The holiday season is always stressful, but I think for a lot of LGBT people it has a greater chance of being full of badness or being full of more badness. It occurred to me over the weekend when several friends and I ran round to another LGBT friend’s house as an emergency “it’s not all shit” party to remind him he had family, even if not in the ( Read more... )

 And this is accompanied by the insomnia of doom. Which is very very irritating.

Because of a weird quirk of Sparkiness, sleep deprivation is also accompanied by the hyperactive libido. This is not a good combination

The UK has had our first "Black Friday" thanks to shops copying online retailers who are, in turn, copying the Americans. We are all ( Read more... )

Yes, I’m actually going to make some this year. I normally don’t bother because, well, why make promises you know you won’t keep so you can break them later and feel bad about it? What is this, emergency guilt reserves? “Hey, I don’t think I’m going to feel guilty enough in, about, mid-February, so I’m going make some promises I’ll break and ( Read more... )

Now that was surprisingly not awful.

It was bad, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the long drawn out hell of relatives I want to kill with a flamethrower  but can’t because there’s so many of them and it’d cause a severe fire hazard.

Part of it is simply that our vast huge family is breaking up. As the oldest generation shuffles off their ( Read more... )

A few years ago now, my brother moved to Anglesey, in Wales. He has visited multiple times since then (clearing out the cupboards every time - it’s like being visited by Huns)  but I’ve never had occasion to schlep over to Wales to visit him. He insisted I take a weekend to come see him and take him to their wonderful local lobster restaurant. ( Read more... )

I have finally made my Winter Feast cake!

But Sparky, I hear you cry, it’s October!

I know, I know, I’m running late this year. I normally have all Yule, Christmas and Winter Feast cakes made in September. But it’s still a good time to get them baking.

I always make these every year partly because of Beloved. He used to hate Christmas cake because ( Read more... )

Valentines day has swung round again. And words cannot express how much I hate this day (though I am looking forward to the much more fun holiday - cheap chocolate day ( Read more... )

And yes, ongoing. See the thing is there’s a lot of family social stuff this time of year for us and it tends to bleed over a lot more into less a few days of holidays so much as a couple of weeks. And when we get a day spare it becomes more a case of “we’re alone! ALONE!!!!” and not wanting to do anything else. Except the damn neighbour ( Read more... )

There now begins my annual attempt to maintain sanity as the holiday season officially begins. After all this is the time of year for food! (YAY!) drink! (YAY!) and family (oh dear gods preserve me ( Read more... )

In a break from holiday tradition we managed to go, well, so far, without one single thing being ste on fire. Not one single thing. This may be a first in the history of our holidays. My rather extreme nervousness around naked flames is thankful, however.

However, my great aunt did die on Christmas Eve, which was rather unpleasant. It is the ( Read more... )