Merry Festivus, everybody!
Current Mood: Amused
The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Merry Festivus, everybody!
Current Mood: Amused
I’m sorry. I’m going to rant a bit now (even moreso than usual). Xmas is supposed to be all pap and tack. It’s all about gaudy. It’s not supposed to be tasteful, and clinical, with everything in its place and no speck of glitter in sight. People who buy two trees are in the same league as the idiot woman who bought £50 rolls of ribbon for her presents.
The rise of the 2 Christmas tree household
Children’s badly-made decorations and gaudy flashing lights are, for many, the true essence of Christmas. But it would seem an increasing number of parents are banning garish decorations from the family tree. Instead, children are being bought a tree for their bedroom to decorate themselves, while the adults ensure the main Christmas tree is kept more tasteful.
Leading retailers have reported that they have seen customers buying more than one tree, with their research suggesting that the second, smaller one is being bought for children’s bedrooms, in another sign that the recession has failed to dent parents splashing out on their offspring at Christmas.
The phenomenon of the two-tree household is also the culmination of a long-running trend that the family Christmas tree has become a status symbol and a design feature, rather than merely the main traditional decoration during the festive period, according to one expert.
B&Q, which said it will have sold more than 250,000 real trees by the end of this weekend, calculated that a quarter of all of its customers buying a tree were also buying a second one – invariably a sparkly, fake tree. Annette Hill, assistant buyer in horticulture at B&Q said: “There appears to be a growing trend for households displaying more than one tree, giving parents and kids a chance to stamp their mark.”
Tesco, too, said that 25 per cent of small fake trees that were being sold were being bought alongside larger more tasteful versions, with the supermarket pointing out that the small versions were ending up in people’s hallways or children’s bedrooms. A spokesman for Tesco said: “It’s part of the trend to splash out on your children, regardless of the economic conditions.”
Part of the problem with allowing children to make their own baubles, angels and stars is that they while they may have charm they can ruin an otherwise tastefully-decorated sitting room, said Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, the interior designer and television presenter. The lack of sophistication of preschool glue-and-glitter efforts are compounded by being clustered on just the bottom two branches of the tree, with young children unable to reach the higher branches, leaving the top half naked, and the bottom covered in bright lights and tinsel. Mr Llewelyn Bowen said: “I think the whole two-tree phenomenon is about controlling your environment. Things have changed enormously from when I was growing up and you put up the tree and got out the box of old decorations you used every year. Now we are very keen to show off our lavish side at Christmas and have a tree that you can impress the Joneses with. You are never going to do that with it covered in Barbie glitter. As far as I am concerned buying your children a tree for their bedroom is a case of the parents indulging themselves.”
Current Mood: Aggravated
I woke up with rather unwanted news this morning. I tried to check my email from my phone and got a message saying that my password was invalid. After a few tries, I simply reset it and was then informed that there had been unusual activity with my gmail account.
Well, fuck. This is the email account from which my whole online presence is registered. This is the one that gets all the password update emails and shit of the sort. The good news is that it seems that the chinese fuckers only hijacked my account to spam all of my contacts. The bad news is that I have to assume that every email I have sent and received from my gmail since 2004 has been compromised and copied. How… violating. Most of that is useless and trivial. But still. It means that I have to change every password that I have, just in case. So far, I’ve changed over a dozen, including my gmail, amazon, ebay, paypal, linkedin, facebook, skype, creditexpert, sourceforge, domain registrar and web host. I’m still debating if I need to change all of my secondary stuff, like Tesco and Dabs.
The really, really annoying thing is that I don’t know how they got my password. I’m generally on the lookout for scams or phishing, and my password isn’t susceptible to a dictionary attack. It’s a giant faff that I did not need today.
Current Mood: Angry
We had our very first PRIDE xmas potluck brunch last Saturday. I made a ham, JuanAn made a spanish tortilla (potato omelette) and Antonio and David (and Antonio’s mom and Eli’s grandmother) made paella*. Attilla brought some salad and Rui was in charge of puddings. It was a very fun afternoon, with waaaaaaaaay too much food.
On Sunday, Katy and I did our first xmas shop at Tesco. We bought the booze and the non-perishables. We’ll get the rest of the stuff that we need for New Year’s closer to the time.
Bean’s being a pest at the moment. The good news is that he’s walking on his cast like nothing was wrong and he’s still sleeping very well. The bad news is that when he’s awake, we just want to kill him. Otherwise, he’s a happy, normal 2 year old. I’m looking forward to dumping him with the oldies and then running away for a bit of quiet time with Katy in London.
*There was some debate to see if this could actually be called paella, because it was made with onions instead of garlic, but the end results was very nommy nonetheless.
Current Mood: Tired
I saw this article online today and it made me want to punch a hole in my monitor. The gall of the woman, complaining about lost luxuries. I’m sure it sucks, but you’re still better off than a large chunk of the population. I know I have it good, and I’m thankful for it.
Merry Christmas? Along with millions of other middle class mothers, I can’t afford one
Less than five years ago, Christmas for me meant leisurely afternoons in Harrods buying a pretty embroidered cushion, some bath oil and a toy or two here, some smoked salmon and a box of chocolates there. And the best thing was that you could send your plethora of luxury gifts down to the front door and then collect them later. No hulking heavy bags round the other shops as I stocked up on yet more presents. Shopping in a global superstore among the well-heeled is a relaxed pleasure — or should I say, it was. For today it is merely a gold-tinted memory, as remote and exotic as going to Timbuktu. This year, the arrival of the festive period has sent shivers down my spine. And not because of the cold.
Like many thousands of families across Britain, I have experienced a dramatic downturn in my fortunes in the past year or two. To put it simply: I may be middle class, but I’m poverty-stricken. Five years ago, I earned £1,200 a week from my work as a TV and film producer and would have thought nothing of spending £45 on a pot of gold-lidded lusciously scented body cream as a Christmas present for a distant cousin. Now, I live in a two-bedroom rented flat in West London and my cousins will have to make do with little trinkets for their children only.
So how did this happen? Put simply, my partner and I started a new business four years ago, and we borrowed and borrowed and bought a country house alongside the two we owned between us in London. We practically rebuilt it while I fussed over the kitchen, oohing and aahing over Farrow & Ball paint and butler sinks. We moved to the Cotswolds and I even bought another cottage as an ‘investment’. When the recession hit, we realised the value of our properties had slumped and we were largely in negative equity. We had to rearrange our lives totally. These days, I am lucky if I earn £500 a week as a writer.
When I first wrote about becoming one of the Nouveau Pauvre — the newly poor — in the summer, many readers reacted angrily, feeling that because there were times when I’d been more fortunate, to complain about losing luxuries was repugnantly selfish. That’s as maybe — it doesn’t alter the fact that my life has changed radically through having far less money. And I’m certainly not the only one struggling to provide a happy Christmas for one and all.
Many of my friends are in quiet despair. One girlfriend told me that she’d planned to spend only £50 on her 15-year-old daughter and yet the same daughter is now asking for an iPad, which can cost more than eight times that. Another mum, with three grown-up children, told me that five years ago she would go to H&M as a matter of course for cheap and quirky clothes, but now she finds herself baulking at the prices. Even Boden, that reliable stand-by of well-to-do mums in the Home Counties, is now looking too expensive.
One friend has not stopped thanking me since I told her about a local charity shop that sells quite good children’s clothes. And another tried to save money by buying her son cheap trainers, only to be advised by her daughter that he would not be seen dead in anything other than the latest Nikes. It’s certainly not confined to my group of friends.
According to a recent survey, more than half (53 per cent) of mums are planning to cut back on the cost of Christmas presents this year, looking for better-value options and discounted items, while 42 per cent just plan to buy fewer presents. And shoppers are set to spend just £195 on festive gifts for loved ones, down £37 on last year’s figure. Personally, if it were just me and my partner, we’d tighten our belts and be done with it. But I have a six-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old step-daughter — not to mention six godchildren and about a dozen other children, ranging from teenagers to toddlers — who I need to buy presents for.
Just as I used to do as a little girl, my daughter has written a wish list to Santa and is confidently expecting him to wiggle down the chimney with a sack bulging with goodies ranging from a violin to Silly Bandz, the ubiquitous rubber bracelets all the rage among young girls. She has been aglow with anticipation and her face lights up every time she hears the word ‘present’. And the idea of having to disappoint her makes me feel sick to my stomach. In an attempt to soften the blow, I tried to lower her expectations the other day.
We were singing along to carols in the car and when it came to the last verse of In The Bleak Midwinter I made her listen to the bit that involves the poor man with nothing to give other than his heart. My six-year-old smiled at me from the back seat, agreed that love was a very nice present and then asked with considerable shrewdness for her age: ‘But Santa’s still coming, isn’t he?’
Incapable of treading on her dreams, I decided I might be able to afford stockings if I filled them with lots of little, cheap things that would give the illusion of bulk and plenty. So, far from perusing the aisles of Harrods, I found myself checking out the bargains at Poundland. I discovered excellent deals like giant Toblerones for under £1 — but still, it was not the place to fill an entire stocking. Yet even the most reasonable of places, like Asda, no longer seem that cheap. I have made it a golden rule not to spend more than £5 on a stocking present, and am horrified by how many items like window stickers, sets of crayons, colouring books, little plastic puppies and so on cost well over that. Even Silly Bandz just squeak in at £4.99, depending on where you buy them. I tried the internet, but quickly filled a virtual basket that came to over £320 so, feeling queasy, I abandoned the website.
And when I went back to the shops, all I could think was: ‘I can’t afford this. Why am I here?’ And it’s not just presents I can’t afford. There are the time-honoured rituals, like the annual visit to the local pantomime or to a London show, that are now out of the question. Tickets for the musical Wicked were £90 when I last looked. Then there are the decorations that suddenly seem oh-so-expensive. My mother always had a glossy, fat-berried holly wreath on our front door, but today something similar can cost well over £40, even if you try to track one down cheaply in a local market.
What my mother did save on was tree decorations — we had a few red and green baubles and some lengths of lank tinsel that were wrapped in tissue and carefully put away each year. I still own a few surviving baubles and some tiny birds made out of pipe-cleaner that will make it on to our tree this year.
And don’t even get me started on food. Ever since Nigella first exhorted us to be domestic goddesses, even my most laid-back friends have become control freaks in their Christmas kitchens, feeling pressured to make their own stuffing and cranberry sauce — all organic, of course. Long gone are the days when you just bought a supermarket turkey and shoved it in the oven. Now, we are made to feel like lousy cooks if we haven’t soaked it in a spicy brine full of expensive Maldon sea salt, cinnamon sticks and maple syrup for days beforehand. My mother was lucky because my grandmother provided us with tin upon tin of home-made mince pies and a Christmas cake. I would love to bake, but I don’t have time.
Even wrapping paper has become a source of irritation. My mother spent hours wrapping presents, turning even a mundane gift into an enticing, beribboned box worthy of one of the Three Kings. Following in her footsteps, I used to buy ribbons from VV Rouleaux — now their price of £50 for velvet and silk ribbons seems truly shocking. Obscene, even. So I was thrilled to spot a six-pack of gold twine at Tesco for £2, and I’m hoping that will do the trick.
Of course, to some struggling to pay even basic household bills, this may all sound like another self-pitying whinge from someone who once had it all. But I guess the point is that still — despite the recession — many of us feel under more pressure than ever before to create a perfect Christmas. How many families, I wonder, are tormented by the question: can I spend less this year without looking horribly mean? Their anxieties will only be fuelled by the pressure to spend, spend, spend our way out of recession, as retailers advertise like mad for what customers there are who do have money to spend.
Every commercial seems to be rooted in the cheery assumption that we all have oodles of cash again. ‘I want that!’ has become a familiar cry in our household as my girls are targeted by yet another advertisement for a Nintendo or an all-singing, all-dancing plastic pet shop. There is no point trying to buy children a cut-price version of what they ask for. They are ferociously loyal to their brands and they would far rather have a cash donation towards a real pair of Uggs than be palmed off with a fake pair from Sainsbury’s. Yes, Christmas is heaven for the rich, but increasingly hellish for the less well-off. The plight of those of us living in reduced circumstances is made even worse by those lucky enough to have remained in employment, who are also enjoying vastly reduced mortgage rates.
And while I expect little sympathy, I’m not too proud to admit that it seems a particularly brutal hell when once, not so long ago, I could treat my little ones to almost everything (within reason) on their wish lists. And I suspect I am not alone. Christmas is always a peak time for family break-ups, but I can’t help feeling it will be even worse this year. Cooped up families worrying about their jobs can only be enraged by the extra burden of celebrating a Christmas they may not be able to afford.
Kirsty White, a counsellor at the Tavistock Centre For Couple Relationships, says: ‘Families experiencing financial difficulties are especially vulnerable at this time of year. ‘For those with children, Christmas brings an extra challenge to fulfil their expectations and possibly repair either real or perceived damage caused by financial constraints. ‘This can be divisive, with one partner seemingly turning a blind eye to difficulties by indulging expectations, leaving the other forced to play Scrooge. Both can end up feeling judged and misunderstood. In these circumstances, engaging with the reality of their financial situation seems even more unbearable.’
In Christmas’s bitter aftermath, Kirsty expects to be busy in January. I for one don’t want to spend another year bickering with my partner about what size of tree we can afford while wondering if I will be deemed mean for spending £10 less on a favourite godson. The whole thing has become one big headache. This June, I finally paid off the last of my credit card bills. I have not used one since. I know, in reality, as Christmas Day creeps up on me, I am bound to dust off one, persuading myself that my family’s and friends’ presents are paramount. I wish I were brave enough to do things differently. But the truth is I’m just too squeamish about disappointing my children in the short term — even though in the long term I would probably be doing them an enormous favour.
So with Advent upon us, I can only look to the next few weeks with a creeping sense of dread. Cry ‘Bah Humbug’ if you must. Call me spoilt if you wish. But the fact is, I wish I could cancel Christmas.
Some of the comments about the article:
Wow I would love to make only £500 a week. Perhaps handmade gifts would be in order, and perhaps you should just tell your children to expect less. My son knows we don’t have a lot of money, and is prepared to take a less expensive gift. Greed has brought us all to this point, so let’s teach our kids it’s not about how much money you have or what possessions you have.
You want to make a happy, shiny Christmas for your family; yet you can graciously inform everyone that Santa has so many more VERY poor children to care for this year. So this Christmas will not be as plentiful as others, yet we are all together, and that is where happiness lies.
Well it seems to me a pity you brought your children up to be so materialistic and unappreciative of the value of money. And who says a Christmas is “perfect’ because the presents are wrapped in velvet ribbon and the chocolates are from Harrods?? Seems to me you have a very very weird idea of happiness based solely on what you have in the bank and can afford to fritter away on expensive ‘trinkets’. I think you sound like a very sad and bitter woman and need a dose of reality.
Current Mood: Angry
She may not be much of a celebrity. But smiley Stacey has proved Essex girls are no joke
The first words that flew out of Stacey Solomon’s wide mouth as she was parachuted from a plane to join the other celebrities in the Australian rainforest were typical: ‘I’m the luckiest girl in the world!’ No hysteria, no vanity, no cod heroics, just pure, unadulterated joy and gratitude. There were no crocodile tears during the three weeks Stacey inhabited the I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! jungle; merely a desire to grasp life with both French-manicured hands. ‘Lord only knows I’m annoying, so thank you for having me,’ she said as she accepted her crown. And with those words, a brand-new star was born.
Why do I love Stacey? Can I count the ways? There is no artifice about her, no vanity at all — she described her special skill on entering the show as ‘talking’. No chip on those gloriously broad shoulders (unlike Cheryl Cole, who felt the need to tick off a contestant on The X Factor for daring to highlight her working-class roots). When Stacey was crowned Queen Of The Jungle on Saturday night, having brought fellow finalist Shaun Ryder out of his shell (her presence was like a deliriously sunny, ripe peach placed under the nostrils of a particularly recalcitrant tortoise), she was shown clips of her best moments on the show, and could only exclaim how hideously unattractive she looked.
Read More “Stacey Solomon is my guilty pleasure” »
Current Mood: Amused
You read articles like this and you understand why you see news reports about 3 generations of a family sharing a council flat, no member of which has ever worked a day in their lives.
Proof that work just doesn’t pay: Child poverty among unemployed families is falling … but increasing in working homes
Child poverty is rising among working families while generous benefits cut it for the unemployed, a report has revealed. The study by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation is an indictment of Labour’s record in power – and casts doubt on the Coalition’s ability to deliver its pledge to ‘make work pay’. It reveals that while the policy of lavishing benefits on the unemployed has helped tackle some aspects of child poverty, many working families have fallen behind. Child poverty in workless families fell in 2008/9 to 1.6million, despite the impact of the recession. But during the same period child poverty among working families rose to 2.1million – the highest on record.
The figures continue a trend that began five years ago and mean that 58 per cent of children in poverty now live in homes where at least one parent works. Tom MacInnes, co-author of the report, said ‘substantial’ increases in benefits had helped drag many children in workless homes above the poverty line. But he said there had been too little focus on the children of people in low-paid jobs. ‘The figures suggest that something is going wrong for people in this group – it is disappointing. It demonstrates that work alone is not always a route out of poverty,’ he said.
Three men—a mathematician, a biologist, and an engineer—are discussing their love lives. The mathematician starts off talking about how much he loves having a wife. She takes care of him. She always there for him. She’s so constant, just everything he could want. But the biologist disagrees. “What you really need is a mistress,” he says. “My wife is boring, but my mistress always makes sure there’s something new and exciting going on.” Those two argue back and forth for a little while until, finally, they ask the engineer to break the tie. Which is better, a wife, or a mistress? “I like having both,” says the engineer. “That way, one of them always assumes I’m off spending time with the other one, and I can go into the office and get some work done.”
Why do Computer Scientists get Halloween and Christmas confused?
Because Dec 25 = Oct 31
Werner Heisenberg is speeding along in his car when he is pulled over by a state patrolman. The trooper walks up to the side of the car, and as Heisenberg rolls down the window, the trooper asks, “Son, do you have any idea how fast you were going?” Heisenberg responds, “No, but I knew exactly where I was!”
Q: Why did the statistician take a bomb with him every time he flew?
A: What are the chances of there being two bombs on an airplane?
From: The Independent.
Why do beautiful people have more daughters? Because beauty is more important for a woman than a man, according to evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. Why are most suicide bombers Muslim? Because they don’t get enough sex. Why are liberals more intelligent than conservatives? Because liberalism is “evolutionarily novel.” The London School of Economics researcher and author of Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature is accustomed to defending his provocative assertions against outraged critics.
He acknowledges that some of his ideas may seem “immoral, contrary to our ideals or offensive”. But he insists they are true and supported by scientific evidence that he has continued to collect since his book was published in 2007. “Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct,” he says.
Now, in a study to be published in Reproductive Sciences, he has adduced new evidence for what he describes as one of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology which explains why attractive people have more female children. So how does the research stack up?
1 Beautiful people have more daughters
Known as the Trivers-Willard hypothesis this states that if parents have any traits they can pass on to their children and that will be better for one sex than the other, they they will have more children of that sex. A man’s value as a mate is largely determined in evolutionary terms by his wealth, status and power, according to Dr Kanazawa, whereas a woman’s is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness.
“Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons,” Dr Kanazawa writes.
Figures from the 1958 National Child Development Study of 17,000 babies who were rated for attractiveness by their teachers at age 7 and were asked at age 45 for the age and sex of their babies bears this out. The unattractive children were more likely to have sons, according to the Reproductive Sciences study.
2 Liberals are more intelligent than conservatives
A study by Dr Kanazawa, published in Social Science Quarterly in March, based on the same data showed that young adults who identified themselves as “very liberal” had an average IQ of 106 while those who identified themselves as “very conservative” had an average IQ of 95.
“The ability to think and reason endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions. As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognise and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles,” Dr Kanazawa said.
Humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends. Being liberal and caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.
3 Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated. But when religion is involved it is always Muslim, Dr Kanazawa says.
Why? The surprising answer is that it may have nothing to do with Islam or politics, culture or race. Rather, it has to do with sex, or in this case the absence of sex.
Writing in Psychology Today, Dr Kanazawa said the distinguishing feature of Islam was that it tolerated polygyny – men taking two or more wives at the same time. By allowing some men to monopolise all women other men were left out. The prospect of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr to Islam then created a potent cocktail. “It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim suicide bombers,” he says.
4 Men like blonde bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Blonde hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age, Dr Kanazawa says. Typically, young girls with light blonde hair become women with brown hair. So blonde hair is a signal of youth and men who attempt to mate with blondes are unconsciously seeking younger (and hence healthier and more fecund) women.
5 Humans are naturally polygamous
Polyandry (one woman married to more than one man) is rare but polygyny has been widely practised throughout most of history.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women and their children are better off having a share of the few wealthy men than having an entire poor man to themselves. In practice, most industrial societies tend to be monogamous because men tend to be more equal in their resources than their ancestors in medieval times.
6 Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
A man’s value as a mate is largely determined by his wealth, status and power whereas a woman’s comes mainly from her youth and physical attractiveness. A father is important to his son in ensuring he inherits wealth status and power but he can do little to keep his daughter youthful or beautiful. His continued presence in the family is important to the son but not as crucial to his daughter.
7 What creative geniuses have in common with criminals
The tendency to commit crimes peaks in adolescence and then rapidly declines. But this curve is not limited to crime – it is also evident in every quantifiable human behaviour that is seen by potential mates and costly (not affordable by all sexual competitors). In the competition for mates men may act violently or they may express their competitiveness through their creative activities.
8 The myth of the male mid-life crisis
Many middle aged men go through a mid-life crisis but not because they are middle aged. It is because their wives are. Dr Kanazawa says: “From the evolutionary psychologist’s perspective, a man’s midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife’s imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career and thus his renewed need to attract younger women.”
9 It’s natural for male politicians to risk everything for an affair
Powerful men have always married monogamously but mated polygynously. Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a large number of women.
10 Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist
Men always subjected each other to abusive, intimidating and degrading treatment at work. It is part of their reaction to competitive situations. Men are not treating women differently when they harass them. They do it because they are not discriminating, Dr Kanazawa says.
Current Mood: Blank