30s TTC - We BESH you a Merry Jizzmas and a droid-free new year!

[CurlyCasper]

Come in, come in. The wine is mulling, the bird is stuffed and cooked. We have a huge table at which to enjoy our festive feast, and the rippling Ricky Whittle is the centrepiece, draped in berries to be removed by whatever method you choose.

A bottle of Gin and an elf-man in a box awaits each and every one of you. Just make your wish and when you undo the bow he will appear.

There's a nativity tableau in the corner, for praying to the baybee Jebus and, most importantly of all, Santa has been asked to deliver the gift of exceptional fertility, so that each and every BESH can enter the new year with a baybeeee in their tum tum.

Oh, and I've let a few cats in to aid with the 2WOOFL menkulness.

Now, let's get together and get the tree up!

VAG - I completely agree about the talented mr ripley, so disappointing.

Camel - yes, I think we live v nearby. Yay.

Ooh, VAG you OK? You stepped away from the work, surely?

Nephew is not a film child prodigy but at the age of 2.5 he speaks Engligh & German! Its hard enough to understand his toddler gobbledy-gook without it being peppered with bloody German.

Though I did find it hilarious when he was told to do something he didn't want to do & stamped his foot shouting "Nein!"

Christ on a bike, I should preview my messages BEFORE posting them. ENGLISH, nephew speaks ENGLISH.

I obviously need some more Bailey's, I'm starting to sober up..........

Thanks Muser - I came to the same conclusion whilst brushing my teeth (and agree with whoever said it should be blue!). 2WOOFLing I'm stuck on though.

Hope you're all surviving family - we're off up north to the in laws whenever we get ourselves organised. Sounds like bil and sil are heading south as we go north so we're missing them which is a shame. It's only 3 days so should be OK, she says hopefully - I'm taking a pile of books!

oca 2 Weeks Of Obsessive Fucking Lunacy - as christened by gin.

Arh - spent an hour pressing refresh and thinking gawd, everyone's doing work now, only to finally realise I was refershing page 10 only and here you all are on page 11.

Have done another titchy bit of work. I really must concentrate a bit this afternoon, feeling guilty about being paid by the taxpayer to sit about gassing/reading about how other people bring up their children (MN is hypnotic)

Pom-de-pom.

Oce - ILs and only three days? does not compute.

I have also only done a tiny bit of work. Must get on with it and stop pronouncing on other people's parenting.

Thanks for the translation, glad to know this is what I have to look forward to .

The only three days does include visiting friends this evening and spending Hogmanay down the pub with troublesome husband's very pissed mates before watching mad people swing balls of fire round their heads up and down the main street, so at least there is escape. Have to think positively or I'll not survive.

Lol at "Nein!"

I too attempted to watch The Holiday. I got to the part that camel described where Cameron Diaz lets drunk Jude Law into the house, at which point I started screaming "WHAT?!" and throwing things at the telly. There was some really clunky line where she said she was going to have to sleep with him (and I could only think how foul his breath must have been) so I knew it was all down hill from there and I went to bed. If I'm going to watch a romcom I actually want to feel seduced. That was just yucky.

Now the big question, should I make a cassoulet for New Year dinner?

no, make a bean stew sans dead animals

Talking of fillums, I escaped Teh House of Hell and went to see Avatar with TYF and his brothers (the fun young one and Cap'n Beigeheart, the oldest). In Exeter. Oh, the raging glamour. It was quite enjoyable in a festive hokum sort of way - if you could ignore the cliches, the heavy-handed moralising, the overlong battles sequences, the clunky characterisation and the final fight, which me and TYF gigglingly named 'the world's most homoerotic battle of obvious symbolism' as we whispered to each other. Having analytical, sarcastic, critical theory-esque brains like wot we does tends to spoil 99.9% of all entertainment. So we make our own fun by mercilessly taking the piss.

I want to see Sherlock Holmes. I like Rachel McAdams; I think she is my secret lesbian crush. I always watch The Notebook when I'm really hormonal and crampy Although am under no illusions that SH will be in any way good. Also concur about TTMR. Jude Law is a bellend of quite staggering proportions, but on the other hand he is pretty and can clearly get women knocked-up like it's going out of fashion, the foul man-slag, so maybe he should be kidnapped and kept in a cage marked 'Last Resort'? By pretty, I mean he is technically good-looking, but I don't fancy him. Sam Worthington, in Avatar, on the other hand, even with the CGI-ed withered legs... I would. He only needs to lie down, after all

I misread Vag's bit above and thought she said she felt guilty about being paid by the taxpayer to sit about gassing other people's children. Don't do it, VAG!

Can you tell I'm bored? And desperate? I am now a lily-livered spoilt brat attention-seeker because I refuse to eat some pork that was cooked on XMAS EVE and not refridgerated. If MAC could copy the gorgeous shade of shimmering iridescent green on that chop, they'd have a best-selling eyeshadow on their hands. She hasn't said those words, I add, just implied them through looks, gestures, snorting noises and 'polite' comments. At least we escape tomorrow! Am now doubly desperate for a baybee because I can then play the 'baby is too young*/am still bfing on demand' card to put off coming down here as long as poss. I wouldn't mind, but the ILs won't come to our home for some reason and won't meet my parents. We've been together over 3 years, FFS, and my parents chat regularly on the phone with my bro's girlfriend's mum and stepdad, and they've only been an item since the summer (bro and girlf, not her folks). Yet I can't call them on their freakery as they are really polite and friendly (or so they think) - so I would just look like a massive bastard and mardarse if I spat the dummy. My Mum wrote me an email full of stuff to keep me sane: swearing, chat about books, details of what she got from the Topshop sales and a tongue-in-cheek paragraph all about lovingly dampdusting the house from top to bottom and cleaning using Ecover products!

Oh Christ, his senile Gran is back now. When do I get my halo? If all this dutiful suffering doesn't win me a baybee then I don't know what will.

Sorry for such a long rambling bag 'o' shite - you guys are all that stands between me and a hover mower killing spree...

*Am hoping to keep this up until they have kids of their own.

Scorpette - poor you, it sounds like a nightmare. Just sulk until it's all over. How much longer are you stuck there?

Sorry to laugh at your misfortune scorps but HAHAHA It just makes being in the office a bit more appealing.

You can get your own back when I see the boyf's mum on Jan 9 - which is when she sees fit to celebrate Xmas with her son. She's been far too busy over the festive season with friends, & going on 2 separate holidays with 2 separate ex's! (Oh how I've missed my judgey pants). Slaaaaagg!

Shimmery pork

If it's any consolation (which it won't be) my parents and inlaws are ostensibly quite similar people yet have not met/spoken since our wedding (4 years). We're planning on an enforced get-together next time the ILs invite themselves to stay at our house for 3 days and eat us out of house and home.

Blimmin' hate being at work in the West End when others aren't - just took 1/2 an hour in Caffe nero's to get a poxy take-away sandwich. They should have a fast-track queue for those of us who are working. I have important surfing-the-interweb to get back to, I'll have you know.

What made it worse was that the queue already stretched to the door when I joined it, then a bunch of 14yo boys decided they were hungry and one of them had a mother in the queue in front of me so they all hoisted their lunch choices on her, thus delaying my sandwich Still Further. Remind me why I want one of these awkward, smelly individuals to call my own?

We escape tomorrow. Cannot sulk as am genetically programmed to be middle-class-polite and bite tongue when provoked. Of course, with own family, I'd speak my mind, but these lot are the sort who are so repressed and un-self-aware that they would see ringing 999 if you chopped your arm off, as dreadfully vulgar and attention-seeking and pathetic.

I have rebelled in small ways - I won't eat anything I consider in any way dubious (so am on starvation rations, hurhur) and have thrown away all used foil/cellophane/freezer bags, etc. Marlon Brando's got nuffink on my rebellion!

Go Scorpy! You rebel!

Scorps come and join me over here

There are some very stupid strange people on this board...

scorp I seed Avatar too! It was hilair - very gorgeous to look at, but oh-so-obvious. And cured by the tree!

Would have to disagree on the world's most homoerotic battle etc etc, purely because it is beaten by the giant poisonous lady spider and Frodo's short trusty sword in Lord of the Rings. But definitely comes a close second.

I vote yes on the hover-mower killing spree.

Does the senile granmother at least have the decency to be Bridget Jones stylee insane?

Dear God, please help me. I want to go home. I want my own life again. I don't feel like an adult, I feel like a teenage boy who everyone's annoyed with.

"So what are you going to do about babies, Bridget?" said Una.

"Oh look, a penis," said Granny, holding up a giant tube of Smarties.

I have been out getting the NYE supplies in. 3 bottles of bubbly for 2 people, possibly overkill?

I also have some rather nice looking raspberry liqueur. Cocktail anyone?

Meeeeeeee!

With an umbrella and a sparkler in? Coming right up.

Woohooo!

Bessie come home to the Palace and have one of Muser's cocktails - don't you know yet that YABU whatever you say or do outside of here? (fwiw I'd have the same thoughts as you on friend, but I guess she may yet come through, maybe benefit of the doubt this time? Blimmin' loathe holier-than-thou MNers - shouldn't they be off polishing their halos somewhere?)

mm, me please!

hehe. VAG - I did know that was pretty much the response I would get and tbh, I sort of know I'm overreacting. It's much better in the gin palace with you lot