sparkindarkness | Entries tagged with holidays

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 conventional way

The thing is, we were ready or expected it. Not necessarily for him – but for one or more of us; because this time of year hurts all of my LGBT friends, every last one – and some of us it hurts very badly. No-one made any plans, we didn’t sit down and draw up battle plans or charts or anything else (and I plan EVERYTHING) but we fully expect one of more of us will break every season, and several of us will crack – ‘tis the season for having one another’s backs and being ready to pick up the pieces

It’s fraught for several reasons

There’s family. Family you can’t be with because their hatred won’t allow it. Family you HAVE to be with despite their hatred making the turkey feel like acid on your nerves. Extended family who are more vicious than a rabid wolverine will suddenly be at unpleasant mauling range. Many couples are forced to split up for the holiday because their families won’t tolerate a partner – or because they have to closet for safety and can’t even admit to having a partner.

Family is far too often our greatest enemy. Many tongues will be bitten through before we can finally break free of them

Then there’s a whole lot more overt religiosity, Christianity will be blared at us from all angles – and people who spend much of the rest of the year telling everyone who we’re inhuman dirty monsters that should be shunned and persecuted will be given a high profile. Sometimes they won’t even pause in their vitriol and their joyous Christmas messages of peace and goodwill for all will come with a heavy “except LGBT people” disclaimer. Wall to wall broadcasting of a religion which loathes every breath we take is mind numbingly awful for many of us. And people will, of course, take great pleasure in telling us how very important this religion is to us all.

As a bonus, Christmas programming is generally even more heteronormative than the rest of the year (which is saying something).

Top it off with the freaking Salvation Army everywhere, which is permanently headache-worthy. They’re the worst, but you’ll be tripping over a lot of religious charities this time of year (as a bonus, the Blood Service also likes to step up their donation advertising, just in case we’re not getting enough “evil sinful homos!” on airwaves).

Our already disproportionate homeless rate becomes even more pressing in this colder months, and family tensions and forced family mixing can cause more than a few of us to be leaving their homes unplanned at this time of year – and the safety nets are too often manned by those very say bigoted charities.

The season of goodwill is often worse than any other time for LGBT people – make sure you look out for each other guys because some of us will crack and break under the tinsel and the holly

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 reminded that copying the Americans is never a good thing.

Despite these.... distractions there have been lots of preparations for the 3 stages of the Holidays:

Stage 1: The Family, where I realise that a terrible apocalypse wiping out all humanity does actually have it's good points.

Stage 2: Good Friends: where I realise that some people surviving this apocalypse is not necessarily a bad thing, though we're all very inept at killing zombies (but we will have immense fun doing it

Stage 3: Beloved and I: where I realise that reducing the entire world to our silent house would be a wonderful wonderful thing

All stages require immense amounts of baking and freezing. In years past I used to cook a ridiculous amount and then spend all January trying to find more and more creative ways to use up the leftovers and resolving not to cook/bake/construct so much for the next year. But the last few years I've found more and more people eating my food in vast amounts so even greater preparations are needed

F have kindly volunteered to test all food in case it's poisonous. She's a generous, self-sacrificing soul like that.

At the moment this has meant everything that can freeze and cakes and puddings that will nicely preserve and age and get even better (full of boooooze) as well as vast and vats of soup to freeze because Beloved has become enamoured of soup. I don't know why he is enamoured of soup. I'm not even sure I understand enamouring of soup. I'm pretty sure being enamoured of soup is illegal or should be. I also have a creeping fear that he will suddenly decide he doens't care for soup any more (as is his wont) and I will have oceans of soup and nothing to do with it.

Also the enormous ham (which Beloved got as part of his much-to-be-regretted meat haul) was too big for my biggest pot. Yet Beloved insisted I not cut it up because it was so impressive (I think this is Silly as a bigger ham rather than 2 small hams simply means less yummy yummy glaze, but I humour him constantly because I a) love him and b) enjoy telling him he's being humoured). Cooking a ham in a pot that is too small for it proved to be an... interesting experience.

Beloved wants to try layering a boozy fruit cake with boozy cream. I told him no. I fear he may try it on his own.

Beloved wants a BBQ next weekend. In December. Yes he does. F agrees. We may need the booze ocean we have acquired

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 ensure a bumper crop of guilty and feeling like a failure!”

Besides, when I make ritual decisions to set my life on a new path, I do that at Imbolc.

But this year I’m making some resolutions to CONTINUE. This fits my definition of Yule, celebrating life and self as it is in a defiant fire against the dark. That sounds like a cop-out, but these are things I need to continue that I know I will stumble on – because I already am doing.

So, I Resolve:

To keep healing. I’ve made immense progress in putting my shattered mind back together this year, I want to keep going, no stopping, hiding or running.

To keep the upper lip wobbly. No stiff-upper-lip enduring situations that are hurting my healing. No enduring what I can’t endure, no tolerating what I shouldn’t tolerate. I will ask for help when needed, not hope someone notices I’m drowning and throws a life line. I will remove myself from situations and places

To not use booze as a not!coping mechanism.

To wear my hair more as I want it in non professional settings. And stop playing they “should I cut it?” game.

To remind Beloved of his many many flaws. At length. It’s good for him.

To not feel ashamed for withholding trust, friendship or my company. I have no problem being suspicious, but I view it as a character flaw, which I need to work on

To stop doing things and going places I know are going to annoy me, it’s like a scab I can’t stop picking, it’s silly and ridiculous.

To not use my hermit tendencies and lack of trust as an excuse to avoid people I do trust and to hunker down and hide. In fact, I resolve to go out more. No, really.

To remind Beloved of his many many flaws. At length. It’s good for him.

To remember that the family tree has thorns as well as flowers - and it needs to be less spikey before I climb it

To not argue with someone who isn’t listening, to not repeat what I’ve already said (they ignored me the first time, what makes me think they’ll listen the second time?)

To have fun and not feel guilty for it – nor feel I need to be “productive.”

To scream at my damn ISP on a regular basis. In fact, let’s widen that so it sounds wiser: to stop ignoring things and hoping they will improve. Including the ISP. Which is still shit.

To stop trying to multitask.

To remind Beloved of his many many flaws. At length. It’s good for him.

To avoid ALL online games, all gaming Apps, all MMOs, all browser games until I show I can handle them reasonably without becoming ludicrously hooked on them to the point when I’m playing without even enjoying them.

To not have huge long absences on the blogs, twitter, or elsewhere.

To answer the damn emails, damn it. And no-one believes the whole “oh I didn’t get that email, that’s why I didn’t respond” excuse!

Did I mention reminding Beloved of his flaws? Because I really need to do that.

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 mortal coil, a lot of my parent’s generation, my generation and my nieces and nephew’s generation are less inclined to make the effort to stay in touch with 3^rd cousins and the like. There are one or two lynchpins and the clan will generally keep in touch – but the endless visiting and HUGE DAMN PARTIES are probably a thing of the past. I think I’m, supposed to be sad about this but… I’m not. I’m generally of the opinion that if you lose touch with someone, there’s usually a reason.

Of course some of the awful was still there with the family gatherings I couldn’t duck, but I’ve found a nice counter tactic if just gasping “WHY DO YOU WANT TO RUIN CHRISTMAS?!” at them in an increasingly shrill and louder voice until they subside and leave me alone. Not the most mature response, but surprisingly effective. I’ve backed it up by assuming anyone mentioning anything about being gay is coming out to me, when they say they’re not, I ask them a) why they care and b) why I should care what they have to say. Also rather effective.

Thankfully, my own holiday celebrations happen on the solstice, so I can endure the annoying without it ruining my day. Beloved’s holiday celebrations happen around wherever bottles of booze are open

Dramas aside, we were faced with a terrible terrible scourge. Poultry.
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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. And to bring my wallet (of course – little brother and all that).

Beloved was most excited, he’s never been to Wales before. Which was amusing to watch because he seems to have this odd idea that absolutely anything will be different. You’d think we were going to distant climes but he was insistent it would be Different. He also expected it to rain all the time. I said he was silly and that was just a ridiculous stereotype.

And Loki heard me.

Road trip was uneventful (“it’s getting hilly isn’t it?” “yes, they’re called the Pennines.” “oooh Lancashire, aren’t we supposed to hate them?” “No, I am, you’re a southerner and don’t get to take part in our ridiculous, centuries old petty grudge.” “I’ve lived here for over decades now!” “And you’re more than 2 decades old – southerner.”) there was lunch, there were views, there was a bloody WIND because it was November in the Penines.

Then we crossed the River Dee and DARKNESS DESCENDED.

Literally, we had to turn on the headlights. It was like 2:30 in the afternoon and we had the headlights on. And it RAINED. I don’t just mean rained, I mean RAINED. It was the kind of rain where, if your cracked the car window you risked drowning in the deluge. This was maintained for the entire duration of our stay.

Beloved decided that Welsh was a great language for casting spells, at least from the little he gleaned from the road signs, and is still spending an inordinate amount of time chanting “Arath! Ysgol! Canol y dref! Ildiwch! Cerddwyr” rather dramatically (which sounds impressive by means “slow, school, town centre, give way, pedestrian” and probably not the chanting of some mysterious Merlin. Unless Merlin doubled as a lollypop man)

My brother dragged me round the sites – and by sites I mean “shopping” (and guess what that meant?) which included Llanfair PG (no, I’m not typing the full name, google it) which seemed to be a) a tourist hub and b) a tourist hub based entirely on its name.

What I did like was the terrain. It reminded me a lot of the North Yorkshire moors in a way – not that it’s similar per se, but that it has an incredible, stark beauty. Pretty to look at (and rainy, did I mention it rained? Because it rained. A Lot) but probably a hard place to farm. The terrain and the restaurants convinced me why this area is a holiday hot spot (or wet spot. Did I mention the rain?)

The lobster place was fabulous, my brother was right. But I’ll never be the biggest fan of lobster. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m always left with a feeling of “I like it more than crab, but I don’t like it twice as much as I like crab – so why am I paying twice as much?” They also had nice oysters – but same applies. I like oysters but why are they a squillion times more expensive than mussels? Especially in Britain where we harvest metric fucktons of shellfish – then sell it all abroad.

It was nice to get away from it all for a couple of days, and it was probably my reluctance to relinquish the peace that led to my purging of annoyances (which I don’t regret and am glad something spurred me on at last). Even if we did get stuck in a traffic jam due to an accident and the Sat Nav redirected us to the UNMOVING ROAD above the road we should have been on flowed, slowly, but still flowed. I can only assume everyone had a Sat Nav like ours and they all said “ZOMG AN ACCIDENT! SLOW TRAFFIC! Let us now filter 8,000 cars on a country track designed for goats! SLOW GOATS!” resulting in it taking us 6 hours to get home.

I brought lava bread home with me, not sure what to do with it. And Welsh cakes. Which are like rationed fruit scones – where fruit and sugar severely rationed and no-one’s heard of baking powder or eggs.

Or, as I remarked, they’re like scones if Beloved baked scones. This may result in him defiling my kitchen.

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 his family never baked them – they bought them. Nasty, dry things that they were. And then he ate, in order, my great-aunt’s Christmas cake and then my Christmas cake – he is now hooked and a huge cake

And partly because of said Great Aunt, master baker for near a century, who finally broke and asked how I made my cake. Victory parade, if you please.

Since I think Christmas cake – and fruit cake – is sorely undervalued I’m going to throw the recipe I use out there in the hope more people will make this unctuous, rich, boozy, heavy and EASY cake (sans icing since we won’t be doing that until December)

Note: this cake is very rich, very heavy, very boozy and has been known to pin people to their chairs, caught in the eternal torture of wanting to eat more of the lovely but possibly exploding if they do. If you want a lighter version of this cake, please go look up the meaning of the winter feast, put away the diet books and invest in some elasticated waist trousers. Lighter Christmas cakes indeed! *harrumph*

The night before, prepare the fruit:

Your ingredients (in metric despite my imperial scales):
420g of Currants
250g Sultana
250g Raisins
160g glace cherries
150g dried apricots
75g Candied peel
9 tbsp of Brandy (or more! I go more, often a lot lot more) Do not stint on the booze!)
3 tbsp of red sherry or ruby port (if you prefer a smoky – NOT peaty – whisky)

Put it all in a BIIIIG bowl, mix well so the booze can soak that fruit through and through – leave it over night to percolate. I’ve left it a couple of days before to really SOAK.

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The rest:

280g Plain Flour
2-3 tsps grated nutmeg
2 tsp ground mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
280g butter (softened)
295g Dark Muscavado sugar
5 BIIIIG eggs or 6 smaller ones (beaten)
80g whole almonds – chopped
2 tbsp black treacle
2 grated rinds of lemon
2 grated rins of orange.

Mix it all into the boozy fruit. Mix mix mix mix. Done. No, really – just shove all the ingredients in a bowl and mix – if you can use scales and turn a spoon, you can make this cake.

Set your oven to 140 (that’s Celsius. If you don’t work in Celsius – learn) Put in a greased tin and bake for FIVE HOURS. That is not a typo. 5 hours. This cake wants to bake forever!

When it’s done let it cool and wrap in paper and store in a cool dry place. Every 2-3 days from now until you ice the cake in mid-December you want to take it out, stab it with a thin skewer and drizzle more brandy into the cake. Don’t stint on the booze but don’t drown it. Keep feeding the cake until we finally ice it.

This is a BIG cake (about a 9” round tin). You may want to make a smaller one but remember – WINTER FEAST! GO GLUTTONY and just make a big one and eat it all. It also keeps forever and a day without going stale

A note on measures: I guestimate as much as anything. It’s a very forgiving cake – and, remember, MORE IS MORE, especially with the fruit, spice and booze. Winter Feast guys, don’t be stingy.

The icing is a nice simple layer of marzipan covered with a layer of diamond hard royal icing. Making it EVEN RICHER.

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!)

Not just because it's so commercialised that cupid should have a Clinton Cards logo branded on his arse. Not even because I think greetings cards are the biggest con since people started trying to sell London bridge

No, my first annoyance is just how empty it is. To me Valentines day means "society has told me I should give you this card and this sanctioned gift. This is no indication of my feelings - it's required on this date." Nearly every couple around the country - and more, will be doing the same thing, probably even the same gifts and maybe the same cards. It's very impersonal...

But the main reason I hate it? Well, is there a holiday on our calendar that is more heteronormative than this one? Is there one holiday that is more overwhelmingly straight? For the weeks leading up to it and the day itself, it's one giant het-fest - even more so than daily life.

I'm glad I don't watch much television, because the weeks of adverts of lots of straight folks celebrating romance would quickly drive me up the wall. I mean advertising is usually wall to wall straight folks anyway. It's absolutely everywhere you look, in every media you consume and it's all straightness all the time. Well now we get to throw in the emphasis on love and couples blaring from every direction and the omission is glaring. "It's the time of year where we all celebrate romantic loooove! Uh... but not yours. No we don't want that. Yours doesn't count. We mean real love. And by real love, we mean man/woman love - the only love there is!" Which has the added bonus of meaning that I could never ever truly know love - don't you just loathe that meme?

What's with that Milk Tray man?! Am I not worth James Bond rip-off stunts to bring a box of poxy chocolates too?!

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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

So some quick whistle-stops before I go into detail when I have time

We managed to get through the whole season without throwing any food away. Considering how much we bought? Impressive.

My brother didn’t manage to get up from Wales. This officially makes him Public Enemy Number One for being in the land of the savage leek and not with any member of his family during the holidays. He is coming up this Thursday. He Will Be Judged. Several twigs of the family tree are blaming the Welsh. No, they don’t have to make sense, they never have before.

Christmas day remains one of the hardest, most headache causing day of the year. Mum has long since called the day “Duty Day” as it becomes an endurance test of annoying relatives, policing them and keeping them happy

The whole season was tiring in general for that matter. I never find this time of year jolly with holly and other tings ending in –olly. It’s too overwhelming, there’s too much to think about and there’s zero privacy

There were fail moments. Big horrible make my brain melt moments. But a lid was kept on things because a) therapy and pills b) more pills c) booze which shouldn’t mix with pills, d) my over-using the line “stop now and I’ll pretend you didn’t say it. Otherwise we have to have an argument, you may say something unforgiveable and then I have to kick you out/storm out and not speak to you either”. Not perfect because “pretending they didn’t say it” doesn’t mean they didn’t say it but it was at least a non-escalation

That being said, I can feel the… fraying. No time for peace, no time for privacy, none of my own space, all these people in my house, all those days outside my house, the neighbour’s oh-so-fun-literature, the arguments, the fail, the sniping, the general family being family… I can hear the thin ice of my psyche cracking

Beloved has long loved Steam, but has now developed a disturbing addiction to it. We may be bankrupt by February at this rate. And he keeps tempting me with things.

I still have Christmas cake left. And it is rich and yummy. And I have Baileys double cream

I also have a lot of mussel meat. Not mussels in the shells, just mussel meat. Need to decide what to do with them

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).

On the food front, I started baking to day (not including the Christmas Cakes which were, obviously, been made in September and have been fed brandy on a four times weekly basis to make them rich and unctuous and only now have been covered in marzipan and royal icing). Finger food, pies, cakes, buns, snacky and, because of a poorly worded and possibly drunken argument, several pork pies (I complained that most pork pies you buy skimp on the jelly – pork pies without good jelly are nasty. I complained enough that I was challenged to make my own, so yes yes I have. With lots of jelly. So there). My freezers, fridge and cupboards are bursting and I’m not even half done. And everything will have brandy in it

On the drink front, we have assembled a terrifying array of colourful, braincell killing drinks. And we have numerous recipes for cocktails that sound oh-so-witty. If Beloved holds control of the bar for the season they will be yummy. If someone wrests control we will have drinks that taste of sugar and paraffin. We also have more wine than France (and yes, it is all European *Euro-snob mode*)

On the family front. Ugh. Well, this is what comes of deciding that people who share the same great great grandfather as you are totally family. And those ancestors loved their breeding. Damn they were bored.

Of course a lot have died off and we’ve also had more peace this year because of the huge amounts of my family tree I’ve decided I refuse to deal with any more. Which means less visits (this time of year the clan visits each others houses so they can criticise, snark and argue in different settings). Which is good – because the people I won’t be seeing are people who always made me cringe, annoyed me, insulted me and generally left me in the position of having a blazing row, during the holidays, with my host/guest OR biting my tongue and taking another insult. So, yes. Good. And it si good, even if I do have to keep telling myself that.
Of course there’s still a lot of family left and they’re all very annoying in their own ways and certainly not fail free so I’m sure I’ll get that wonderful grey hair feeling soon anyway. At least this year I have my pills.

So, chaos reigns. Sparky will be… up to his eyeballs in it for a little while and no promises to peak my head over the parapet until some of the dust has settled.
Also my ISP keeps dropping the net. Do not make my nightmare a reality, ISP, do not!

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 commonly held view by her surviving sisters that she died on Christmas Eve out of spite, that she always had the worst possible timing and that she always did know how to ruin a party. One learns at this point that when relatives over the age of 80 start sticking in their knives it’s best just to nod and smile and shuffle away, lest they turn on you

But then it was announced that we should drink to her memory and since she was 97 that was a lot of memory to drink to.

It may seem kind of heartless – but she was 97 and her quality of life had declined to an atrocious level leading to more a sense of relief than mourning. Still for a while I have to do the Family Lawyer duty of making sure her death and all trhe stuff around it is handled properly,. especially since her children, while generally nice people, aren’t the deepest thinkers out there

We did go to mother’s as is traditional, but the badness was kept at bay largely because Nana and 2 great aunts were also in attendence and the aunts were busy complaining about the great aunt who was so thoughtless as to die at Christmas. Nana, sadly had one of her bad days. She has very advanced Alzheimers, doesn’t recognise, well, anyone really, flails around desperately trying to fit the world into her shattered recollections of what it was like in 1940 and gets extremely agitated when it doesn’t fit – which it never does.

So Christmas Day was.. difficult. More than most even. But nothing burned and it’s nothing we didn’t expect. It’s always been the Season of Duty & Awkwardness & Hard Work and never really been something of greta joy per se. Now is the holiday for us – the aftermath. Familial Duty is Done and now you can actually enjoy the peace and the shinies and the left overs (of which there are stunning, awe inspiring, terrifying amounts) this is our real holiday

Especially since brother mine couldn’t get through for Christmas and is now due on Wednesday for a second min, duty-free Christmas, which should be interesting, but at the same time drags the whole social aspect of Christmas out even further when I just want to curl up with Beloved, reading ebooks. My hermit senses are screaming at me

Donotwantness continues apace with possible eye opening melt downs directed at the parental units. Torn between hoping for results and irritation that it happened.

Ah busy busy busy. Also did not get to watch Dr. Who Christmas special. I am disappoint

Obviously may be a bit awol with the hols. I’ve had my yule, my solstice, my party, my spirituality and my rockingness which I will return to when I remember

Now is the familial duty bit with lots of socialising mingling and what Beloved repeatedly calls my “gfot something to prove” cooking which I ibject to – everyone cooks and bakes a lot this time of year. And besides, any cook with pretentions in teh family has to throw their hat in the ring. It is known. It has absolutely nothing to do with my issues. No. Not at all. of course not.

So baking cooking and enduring family. Let’s hope the season of goodwill (HA!) will give them plenty of other things to bicker about and leave me alone

And no, Uncle Fail cannot have my baked goods. So there.

I say it every year, but it's always best to repeat it.

I don't do Holiday cards. Actually, I don't do cards of any kind. I don't send them, I don't return them and I'd prefer not to receive them, to tell the truth (not that I'd throw them back in your face or anything, obviously). The only cards I send are to some rather dessicated relatives who would be SHOCKED and APPALLED if I did otherwise.

I understand cards - or what cards were. Cards were nice little letters you sent people you didn't see very often to remind them that you still considered them a friend and still thought of them. They were a way to keep in touch - especially at a time when telephone usage was not unduly common.

Now we have the internet. I'm in touch with absolutely everyone I want to be in touch with (and a fair few others at that - family should not share my email!) If I have fallen out of touch with old school friends or whatever, there's a REASON.

I find it ridiculous to send a card to someone to wish them a Happy Holiday when I see them on a weekly basis, communicate with them several times a week or even share the same house with them (Beloved, you can stop your pouting right now). It'd be like sending them a letter - very very silly.

Furthermore, the waste of the whole greetings card system appalls me. Most of them are GROSSLY overpriced - I'd much rather everyone send their card money to a deserving charity (like Médecins san frontières or Water Aid) than waste it on a lot of paper. Paper, which, of course, does NOTHING for our environment since even recycling it won't 100% make up for the vast number of trees we kill to send an empty message with all the true sincerity of an insurance agent.

So, I will not be sending cards this year, nor do I expect them.

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Spark In Darkness

A Not-Always-Happy Holidays

The Holidays loom ahead

New Year's Resolution

Holidays

Wales!

Chritsmas Cake - it's baking time

Valentines Day

On going holiday thingy

‘Tis the Season for Grey Hairs

Ah the holidays

And on to the holidays

My annual card rant

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