Christmas Preparations pt II
Christmas Preparations
Our lil' boy is coming home today, w00t! So what am I doing sitting here typing instead of getting his room ready? Is it that I've been so organised that everything is all ready? Falls about laughing! Nope! I'm doing my daily 2 hours with the lightbox. SAD can be such a pain! Meanwhile H is off on the usual husbandly Christmas Eve tour of the shops. He left around 7am to get to the local "You weren't in so we couldn't deliver it" parcels office before everyone else, past couple of times we've tried the queue has been out onto the pavement! Then he's getting a few bits & pieces from the market - like a Swede, & I think he wants a big box of long envelopes as well. Apparently the other day at work someone brought in an M&S Luxury Christmas pudding with Corvoisier cream - which he liked so much he offered to go get one for us. Fine by me. I could do the usual chocolate Christmas puddings, come to think of it I reckon we still have at least one plum pudd left in the freezer from last year; so whatever happens we'll not be pudd-less. However I'm fairly in favour of not having to stand around baking more than I'll have to anyhow, & there's the bedroom to sort & the vacuuming to do.
Remember the Boxing Day Tsunami? People are beginning to recover. That's the thing about Life - no matter how horrendous the circumstances, & the Tsunami was pretty horrendous, it goes on!
Writing of life going on, even though horrendous - in the Middle East Christians are moving out. Those left are being viewed with increasing suspicion by their Muslim neighbours. After all, the American, British (et al) forces are Western & therefore 'Christian' aren't they? Err . . . No. Western doesn't mean Christian any more than American means white, or black!
So does this matter? & if so why? Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, points out a few things which might not immediately leap to mind. If nothing else, segregating people by religion, or racial group, has NEVER been shown to improve matters - look at Northern Ireland, what used to be Yugoslavia, the current mess in Iraq . . .
Meanwhile some Chinese have been complaining about the way Christmas has been encroaching on their country. I suspect they really mean Xmas, but there we are. Students from elite Chinese universities were blaming their government for not supporting (Chinese) traditions. Yes, well, bearing in mind China's history in the last century, quite which traditions do they mean? After all, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s pretty effectively removed most indigenous Chinese traditions, didn't it?
Last year a Christian couple in Lancashire expressed their views on their council promoting homosexuality to the council, and received a visit from the police! Now I believe that people are people regardless of their religious or sexual orientation - and should be treated as people. So the police reaction strikes me as kinda tough, unwarrented, generally, & a Bad Thing. After all, if peoples' sexual orientations, or religious views, really don't matter then why were they investigating this couple? Oh, they've apologised, & come to an out of court settlement now, but honestly . . .
As Mr Roberts, one of the original complainants, said:
"Morality is the foundation of democracy and when you do away with morality, your democracy goes down the Swannee and you end up with immorality and then anarchy."
"And all I was doing was just [to] challenge our council that all we wanted was the same rights as the gays and lesbians have."
See, either everyone is treated with equal courtesy, or our beliefs & practices DO make a difference, & all this "PC-speak" is so much claptrap, not to mention woolly thinking!
Like here? If you go down to the Canadian woods tonight - make sure you don't, in any way, resemble a deer. Hmmm, p'raps it's a Good Thing Vancouver Island is somewhere near the end of Santa's run! Just imagine the headlines - "Rudolf shot down by native hunter"!
Anyone seen the latest Potter hype - about the new book title? "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" Just doesn't do it for me, somehow. Meanwhile the BBC are showing "Harry Potter & the Philosophers' Stone" yet again over the Christmas period. Yaw-awn!
H has returned, poor guy. Having queued for half an hour to get into the "You weren't in so we couldn't deliver it" parcels office, it turns out he can't pick up the parcel. It's for S & S has to sign for it. So it's being redelivered next Thursday. Hmmm, you staying til then, S? Otherwise I'll have to see if I can't sweet talk 'our' postman into either leaving it here or letting me re-address it! People - if you want to send parcels to our children, send them to their addresses, not here, PLEASE! Still, apart from the swede, he got everything else. I'll go make him some coffee, then we can start on the bedroom.
Y'all have a good day now!
Our lil' boy is coming home today, w00t! So what am I doing sitting here typing instead of getting his room ready? Is it that I've been so organised that everything is all ready? Falls about laughing! Nope! I'm doing my daily 2 hours with the lightbox. SAD can be such a pain! Meanwhile H is off on the usual husbandly Christmas Eve tour of the shops. He left around 7am to get to the local "You weren't in so we couldn't deliver it" parcels office before everyone else, past couple of times we've tried the queue has been out onto the pavement! Then he's getting a few bits & pieces from the market - like a Swede, & I think he wants a big box of long envelopes as well. Apparently the other day at work someone brought in an M&S Luxury Christmas pudding with Corvoisier cream - which he liked so much he offered to go get one for us. Fine by me. I could do the usual chocolate Christmas puddings, come to think of it I reckon we still have at least one plum pudd left in the freezer from last year; so whatever happens we'll not be pudd-less. However I'm fairly in favour of not having to stand around baking more than I'll have to anyhow, & there's the bedroom to sort & the vacuuming to do.
Remember the Boxing Day Tsunami? People are beginning to recover. That's the thing about Life - no matter how horrendous the circumstances, & the Tsunami was pretty horrendous, it goes on!
Writing of life going on, even though horrendous - in the Middle East Christians are moving out. Those left are being viewed with increasing suspicion by their Muslim neighbours. After all, the American, British (et al) forces are Western & therefore 'Christian' aren't they? Err . . . No. Western doesn't mean Christian any more than American means white, or black!
So does this matter? & if so why? Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, points out a few things which might not immediately leap to mind. If nothing else, segregating people by religion, or racial group, has NEVER been shown to improve matters - look at Northern Ireland, what used to be Yugoslavia, the current mess in Iraq . . .
Meanwhile some Chinese have been complaining about the way Christmas has been encroaching on their country. I suspect they really mean Xmas, but there we are. Students from elite Chinese universities were blaming their government for not supporting (Chinese) traditions. Yes, well, bearing in mind China's history in the last century, quite which traditions do they mean? After all, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s pretty effectively removed most indigenous Chinese traditions, didn't it?
Last year a Christian couple in Lancashire expressed their views on their council promoting homosexuality to the council, and received a visit from the police! Now I believe that people are people regardless of their religious or sexual orientation - and should be treated as people. So the police reaction strikes me as kinda tough, unwarrented, generally, & a Bad Thing. After all, if peoples' sexual orientations, or religious views, really don't matter then why were they investigating this couple? Oh, they've apologised, & come to an out of court settlement now, but honestly . . .
As Mr Roberts, one of the original complainants, said:
"Morality is the foundation of democracy and when you do away with morality, your democracy goes down the Swannee and you end up with immorality and then anarchy."
"And all I was doing was just [to] challenge our council that all we wanted was the same rights as the gays and lesbians have."
See, either everyone is treated with equal courtesy, or our beliefs & practices DO make a difference, & all this "PC-speak" is so much claptrap, not to mention woolly thinking!
Like here? If you go down to the Canadian woods tonight - make sure you don't, in any way, resemble a deer. Hmmm, p'raps it's a Good Thing Vancouver Island is somewhere near the end of Santa's run! Just imagine the headlines - "Rudolf shot down by native hunter"!
Anyone seen the latest Potter hype - about the new book title? "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" Just doesn't do it for me, somehow. Meanwhile the BBC are showing "Harry Potter & the Philosophers' Stone" yet again over the Christmas period. Yaw-awn!
H has returned, poor guy. Having queued for half an hour to get into the "You weren't in so we couldn't deliver it" parcels office, it turns out he can't pick up the parcel. It's for S & S has to sign for it. So it's being redelivered next Thursday. Hmmm, you staying til then, S? Otherwise I'll have to see if I can't sweet talk 'our' postman into either leaving it here or letting me re-address it! People - if you want to send parcels to our children, send them to their addresses, not here, PLEASE! Still, apart from the swede, he got everything else. I'll go make him some coffee, then we can start on the bedroom.
Y'all have a good day now!