Thread 18 - TalkLair: "That's no moon. It's a space station!"

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 17)

We've had our heatwave - is this it for the summer? All is lush and green in our LairGarden, flowers are blooming, berries are ripening...

In the TalkLair, all the windows are open, the Pimms is chilled, the MN massive salad is ready to serve. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Yep, that base is crying out for some gold tinsel!

49% of the population would not give a damn!

Just asked Mr Veg and he says he'd cover the base. So there

We pile the presents round it.

It's never occurred to me that the base has its arse out...

I have gold fabric that drapes over and around the bare legs and looks even better the second a cat notices that its favoured midwinter posing spot is available again.

@RasaSayangEh this may soothe you. Or not. Ancient but good: The death of the bollocking https://share.google/Q5NoxDuBLZIyNKk5J

And now you'll never be able to unsee it!

Thing is, even if that were true, it doesn't explain the lack of corporate policy specifically towards tree bases!

In the past couple of weeks I have (passing by or purchasing from) noted this phenomenon in numerous branches of supermarkets, cafe chains, pharmacy chains, etc. So for example each branch has been supplied with the regulation Christmas tree, n green baubles, m red baubles, p tinsel pieces, q strings of fairy lights, x pre-lit wreaths for windows, y festive signage etc, giving a unified look across the entire chain. So clearly somebody in each Chain HQ Design/Branding has thought about, ordered, specified, sent out instructions to branches on decoration and placement. And yet all those somebodies have all failed to think about the miserable naked spindly legs!

That's a pretty big omission.

Should we start a campaign against 'miserable naked spindly legs', do you think?

Oy! I have spindly legs!

Does anyone still put the tree up on Christmas Eve and take it down on Twelfth Night? I haven't done it since I left home (because Bah! Humbug! and general apatheism) but was an absolute rule in our family - not just us, but all the aunties and uncles too. I don't expect shops to do it, they have tat to sell, but around here the decorations are up and trees lit in people's houses by early December and the next road is like Oxford Street until mid-January.

MrBint would happily go for 1 December and I was a xmas eve purist, so we generally compromise on the weekend approx a week before xmas. The tree stays up until women's xmas. The strings of lights around the living room ceiling are up all year because theyre a faff to put up and take down, but they are on from xmas eve to candlemas.

I suspect bare legs on commercial trees are for ease of vacuuming.

I've never heard of women's Christmas before but it's a fine idea. A link for anyone else who didn't know about it:

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/womens-christmas-nollaig-na-mban-celebrate-ireland

It's really interesting to note how soft people have become, but that article was written in 2008, 17 years ago. How much more are people distanced from getting a bollocking?

I heard a story that the head of the secondary school I went to advised the teacher who replaced him to follow his routine for morning assembly: 'a hymn, a prayer and a bollocking' and that's what we got.

When I was single, I was very Bah, humbug! (I still am, but am blackmailed into pretending otherwise). We used to put the tree up on the 23rd or so and take it down by the 7th of January, but since the Hooliganette was 5, we have to put it up sooner.

I quite like to see decorations and lights but we can't be arsed doing any of it ourselves. About ten years ago I put up some hippyish decorations I got from a Christmas market, three stings of stuffed fabric stars with beads and sequins on them. They look very cheerful so were never taken down.

I adore Christmas decorations and lights and food and songs and all of it*.

The advent calendar goes up on the 1st of December. It's a string of tiny colourful felt socks, we hang it on the stairs. Two chocolate coins per sock.

The other stuff, maybe mid-December. Depends on variables like when we all have time because everyone pitches in with the decorating, when the local Christmas markets are, how shit the weather is or how stressful the rest of life is (worse weather/more stress = earlier decorating). Everything down before the start of school term so that everyone pitches in with the putting away and tidying up.

*Apart from the planning of the presents for DH's enormous (and growing) extended family - we need a spreadsheet, updated annually, plus calendar to check when each branch might be meeting each other branch during the festive period to hand over sacks of presents, else planning for parcel delivery across the country... bloody exhausting and I am so grateful my side of the family don't celebrate Christmas.

I used to be very gung-ho with the Christmas decorations when my children were little, but have grown more curmudgeonly with time and on the whole CBA. On a Christmas when I don't expect grandchildren to be here, we have a very small table-top tree that suffices. Last Christmas, when I fed fourteen of us Christmas dinner including three grandchildren and their two cousins, I managed to construct a fake Christmas tree using an outside decoration plus lights and tinsel that they all liked. It's a bit lower key this year as there is a big family celebration with my DIL's family on Boxing Day, so I'm just doing a buffet tea here on Christmas day, but I regret to say that decorations will probably have to be brought out again.

MrPSB is part of a big family too, but happily we have a secret Santa organised by my BIL. Max. £25. I am pretty sure that we’ve had the same people for the last 2 years, but they are the ones it’s easy to buy for, so that’s all good. We buy presents for the great niblings but otherwise it’s a breeze. We all have too much stuff so it’s a nice nod to Christmas while reducing waste stress and expense.

The family do I’m going to on Boxing Day (or December 26th as it’s known here) is asking for a Yankee Swap. That’s when you take one present and they all get put in a pile and you choose, but you can be made to swap so whatever you choose you’re unlikely to end up with it. It’s a couple of years since we did one of these and I’m not sure I’ve remembered it correctly!

Digging through my laptop for something else this morning, I came across an ancient doc (which must have been handed down from computer to laptop to laptop) entitled "FU Recipe Archive". FU being Film Unlimited, of course. Back then I didn't venture into GU, because, well, there be dragons. Some long-forgotten user-names, but I think @artant is the only other survivor from there still around here?

@moto748e I remember the FU recipe archive! I’m sure I had it saved but can’t find it now.

My aim when I was working was always to put the Christmas tree up the weekend after the end of term but it seldom happened. A week before Christmas is good (or a fortnight or so, that’s also fine) but it often ends up really late. I hide the base with green tinsel. I mean, no one would mistake my plastic tree for a real one other than at first glance but why make the fakeness more obvious than it needs to be?

Late back from work/school yesterday, so instead of cooking we went for a cheeky McDonalds for dinner.

Picture the scene: Nice quite new branch, so everything is shiny and clean. It's pretty empty, being a weekday evening, loads of free tables all over the branch. We grab a table upstairs, happens to offer a good view of the whole floor. As we're settling in unwrapping our food, a middle-aged ordinary-looking fellow is coming up the stairs with a tray, laden with what looks like 2x drinks, 2x burgers, 2x fries, etc. Without even perusing the floor, he walks directly to the toilet door, backs through it (no free hands) and disappears from view. We're all 👀 at each other. The fellow does not reappear during the whole time we're eating.

Just. What.

Blimey, that sounds weird!

You all looking at each other reminds me of being in the surgery waiting room a few years ago. I was sitting against the wall and there was a row of occupied seats opposite me, with a teenage couple and the dad and another young man. When the teens were called in, the dad went with them, all of them looking very serious. Me and the young man briefly locked eyes, eyebrows raised, in an unspoken message of 'WTF is going on there then?'.

And you didn't send DH in to investigate?