The other noticeable thing about this blog is that nobody reads it.  It’s all very well carefully crafting sly sentences for your own amusement, but this is too akin to mental masturbation, or the sort of behaviour that might be affected by a ‘talented’ ‘musician’ who has a keyboard, GarageBand and an awful lot of his compositions on CDs that he makes for himself and keeps on a special shelf in his bedroom.  In his mum’s house.

So, in 2015 G&P will go quarterly.  G&PQ sounds more like a company that operates ferries than a glossy magazine, so no scope for confusion in the Google results, and I am rather taken with the idea of the longer form blog entry.

Happy New Year everyone.

Happy New Year

According to the media, this is the time of year to make changes to your life.  The newspapers are ironically bloated with ways to lose weight and undertake other activities designed to better you in a socially improved manner.  Brave indeed would be the glossy magazine that proclaimed ‘fuck it, 2014 is the year when it’s OK to spend the entire day in your pyjamas - you can combine a lie-in with an early night so you only really have to rationalise the late morning early afternoon hump’ or, ‘want to de-clutter?  Throw out those cook books – takeaway leaflets use up so much less space’.

Other ideas revolve around walking, cycling and fresh air.  Handy if you live within walking distance of a coastal path, not so great otherwise.  Often there are walking routes which culminate in a charming country pub.  The reality is that for most of us our walking route is the shortest route to the nearest pub, where charm is balanced against convenience.  The only time the gym is mentioned in 2014 is in the money pages, where the advice is to quit your membership as studies show that when you did go last year, you spent most of your time in the hot tub.  Fatty.

Unlike a landmark birthday, which often prompts one to consider starting to do something and stopping doing other things (starting to make old man noises when rising or sitting for instance, or stopping being able to tolerate Radio 1), the New Year is a collective experience and so there is much greater support for starting juggling and stopping smoking.

Last year, I rested the blog.  Not the result of a resolution or even really an active consideration.  I could write that like a farmer I wanted to leave the area of my musings a fallow year to recover and come back more fertile than ever.  But that’s bollocks.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, the world continued to produce events that were worthy of comment.  Popes retired, former Prime Ministers and Presidents passed away and oh my suffering Christ Operation Yewtree caused the greatest amount of retrospective damage to cherished childhood memories since the release of Star Wars Episode I.

At times like this, Twitter just doesn’t cut it.  The problem with tweeting is that you can’t build up a full head of steaming rant in 140 characters including spaces and grammar.  If you read Twitter posts about events, it’s like watching a conversation between people learning a language at elementary level: ‘The Pope has resigned and it is a shock.’  ‘I am shocked that the Pope has resigned, this does not normally happen.’  ‘Has the Pope resigned because of Operation Yewtree?  LOL.’  ‘Don’t say that about the Pope, the Pope is a great man’.  ‘Now he’s not, he wears a dress.’

And so on.

So, time to blog again.  About what, I have no idea, but my New Year prediction is: food, drink, social media, social irrelevances and that firm favourite - minor issues that outrage me to the point of incoherence.

The Feast of Leftover

The period between Christmas and New Year is, perhaps, the most orphaned time of year. By which I mean it is perhaps the time of year with the least significance attached to it, it is merely a period that we pass through, on our way to time of resolutions and renewed gym memberships.

This is perhaps because this slack period does not have a name. It is not really Christmas, nor is it New Year.

More probably it is because it has not yet been the work of a memorable piece of fiction. Throughout the year seasons and seconds are celebrated, especially so at this time of the year, where the simple wave of a remote control could summon any of the three versions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ playing, leaving you to settle on Alistair Sym, Patrick Stewart or muppets as your Dickens vehicle of choice. Myself, I favour Bill Murray’s outstanding performance in ‘Scrooged’.

New Year finds favour with filmmakers, featuring prominently in everything from ‘Radio Days’ to ‘When Harry met Sally’.

Or maybe it’s just the mood. Everyone is bucolic and possibly melancholic. Or maybe they are back at work and so sullen. It’s been days now since anyone had anything approaching a normal meal, featuring vegetables, and one is usually still in the process of trying to get through the Christmas booze so that one can be temptation-free come New Year and the inevitable detox.

Hence, I have decided to celebrate this time of year, which I christen The Feast of Leftover.

There are many reasons to be cheery during this period. The first is that cheeriness is not mandatory. The second is that one can lie on the sofa with one hand stirring a tin of Quality Street in the hope that there may be a toffee left among the wrappers, for hours, and not have this used as evidence in a speculative diagnosis of depression. The same goes for still sporting pyjamas and a dressing gown until well after lunch. Which brings us on to booze. It is acceptable, at this time of the year, to have a glass of port, or two, with a cheeky slice of fruit cake. On very few other occasions does such behaviour constitute ‘lunch’ but, on this occasion, one can get away with it.

Not that it is all sloth and inebriation. There are presents to be enjoyed, books to be read, high scores to be racked up and weapons and car upgrades to be unlocked.

Best of all, there is the Feast itself. If one is lucky enough to have surplus food one should also realise that it is a sin to throw away food. That is why this time of year features an unusually varied diet, as one seeks to use up all the food in the fridge before ‘normality’ returns. And it’s Christmas food too, leading one to question the wisdom of ordering so many picked walnuts. By which I mean any.

If you are excited by the prospect of having a cheese board for dinner, then this is the time of year to go for it.

The Feast of Leftover is also celebrated in our shops. This is the time of year to purchase your Christmas decorations and cards (tip: put them somewhere handy, not somewhere ‘safe’, so when you come to look for them in eleven months, there’s a chance you’ll actually be able to find the bloody things and not have to buy more), retail Christmas leftovers on sale at bargain prices or, actually, prices more suitable for what is a bit of plastic dipped in glitter. Tempting this year were the small artificial Christmas trees on sale for a couple of quid at a DIY store. I wanted to buy loads, take them home, set them up and then stomp through them pretending to be a giant, or recreate the Battle of Endor.

However you choose to celebrate this time of the year, be it with cheese, pickled walnuts or pickling your liver, may I wish you a very happy Feast of Leftover.

Now, having just seen a gap in the greetings card market, I’m off to fetch the card and crayons.

Guest blogger - Merry Christmas from the cook

Christmas – a time of good food, good cheer, letting out the belt one more notch and trying out novelty hangover cures in the desperate hope that something, anything, will work, even if it involves using half a bottle of very-out-of-date tabasco.

The big event at the big house is the Christmas Feast on Boxing Day. Looking round at the kitchen following the Christmas Feast at the big house, one cannot help but feel an odd combination of pride and disquiet.

The Christmas Feast is not exactly what one would call a comfortable environment for vegetarians, or nutters as they are known locally, as the remains of the carcasses (or ‘off cuts’) of various beasts lay strewn about the place, and cauldrons, pots, pans, glazing tins, scrapers, prongs, tongs, prodders, pokers, chafing dishes, warming pans, peelings, leavings, doings, makings, letfovers, plates, side plates, adjacent plates, ladles, bowls, and platters lie variously stacked, scattered and slumped around the place.

The atmosphere though can be said to be one of mellow contentment as the kitchen staff rest in the knowledge that the guests have just consumed the last course and there is nothing more to do for the next two hours, when a cold buffet and sandwich platters have to be prepared, and I as head cook have no chore other than drink an entire bottle of cooking sherry and reflect on a job well done.

Christmas is always a very big occasion at the house and hence requires a great deal of preparation in the kitchen. Luckily the Master does not believe in vegetarianism or any other form of faddy eating, to the extent that he simply refuses to acknowledge their existence. Thus he has decreed that the only ‘special request’ that may be made of the kitchen is for second helpings, which eases things tremendously.

This still leaves a huge amount of work to be done, not just in the securing of the produce, including those things only ever consumed at Christmas, like sprouts, Christmas pudding or emu, but ensuring that the various pots, vats and cauldrons necessary are all ready for us and not, as was discovered one Christmas, being used by the second under-gardener to distil his illegal (though delicious) holly berry gin.

And of course one has to set the traps. It’s all very well for a house guest to think it terribly amusing to wander down into the kitchen in the wee small hours and help himself to something tasty from the fridge in the form of a midnight snack, but that can also be described as a pissed up pest helping themselves to the last of the brandy cream to be had in three counties in the mistaken belief it’s very soft cheese. Nothing discourages midnight snacking quite like an enraged badger being launched by a small compressed-air catapult across a room at a now screaming reveller who has just activated a pressure sensor at the kitchen door.


Luckily, as well as the vegetables coming from the kitchen garden and the more ‘exotic’ herbs from the greenhouse, the Master insists that the Feast consist as much as possible of animals killed on the estate. Unfortunately, given the Gamekeeper’s drinking, perverse sense of humour and almost psychopathic hatred of any animal that might either dig a flower bed, give another animal TB or go through his bins, this has meant scouring the internet for festive recipes for fox, badger and, on one desperate occasion, rambler.

The Christmas feast is, by tradition, twelve courses, all of them featuring some sort of meat – something of a challenge when it comes to the cheese platter but the sort of challenge I relish, which coincidently also forms part of the cheese platter. It would take too long, and probably be incriminating, to describe all the dishes in full, but suffice to say that this year not only were guests required to use the usual assortment of knives, forks and spoons, but also had to employ a small lance for one course, a tiny fishing rod for the fish course described as ‘so fresh it’s frisky’ and, the most talked about cutlery of the night; the table trebuchet.

Happy eating and Happy New Year

Guest blogger – Merry Christmas from the vicar

As the vicar of a small parish church in a picturesque village, my role is, of course, primarily to fleece the tourists who pitch up to look at the world-famous rood screen that graces the church (at least it became world-famous thanks to Wikipedia; did you know that anyone can edit Wikipedia and it becomes a source of authority. This means, for instance that an informed scholar can correct the misconception that the rood screen here at St Barnabus is not in fact a Victorian reproduction but is instead an authentic relic from the Middle Ages. Nobody could have been more delighted than myself at this development and I would like to use this opportunity to thank that anonymous scholar – ‘VIC007’ – for helping to put the church on the tourist map) and then to explain exactly what a screen is, and what a rood is.

The rest of the time is spent writing to publishers of GB travel guides requesting that they include an ecclesiastic glossary to spare overworked clergy from answering basic questions like ‘what’s a trancept exactly?’ and ‘isn’t a font something to do with typing?’ and of course ministering to the parishioners and preparing for the major Christian festivals.

Of which the most important is Easter, but try convincing anyone of that.

Instead, the focus of the Christian calendar in the village is Christmas. Indeed I would say that the entire village considers attending church at Christmas to be a very good idea, and I know that all the villagers are profoundly grateful to the very small proportion that actually did turn up to worship.

Just as I know that the faithful rather enjoy the tradition that has grown up in recent years of the dawn three hour bell pull on Christmas Morning, known as the ‘Hangover Clap’ or the ‘Peal of Thunder’, it brings happy shrieks of misery from all those who have overindulged the night before who live within donging range of the church and are now faced with the awful reality that an enthusiastic collection of campanologists has no snooze setting.

Of course, being an inclusive church, we are quick to welcome those of different faiths who wish to dip a toe in the waters of the font so to speak at Christmas time and see what all the fuss is about. They may have seen clergy on the news, but we are quick to remind folk that we are not of the faith that appears to make a habit out of touching choirboys and appearing some time later leaving the magistrates’ court with a blanket over our heads. No, while many in the church are going to Rome at this troubled time, here in the village we remain of the view firmly held for a few hundred years that ‘catholic’ is just another form of heritic solid fuel.

Still, as I say, all are welcome. Why some young folk even make sulky remarks about becoming pagan and, of course, one has to sit them down and give them a jolly good talking to, explaining that faith really does require devotion and that it takes rather more than some black eyeliner and clanky jewellery to make a decent pagan. Once one explains to them that of course the village has a thriving pagan community and all that is required to join it is to dance round naked all night during the winter solstice, which is in December, while somebody films the whole thing sniggering from the bushes before posting it on Youtube titled ‘world’s smallest cock’, they begin to see the attraction of belting out a psalm in a cosy church of a Sunday.

Modernity and modern fashions have their place, but here in the village we like tradition. That’s why we have ten generations of the same family in the same tomb; tradition. And inbreeding. And inherited genetic disorders. But mostly tradition. But we embrace modernity. Why, we even have women priests here sometimes and the only time there is friction is when there is an insinuation that they look rather better in vestments than I do.

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful New Year.

12 days of Christmas – New Year’s Day

Happy new year.

The paracetamol was about as much use as peeing into a volcano. To really sort out the hangover I had to break out the Monster Munch and lots of soup – I just haven’t got the energy to chew.

Party last night was excellent – from what I recall. Champagne was good, as were the black velvets which, in retrospect, is not my drink and may be the reason for my current fatigued state. Either that or the dancing. After last year I went with a list of twenty decent songs for the DJ to play if he looked like he was playing too much bloody youth music. The list was deployed, as were some of my smooth moves. Hardcore uproar on the dance floor ensued – let us hope no photographic evidence exists that could come back to haunt me if ever I seek office or simply to be taken seriously as an adult.

Back to work tomorrow – a prospect I am facing with equal parts dread and resentment. I’ve just got into the swing of wandering into the kitchen any time I like and having a small glass of something to take the edge off while rooting through the fridge in order to see what can be pushed between two slices of bread to form a sustaining snack to tide me over until dinner. I don’t see why I should curb a habit like that – it seems the only sane response in a world gone mad.

Drinking and eating may not be the solution to the world’s problems (well, apart from thirst and hunger, obviously it’s the solution to those) but, with Kenya and Pakistan both convulsing and discord apparently still rife in 2008, it’s not a bad way to occupy yourself while formulating a sane response to a world gone, going or continuing to be, mad.