100th post and still going

On July 6th 2010 this blog was born. Born out of my desire to carry on writing following my graduation which meant I couldn’t write for student papers anymore. It began as a creative outlet, when my creativity felt stifled by other parts of my life. It has become so much more than that though. Now the blog has recently surpassed the ripe old age of 100 (and now has photographic sibling) I thought I would celebrate by looking back and thanking you, the reader.

Since 2010 a lot in my life has shifted and transformed irrevocably yet this blog has stood sentinel, unchanged. Some of those events have been documented on here like working as a journalist in India or moving to London. I’ve written about crazy things (my secret love of braces, being questioned by the visa police and even wearing fancy dress to beat writers block) and more somber subjects (the Japanese earthquake, religious unity and Tibet). I’ve been awarded Freshly Pressed twice and the Versatile Award, not that I’m bragging (much). The best thing, however, is reading comments and getting stopped in the street (truthfully this has happened twice now!) by people who like my blog and say that it made them laugh. If you want to understand my reasoning for blogging read my 10,000th hit post, as you can tell I like hitting milestones!

It’s only survived past the 2nd post because of you, the readers. I don’t want to go on like Kate Winslet at an awards ceremony but thank you readers and commenters, you’ve kept me sane and motivated.

I would urge anyone to start a blog, you’d be surprised where it takes you. You can be as thick as custard but as long as you have something to talk about, it will work. Just make sure it has heart, I’ve read some blogs that are just written for the sake of writing and it’s painfully obvious. Words written without heart read hollow.

So thanks for reading and here’s to the next 100.

Be warned this is not going to be big on dignity

Ice-skating, as described by The National History Museum, London, is ” London’s most spectacular winter attraction”. In my own words its hell, hell on ice.

My friends have been badgering me for many months to go ice-skating, “it’ll be amazing”, “we are going to have so much fun”, they’d threaten. The last time I had ice skated was at the ripe old age of seven and while most of the memories of that day have been wiped, recorded over or forgotten, I had one over-riding memory of that day: pure unadulterated fear. You can probably guess where this is going…

Eventually, however, I was worn down and bowed to their peer pressure. The day was booked, the calendar marked and that fear began to reoccur. It lingered in my final thoughts at night, like flashbacks from a film of a small boy screaming clinging to the barriers for dear life. I shook it off, reminding myself that I was young, foolish and unbalanced (literally) back then, yet it still remained. You may feel at this point that I’m over exaggerating for dramatic effect, but let me assure you I am really not. The fear was real and not unfounded.

The day rolled round and we made our way to our doom. Doom easily accessed by public transport. Seeing small children and doddery old ladies slink elegantly around the rink gave me a glimmer of hope that perhaps I was being bonkers in fearing this. We soon made our way into the queue and I traded my shoes in for bladed bowling shoes, shuddering at the thought of the plethora of other people who have shifted and sweated within them. Once the clasps were secured and my previous shoes disappeared around the corner there was no turning back.

Standing up for the first time on them felt odd but not bad and the feeling of ‘perhaps I can do this’ began to rise, before being cruelly smashed when I boarded the ice. We waited ‘patiently’, shuffling our way towards the unopened doors like bulls preparing for the Pamplona, while what can only be described as a freezer on wheels went around refreezing the rink and making it slippery once more. I took one more moment to pre-warn my friends that I had a bad feeling about this and then we were on….

If anyone has seen the film Bambi, when the title character finds himself on the ice and his limbs shift irrespective of the other, balance becoming lost in a frozen moment, will know exactly how I was on the ice. While I floundered and fell my friends found the balance fast and were off zooming annoyingly gracefully into the distance.

The small children were allowed to use Pingo shaped stabilisers (see photo). I envied them immensely as they sailed around with their penguin protectors. I’m not proud to admit that I sheepishly asked the stewards if they had larger versions (carefully omitting the word ‘adult’, as clearly nothing about my panicked state was adult like).

I spend the majority of the time with an iron grip around my friends’ hands or linking arm in arm with my two male friends, which more than once resulted in a fellow skater “aww”ing at us.

The hour seemed eternal, time frozen like the rink. Again I’m not proud to say that I called time on my skating sorrows early and consoled myself with a stiff coffee (sadly there was nothing stronger within reach).

So while the whole sorrowful event wasn’t big on dignity, it was big on humour for you the reader and for anyone who was ‘lucky’ enough to witness it. Oh the horror of it all.

My 2011 – 12 months, 12 songs

It seems to have become my yearly ritual now to create a playlist for my year. This last year has been a roller coaster, 2010 rolled into 2011 and India rolled into London. So these songs are representative of a some sort of transition.

So here we go…

 

John Mayer – Waiting on the World to Change

I wrote a blog about this song a couple of weeks ago and I don’t think it will ever stop ringing true to me. Read it here

Ed Sheeran – The City

A song about London, which really encapsulates how I felt about the city when I arrived to it. “The city never sleeps, I hear the people walk by when it’s late, sirens beat through my window sill, I can’t close my eyes”

Simon and Garfunkel - Homeward Bound

Its not exactly their song that has got on this list but a cover. I was in Paddington underground station headphones on and my mind placed firmly inside my own little world. It was then over whatever I was listening that I heard this woman’s voice. She was busking at one of the sites on the London Underground. I must admit her voice stopped me dead. I was on my way home for Christmas so the song held even more potency but it will be a moment I will never forget.

Leddra Chapman – Heartbeats (live)

Yes she may have been on this list last year but god damn it this woman can sing. This year she released a new EP which included her live cover of heartbeats by Nneka. Its a unique cover and annoyingly I’ve missed going to see her twice this year, once through illness the other by work so this song is the closest I’ve got to her live.

Bon Iver – Holocene

Listen to it. All I have to say on the matter. I see the sunrise over the Himalayas, what will you see?

Lee Evans – Suicide Song

Hardly ground breaking music but the memories behind it are what has made it onto this list. I remember being about 17 and my best friend and I listening to this song over and over again and laughing so hard that breath became a humours struggle over the laughter.  Now that friend is off in Afghanistan fighting for queen and country. So although him not being in this country and me spending this six long months worrying about him I put this song on and turn 17 again and he’s there.

The Smiths – Please, please, please let me get what I want

Not because of the John Lewis advert before you start hurling abuse at me. The Smiths have become the bulk of my escape the noise of London playlist. Its grown and grown since I started working in London in March and this song encapsulates why its slow, calm and incredible. Escapism with guitar accompaniment.

Kayne West et al – All of the Lights

A cracking song to keep me walking to London pace.

Ed Sheeran  – You need me, I don’t need you

Another of Ed’s songs. After being a massive fan of his music for ages he finally made it big this year, well done and well deserved. I still remember hearing this song for the first time on SB.TV in early 2010 and was blown away.

Adele – Someone like you

Not because I’ve had emotional turmoil simply because its an incredible peace of music. Powerful would be putting it lightly.

Jessie J – Who you are

Again same reason as above to be honest. This songs lyrics are repeated by my inner monologue on a numerous occasions specifically, “its okay not to be okay”

One Republic – Good Life

This song was in my 2010 playlist for this reason “This is the song I would always play as I walked up the road from my hotel to the main square in Dharamsala. When the sun was pouring through the mountains and everyone waving at you as they past and this song playing I always had a spring in my step.” Thats exactly the reason its back here again because I can put it on and imagine those perfect moments.

Strange Writing Rituals

A horrible bit of plagiarism but I thought you would all find this piece in Shortlist really interesting, especially those who have ever suffered writer’s block like I have (which you can read about here!). So while I put the finishing touches to a few new posts here is something to keep you busy, enjoy!

1. STANDING UP With his reputation for inebriation, you may wonder how Ernest Hemingway managed to write anything at all. In his later years in Cuba, while working on The Old Man And The Sea, he ascribed to a ‘done by noon, drunk by three’ routine in which he would get up at dawn, write standing up at his typewriter until he’d emptied his head, then empty the famous Floridita bar.

2. LYING DOWN In Cold Blood novelist Truman Capote described himself as a “horizontal author”, thanks to his languid approach to his craft. “I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy,” he told The Paris Review in 1957. “I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”

3. DRINKING VAST AMOUNTS OF COFFEE Like a lot of people, coffee was Honoré de Balzac’s poison. But we’re not talking the odd espresso. He would drink vast quantities of black coffee, ensuring that he could write through the day and into the night, once clocking in 48 hours straight.

4. ACTING OUT DIALOGUE As well as chain-smoking and index cards, the man behind The West Wing and The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, has a habit of acting out his zippy dialogue while gazing at his own reflection. In 2010, he worked himself into such a frenzy that he head-butted a mirror. “I wish I could say I was in a bar fight,” confessed Sorkin, “but I broke my nose writing.”

5. NUDITY In order to stave off procrastination, French novelist Victor Hugo wrote both Les Misérables and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame in the altogether. Being nude meant he wouldn’t be able to leave his house. As a safety measure, he’d also instruct his valet to hide his clothes.

6. IN A HOTEL A ritual that is at once lavish, pious and debauched: Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, rises at 5am and checks into a hotel, where staff are instructed to remove all stimuli from the walls of her room. She takes legal pads, a bottle of sherry, playing cards, a Bible and Roget’s Thesaurus, writing 12 pages before leaving in the afternoon and editing the pages that evening.

7. HEAD-SHAVING Demosthenes was among the greatest statesmen in ancient Greece. In order to motivate his writing and public speaking practise, it’s said he would shave one side of his head. Like Hugo hundreds of years later, it ensured that he remained in the house working instead of outside looking daft.

The Work to Play Equilibrium

Balance, it seems, is somewhat of an illusive character. Not in terms of being able to stand up straight or be like Philippe Petit (photo below). No, life balance, work and play, are in a constant act of balancing with work playing the role of the ten ton weight. The age old saying, ” All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” rings painfully true. If I’m not at my day job, which often over runs the constraints of the 9-5 (not that I’m complaining in the slightest!) I’m working on another of my harebrained schemes. I feel that I may well be one chemical spill away from opening a laboratory and concocting evil plans to kill Superman. Insanity lingers in my morning coffee. My dreams have become flooded with work related nuggets: press releases, Christmas cards and ringing phones. I’ve not yet been chased by a rogue Christmas card but I feel a missed time chunk of cheese in the evening and I might well be fleeing from it across a field.

London is of course not aiding my sorry slide in madness; the underground really seems to test my sanity on a daily basis. Some of the nuggets of bonkersness are: being stuck in an entire carriage rammed with vampires at Halloween (should note that vampires don’t exist, they aren’t real people, move on), a 70 year old man swinging on the handles of the tube singing “I’m the king of the swingers” at about the third rendition the woman sat next to me lent over and muttered, “he does this everyday” and finally a man dressed as Batman at 3pm on a Wednesday, enough said.

So why has my December kicked off my mumbling grumblings? I could blame it on the winter blues, the never ending noise of London or the long work hours. That would be a lie though, it’s that balance I spoke of. The work to play ratio is clearly not equal, making me feel lopsided (not physical, I’m not up a bell tower, yet). My evening entrapments usually revolve around working or melting whatever still exists of my brain in front of the telly box. Escapism is king. You can now probably understand why I haven’t blogged in what seems like eons simply because my imagination has been stifled. Held captive by the mundane and the routine. Nothing has sparked my imagination ‘fire’ (not an imaginary fire, I’m not seeing piles of wood and kindling everywhere).

So how have I cured this? I was going to lie to you and tell you I have been dabbling in booze and drugs but I’m not even slightly rock and or roll. In truth, my remedy was simply finding somewhere for me to think, to mull over ideas and to observe. In Durham it was a bridge over looking the stunning Cathedral and in India I would sit on the rooftops and watch the streets below. London’s solution, however, is less glamorous but incredibly effective: the tube. The place full of drunks, bright lights and indescribable smells shouldn’t work. The abundance of things that shouldn’t inspire does the exact opposite. I sit on the tube for hours and scribble away furiously. Crazy? Of course. But when has anything I’ve ever done made sense?

So I’m back and at full capacity firing on all metaphorical cylinders. Right, must dash, this is my stop.

My 10,000th hit (re-posting!)

This is a reposting to mark me reaching my 30,000th hit. The sentiments still ring true, perhaps with my photography to boot now, so for those who haven’t read this before give it a butchers and see what motivates me to write!

Not the drug kind of hit, that would be dangerous. No my 10,000 blog hit, it happened sometime during the night like Father Christmas coming or foxes eating your boots (it happens). I have amazingly reached the grand old age of 10,000 and in all honestly I cannot believe it. I didn’t for one moment 6 weeks ago when I first started blogging away that anyone would read my random ramblings, let along in the colossal numbers that it has, it’s really extraordinary. All my life I never thought of myself as a writer, at school teachers were always telling me how bad I was at any sort of writing. So to reach five figures today is a big two fingers up at my demoralising teachers.

So why did I start to write?
In all honesty because of a two tiered unenthralling motivation. Firstly, boredom, that’s right not inspiration coming to me in a dream or God willing it, pure unadulterated boredom. It was my way of filling the nights when I couldn’t sleep or to escape from my solitude living. The second is my constant driving force through life; to make people smile. Anyone who knows me will readily admit that making people laugh is what motivates me. I’ve tried many other methods to make people chuckle: drama (too scripted), improv theatre (too unscripted), music (if you’ve heard me sing you’ll know why that failed) and finally I ascertained that putting pen to paper (or finger to key) created the perfect outlet. It allows me to witter away the hours by wittering away.

10,000 is a huge milestone and I hope to high heaven that I can add another 0 onto that number in the distant future but for now I am more than happy making people all around the world laugh virtually. That feeling is by far the best feeling in the world, even better than watching a slinky race down some stairs. So keep reading my scribbles on life as there are barrels more of it rattling around in my head.

Writing a bucket list, sad or useful?

For all of those who thought this blog post was me debating the pros and cons of creating an inventory for your storage vessels, I am sorry to disappoint. The sort of bucket list I am of course referring to is a list detailing things you wish to do before you die, or kick the bucket.

The aim of this blog is to get you thinking not about death (because that’s a bit grim) but rather about the things you would regret not doing should you get walloped by a bus tomorrow.

So ask yourself these questions; have you loved enough? Laughed enough? Cried enough? Seen enough of the world? Challenged yourself enough? Been awestruck by something? Truly helped someone?

The list of questions to ask yourself is endless, questions that question your existence and your future. It’s the sort of thing you do during a sleepless night or causes a sleepless night as cross examining yourself usually doesn’t aid your search for sleep. Mine first began just after I left school; it was first a list of things to do before I’m 30 but has now become too long and too ambitious to be done in a few -I’m not telling you how many- years. It was scribbled on a post-it note late one night before I left school and it contained my first and possibly most ambitious challenge: go to every continent in the world. This remained the only entry until I was sat in the shadow of the Himalayas and felt the world towering above me. I think those sort of moments fuel the bucket list mentality, when you feel tiny and insignificant compared to the world we live in, as it makes you question your mortality, question how you have lived your life up to now and how you will leave an imprint on this earth long after you’re gone.

My list is now two pages front and back containing doodled down dreams, on coffee stained and rain damaged bits of paper. Some of them have been scratched off if I’ve completed them or lost interest in actually doing them (e.g learning to juggle). Like in My Name Is Earl, I have great satisfaction in crossing them off as it feels like I am one step closer to appeasing my inner question mark. While some of them are personal and therefore private I will share a few with you:

• Go to Paris
• Touch the megaliths at Stonehenge
• Have my own photographic exhibit
• Get an article published in a leading UK newspaper (and be about something intellectual, not something gormless)
• Publish my Tibet book
• Run a marathon
• Live in London (for at least a few months)
• Go back to India (as soon as this one gets crossed off it goes back up again, what can I say I’m addicted!)

The key thing when writing your bucket list is not to look back and regret what you haven’t done or missed opportunities. Avoid asking what happened or how you could have kept hold of something you loved or you’ll end up crying in the fetal position inhaling chocolate like air. Rather look forward and imagine what you could do and could be.

So I hope you get writing your own, scribble them down on the nearest thing: a napkin, scrap paper, the nearest bald-headed man, whatever you can get hold of. Make sure though that above all that you are inspired by them and let them drive you forward for the future. So when you’re on your death bed (which will hopefully be very very far away) with a piece of paper with a cross through all the writing, you can kick the bucket with a smile on your face and get the rest you will no doubt sorely need by then!

Get Thinking…..

A leap out of my comfort zone

For a country bumpkin such as myself, deciding to undertake an internship in bustling London seemed, on paper, like a rather colossal shift away from working in an office with a view of the Himalayas. A leap out of my comfort zone. The internship is with human rights organisation, Free Tibet (website here), and I must say I am immensely enjoying the experience. While the work is still centred around Tibet, the type of work and the audience the organisations cater for is very different, and has allowed me to see a whole other aspect of Tibet support groups. But I digress, the actually topic of this blog is away from the office and about the rather objectionable experience of getting from my home in the Cotswolds to the office: the commute.

My commute tends to take around two hours, give or take a strike, cow on the tracks, break down or passengers constantly pressing the emergency stop button. As you can guess, it’s anything but mundane. From leaving my home in the morning to returning to it that night, commuting commotion seems to stalk me.

The first leg of the journey, a train from the Cotswolds to London, is relatively stress free, the calm before the highly populated storm. There was, however, a mystical force at work on the train. Every morning I would buy a coffee/ cup of human fuel as soon as I got on the train, yet during my time-honoured tradition of having a nap halfway through the journey my coffee would magically sprout legs and run for the hills. This would result in a de-caffeinated James, who is use to neither man nor beast. This continued until I had finally had enough and tied the cup around my hand so if anyone was to try and steal it I would catch them red-handed. Sure enough, just as the train pulled out of Oxford Station, the string pulled at my arm and my eyes opened to find one of my so-called friends attempting a coffee bean burglary. I will not name the culprit but let’s just say I haven’t had to buy a coffee for the past two weeks.

The first few times arriving in Paddington station used to leave me somewhat outraged and overwhelmed as power walking businessmen jostled me out of the way and I struggled to find my way. Nowadays, motivated by a playlist blaring in my ears, I have started to become a commuting power-walker, weaving and dodging through the slower commuters to leap aboard the Underground. The London Underground has a rather spectacular ability of instilling silence in anyone who enters inside its hallowed carriages. It doesn’t matter if you are accompanied by a best friend or long lost twin chattering away all day, but as soon as you get inside the tube, silence. If you begin to talk, your fellow commuters shot you scowling glances of disapproval and distaste. It’s as if the laws of the library apply to the London Underground, somehow.

After work is where the torment of commuting really comes into its own. Smokers line outside the station, holding their own candle-lit vigil to the end of another 9-5 day. The tubes burst to capacity, your face glued to a sweaty man’s armpit or a condensation window. The anticipation of getting home fills the heads of everyone onboard and a stamped quickly ensues as the doors open. As the tube pulls into Paddington, everyone waits nose pressed against the doors, like horses at a starting block they huff and stamp. The doors rattle open and they’re off, cantering forward, desperate to be up those stairs and into their trains. Swearing muttered under exhausted breath they jostle for position.

After all the struggle of the tube, if you’d be fooled into thinking the train home would be a well earned rest, you’d be wrong, oh so wrong. Businessmen shout at their phones, questioning why their intern isn’t still at work at 8pm. They crack open a can of beer as soon as the wheels start turning and speedily get loudly drunk while they play angry birds, full volume. Unlike the tube, people do not remain solemn and silent, businessmen try and outdo each other with their sales figures, and growing by each sentence like fishermen, they compare and endeavour to outshine one another.

Bizarre traits begin to infect me as a commuter, possession of the souls of commuters long since commuted on. If you have a spare seat beside you, happiness reigns supreme. However, if that seat is then filled, detestation seizes every fibre of your being, hatred focussed on that person next to you. Yes I mean you, 80-year-old lady sat next to me who just gave me a mint humbug, I hate you.

For all the abuse I hurl at London in this entry, it’s a place that I’m swiftly growing to love, a place of busy beauty. As the sunset pours red down on my face and my feet still buzz from their repeated meeting with the London pavements, I have to admit I’m rather enjoying all of the craziness.

One final bit of advice to anyone struggling to keep mental stability in London: there’s a game I play on the tube that constantly keeps me smiling. The aim of the game is to guess the correct place to stand so the tube doors open right in front of you. My winning results in manly giggles similar to those of a crazy person, which means I always get extra personal space in the tube as people attempt to avoid the weird, giggling, bearded man.

My 12-song soundtrack to 2010

For as long as I can remember I have always complied a list of 12 songs at this time of year. The songs embody the concluding year, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met and the events that filled it. Usually, however, the list is scribbled on a scrap of paper and swiftly lost in my Bermuda Triangle of a draw, to remedy this I thought I would upload it onto the blogosphere so you can all take a read and hopefully try it yourself. I find the act of scrolling through your iTunes and selecting the songs oddly therapeutic, a way to conclude a year if -like me- you define points in your life by songs.

So anyway on with the show and in no particular order….

1. Brett Dennen – Ain’t No Reason
This song has been my favourite song for many years because of its incredibly poignant lyrics, including, “It could be a bomb or a bullet of a pin, or a thought or a word or a sentence” and “slavery is stitched to the fabric of my clothes”. The song reminds me of India where I first heard it.

2. Jamie Cullum – Twenty Something
Anyone who has graduated this year must listen to it, sums up the feeling of not having a clue what to do very well, set to jazz.
“I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot
But the world don’t need scholars as much as I though”

3. One Republic – Good Life
This is the song I would always play as I walked up the road from my hotel to the main square in Dharamsala. When the sun was pouring through the mountains and everyone waving at you as they past and this song playing I always had a spring in my step.

4. KT Tunstall – Still a Wierdo
The song title sums me up, plus it’s a good song. Simple as that.

5. Florence and The Machine – Cosmic Love
This hugely atmospheric and hauntingly brilliant song was my most played song of the year. It was on constant repeat while I was writing my dissertation, so now whenever I hear this song I think of Hadrian’s Wall in the 19th Century and probably the only person too.

6. Leddra Chapman – Wine Glass
A simple and emotive song that was on constant play thanks to my iTunes shuffle favouring it above the rest of my music. It has some beautiful lines in it.

7. Ke$ha – Your Love is My Drug
A bonkers song that finishes with the whispered line “I like your beard” which became a catchphrase for my friends in India mainly because I have a beard, in case you hadn’t realised.

8. Dabangg Soundtrack – Tere Mast Mast Do Nain
Dabangg was the first film I watched when I arrived in India, the song then followed me like a virus where ever I went. I still get it stuck in my head in England.

9. Glen Hansard – Say it to me now
The song comes from an independent film from Ireland and the music is as good as the film. I took the DVD with me to India and watched it far too many times and this song would constantly be on repeat in the hotel.

10. Joshua Radin – I’d rather be with you
Another India soundtrack song courtesy of my travelling companions.

11. The Cinematic Orchestra – Breathe
This song is actually what I had on repeat while I wrote this list simply because it evokes memories in the listener, youtube it and I’m sure you’ll find yourself lost in the music.

12. Newton Faulkner – People Should Smile More
“I can’t change the world

Cos tryin’ to make a difference makes things worse

It’s just an observation I can’t ignore

That people could smile more
People should smile more”

Something to think about.

Happy New Year Everyone.

What kind of Christmas celebrator are you?

It’s Christmas Eve and I felt like blogging so I thought I would give you a little Christmas treat of categories for all Christmas celebrators, if you feel one is missing comment and I’ll add it under your name. Have a great Christmas everyone and stay tuned for my 12 songs of 2010 on Boxing Day.

The I wish it could be Christmas everyday-er

You can tell these Christmas-ers from around early October, when they begin to put up the tinsel and playing the carols on full blast. Their Christmas intensity literally snowballs (pardon the winter pun) as the big day draws near, with Christmas paraphernalia littering their office desk and home. They are always the first and only person to volunteer to organise the office Christmas party. The go carolling at least 67 times and can recite most cracker jokes from heart, making these celebrators fun in microscopic doses but unbelievably murderable if you’re related to them.

The Christmas Planner

If you feel Christmas just isn’t Christmas without stringent planning and military style logistic then you definitely fall into this category. With the turkey pre-ordered as the previous years one is still warm and presents brought in the January sale. For them Christmas Day is really the quietest day for this species, all family members have a job from the one year old who is completely bemused by what is occurring to the Grandpa who is already completely drunk and thus also bemused by what’s occurring.

The Hibernator

A potential scrooge in the making, whose perfect idea for Christmas is to tell the family that they have the flu and spend the big day slumped on the sofa watching Top Gear re-runs and eating Pot Noodles and Dairy Milk.

The Escapee

Flip-flops rather than Christmas socks for these people, whose idea of Christmas is to spend it in the hottest place their Christmas bonus can afford. Even the idea of a white Christmas is enough to turn them white as they would much rather barbeque the turkey on a beach rather than roast it at home

The Child at Heart

Still has a chocolate advent calendar at the age of 43 and can’t sleep on Christmas Eve from the sheer excitement of the day ahead. They attend every Christmas lights turn on they possible can and always wears the full Father Christmas suit for the office party.

The Eggnog Nodder

Whenever they are offered alcohol of any form whether it be eggnog, beer or chocolate liqueur they nod violently and grab quickly, performing a Christmas miracle by making it disappear in an instant. When they are questioned or told off for having too much, they simple answer “It’s Christmas!” with a few syllables slurred. They continue to drink until New Years Day when the king of all hangovers kicks in and they vow never to drink again, until next Christmas.