10 Things I Learnt This Christmas...

1. Christmas is definitely way more magical when you’re a child…. the excitement on my little nieces’ faces when they were tearing open their presents under the tree was quite something to behold.

2. Christmas presents are far more sophisticated these days than when I was a child… way back then, the only “blackberry” we had heard of was a fruit typically found with apples in pies!

3. Garden furniture is very handy for indoor use when you have a load of Christmas visitors to fit around the dinner table.

4. My culinary skills are definitely improving, even if I say so myself… I made a very tasty lamb stew for Christmas Eve supper, a full roast beef dinner (with roast potatoes, glazed carrots, green beans, mini Yorkshire puddings, and port and red onion gravy) for Christmas Day, and then fall-off-the-bone tender roast chickens with a medley of roasted vegetables for Boxing Day. And nothing got burnt… well, apart from those leftover Yorkies that I was trying to warm up under the grill!

5. I also make a mean Christmas cake… perhaps it was all that rum but it certainly went down well, especially with a hefty slice of “Double Gloucestershire” cheese on the side.

6. My Christmas trifle, on the other hand, needs some re-mastering… a tad on the bland side!

7. My usually tee-totaler mom becomes extremely chatty after three glasses of champagne!

8. ‘Love Actually’ is still my all-time favourite “Christmas” movie, but the novelty of ‘Merry Madagascar’ and ‘Shrek The Halls’ is wearing a little thin… not so much for my nieces though!

9. I’ll never tire of cheesy Christmas lights…. which is lucky, since my neighbours hold an annual “We have the cheesiest festive decorations” contest!

10. Someone clearly lacking in common sense and good taste has decided to can Satan’s green balls….I discovered this horror on a trip to the supermarket....

Effectively farts in a can.. or at least in the making!

Happy Christmas!

Wishing everyone a very happy festive season... may your glass always be full, your meat tender, potatoes crisp, brussel sprouts absent, and your loved ones near!

Thank you to all my fabulous readers for your support and friendship this past year….


Nat xx

Blog Posts Of Christmases Past

It's almost Christmas already and I've not posted anything even vaguely festive this year.... apart from sharing that recipe for my now infamous booze-addled Christmas cake back in November. Perhaps I peaked too soon? With fortnightly rum top-ups, the cake is quite possibly a sitting fire hazard by now... perhaps best not to serve it with the flaming brandy pudding!

Then I suppose there was the rather silly behaviour at my office Christmas party this year ... you'd think I would know a lot better, especially since I wrote a whole post about the folly of those overindulging in alcoholic beverages in front of their work colleagues, round about this time last year....10 Reasons Not To Get Drunk At Your Office Christmas Party! How the mighty how fallen?! If there's one thing I hate, it's a hypocrite....

Another thing I detest? Satan's little green balls! They're everywhere at the moment, rather like some recurring, annoying little Christmas jingle. This witty (or perhaps rather shitty!) little ditty first appeared way back in 2009 on this somewhat odious (!) post here.....

Nat's Ode To Brussels Sprouts

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...

I loathe to spy thee lying on my plate

All small and green and round

I detest thee, soggy vegetable

I abhor thy sulphur scent

Boiled or roasted, steamed or fried

I hate thee for thou bitter taste

It makes me gag and twist my face

And later I hate thee even more

When two hours on, the air turns poor!

And sprouts are not the only things I hate about Christmas. Indeed, I made a whole list last year... only 5 Things I Hate About Christmas? Huh! I reckon my list grows yearly, as I become more crotchety and bah humbugish in my dotage. Mostly, I'm just fed up with the growing commercialisation of it all... the fact that it all seems to be less about spending time with your loved ones, and more about how much loot you can get! Mind you, there was a time when getting the latest "Baby Doll In A Rocking Cradle" was a very big thing for me...

Yes, back in the "olden days" when Christmas for me fell in the middle of a hot Southern hemisphere summer holiday... sun, sand and surf. A barbeque and the beach.... now I dream about a white Christmas, coz it looks pretty... for a while...but I really just can't be bothered with all that inevitable slush, ice and shovelling snow! Chances of snow are in fact very slim in the UK this Christmas, with temperatures set to soar to a tropical 11C later this week... Global Warming anyone?

Can you now see what I've managed to do here? Cobble together a whole post, pretty much from the posts of Christmases past. Needs must when a serious lack of inspiration and a heavy dosage of laziness sets in...and all that egg nog. Nothing wrong with a bit of recycling - the BBC do this all the time.... rerun the same old programmes at Christmas, year in, year out, with just the odd sprinkling of something new to trick viewers into thinking they're getting value for their licence fees.


So, I may not have wowed you all with my original seasonal prose today, but I'll leave you with a shot of my "fabulously festive" Christmas tree at least....

Happy Christmas everyone!

One Decade

Ten years ago today, I stood under a hot African sun, in front of 40 of our close friends and family, and said these words to the man standing next to me...

From this day forward I promise you these things.

I will laugh with you in times of joy

and comfort you in times of sorrow.

I will share in your dreams, and support you as you strive to achieve your goals.

I will listen to you with compassion and understanding,

and speak to you with encouragement.

I will help you when you need it, and step aside when you don't.

I will remain faithful to you for better or worse, in times of sickness and health.

You are my best friend and I will love and respect you always.

A lot has happened in our first decade of marriage.

Just one week after our wedding, we boarded a plane to London - with one-way tickets and all our worldly belongings in two suitcases between us to start a new life in the UK. And what an adventure it has been!

Between us we've had 7 jobs... some of which we've hated (with She-Devil bosses from hell), but finally we are both reasonably content. We aim to work to live, never live to work....

We've taken on the complete renovation of a Previous-Owner's-DIY-Experiment-Gone-Horribly-Wrong of a house.

We've travelled... to West Coast USA, Canada, the Caribbean, South Africa, The Maldives, Egypt, Malta, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belguim, the Czech Republic, Romania, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, and all around the UK and Channel Islands. Vietnam and Cambodia beckon in 2012...

We've experienced scuba diving, snorkeling, skiing, snowshoeing, dogsledding, paragliding, hot air ballooning, mountain biking, hiking, driving a Ferrari and indoor skydiving. Some of these activities ended better than others!

We've learnt a bit about Aikido... and have the bruises to show for it! One of us has ended up with his leg in plaster for 3 months after a freak football-in-the-park incident.

We've witnessed friends' matching and then hatching a whole brood of littl'uns.

We've become aunt and uncle four times over and godparents twice.
 
Sadly, we've watched my dad put up a brave fight against cancer, and finally lose.  And we've seen how this dreadful disease plays havoc with the families of so many of our close friends.

We've watched the world changed by the explosion of technology, gadgets and social networking.

We've witnessed the global economic downturn, revolutions, wars, famine, natural disasters and much of the world's population suffering on a large scale.

We've counted ourselves lucky to live the comfortable, privileged lives that we do.

We've laughed, we've cried... and we've talked and talked.

What will the next decade bring?
 

A Very British Safari

Lions, tigers, rhinos and bears... not the sort of animals you'd typically expect to find in the green fields of England. But that's exactly what I saw this weekend - at the Woburn Safari Park!

Crazy. Stupid. Busy.



I’ve been off the bloggersphere for a little while. Kind of conspicuous by my absence, so to speak... or rather type.

So....what has been happening in the Life of Nat?

Quite a lot, actually... there have been some crazy high jinks, some should-have-known-better-stupid escapades, and some run-of-the mill domestic stuff.

First up, the high jinks, or rather Air Kix. One night last week I got to try out indoor skydiving... body flying in a wind tunnel, set up to simulate free falling at 24,000 feet.

There is no way on this planet (or indeed the wider galaxy for that matter) that I am ever going to jump out of a ‘plane with just a silk sheet strapped to my back to spare me from making like a cow pat (splattery splat!) in a big open field of ruminating bovines. So this is possibly the next best thing. And perhaps slightly less dangerous than my foiled attempts at paragliding.

Here I am looking rather ...er... fly! And large...

Loads of fun and definitely something I would try again.


And so onto the stupid escapades... or rather “This one time, when I temporarily lost all sense of proportion and imagined I was back in my drunken undergraduate student days!”

My liver certainly thought Nat was partying like it was 1993....

It was my office Christmas party this past weekend... a 3-course dinner, obligatory cheesy disco for those so inclined, and then midnight taxis home for the local residents or a night in the hotel for those of us living further afield. I should have listened to the Sensible, One-Glass-Of-Wine-Is-My-Limit Nat sitting on my shoulder, and retired to my comfy hotel bed as the Pumpkin Hour struck.

Random shot of hotel light fittings

But I didn’t.

“A quick night cap” in the hotel bar with the other stayer-overs (is that even a word?) turned into a few. And then someone had the bright idea of “finishing it all off with a shot”...

Next thing we know it’s gone 4 am and we have steadily worked our way through a selection of liqueurs.

Tequila! She makes me happy!

So does sambuca, disaronno, Bailey’s, vodka and kahlua...

The bar man is politely asking us to “Leave right now people! Just get out!!!” and actually escorting us from the premises...

Amazingly, I wake up 6 hours later feeling rather chirpy, which is more than can be said for my ‘tache-touting, everyone-was-my-buddy-last-night’ husband (who by the way has been so flattered by the positive response to his whiskers that he’s keeping them till the New Year). The hangover struck with a vengeance on the drive home...

I spent the rest of Sunday semi-comatose on the couch, unfit for purpose, which did nothing for the progress of Operation Christmas Preparation. With a whole horde of visitors about to descend upon us between now and the Big Day itself, I have been on a frenzied hosting hyper drive...planning meals, ordering van loads of groceries, sorting out the guest bedroom, getting the Christmas cards posted, gifts wrapped, Christmas tree decorated, Christmas cake boozed...

Someone please hit the “Pause button”!

The 'Tache Chronicles, Concluded

So, finally....here we are at the end of Movember.... a whole month of mesmerising moustachery reaches it's magnificent...er...conclusion.

For the past 30 days, my hubby has been sprouting facial hair for a good cause - to raise funds and awareness to help combat men's cancers, specifically prostate and testicular cancer.

Without mo ado, here he is, in all his hairy glory......



Drum roll.....

Nah.... that's not him!

"I want to break free!
I want to breeeaaaak free!!!
I want to break free from this 'tache and these over tight white jeans!
I don't neeeeeed them!"

Neither is that.

Or that.

Not that.

Or even that. Cute though!

OK! OK! Enough! This time it's really him.....

Gotcha!

Enough already....here's the real deal......

Day 30

To be honest, I won't be too sorry to see the back of the hairy lip rug. Hubby's apparently thinking of keeping it for the upcoming party season, just for a bit of comedy factor. Hmmmmm....

I leave you with this little 'tache ditty by That 1 Guy, courtesy of the lovely (and highly talented plasticine artist) Stephanie off of Love, Life Project: a happy living blog.....

Can You Use That In A Sentence, Please?



Ah..... my dearly beloved clients! I've gotta love 'em.... apart from keeping me in employment, they provide me with endless inspiration. Mainly inspiration on how not to behave unless you want to be classified as a complete raving lunatic slightly high maintenance. But inspiration nonetheless.


Like how to make every email appear far more complicated (and therefore far more important) than it needs to be.

It's quite simple really... just add a whole lot of unnecessary or daft words. Then sprinkle liberally with "regarding".

Exhibit A 
"With regards our recent conversation regarding the updates regarding...."



Be sure to use the word "pursuant" whenever possible....

Exhibit B
"Pursuant to our recent teleconference...." or "Pursuant to your email"


Better yet, use words completely out of context, whenever possible... again this will make things appear far more urgent than they really are (and possibly even quite secretive)...

Exhibit C
"I will discuss this with you later today, following our internal review meeting that is currently transpiring."

Don't be afraid to be melodramatic ...

Exhibit D
"There is a mighty sword poised over our necks. If we do not get the documents in time, it will be the end of us."


Or intimidate with title dropping...

Exhibit E
"I will have to discuss that with our Big Cheese Global Vice President of Very-Important-Sounding Functions-That-Are-Not-All-That....."


The power of downright rudeness should never be underestimated. It won't win you any friends though, so proceed with caution...

Exhibit F
" Send me the document NOW!" or "I MUST HAVE IT BY 3PM TODAY!" .

And if all else fails, get touchy-feely

Exhibit G
"I am reaching out to you right now, to ask you to..." [Client with exceptionally long arms, obviously...able to reach right across the Atlantic]