Finally, carols

All has been said and done now, but in the run-up to Christmas I was really craving carols. Various plans fell through. Audience participation is not always welcome- who knew there is difference between carol concerts and carol services? Even Midnight Mass turned out to be a lot more Godly than I had remembered. Much less clementines with candles and more, well, like you'd expect from a church I suppose. No less enjoyable for that, mind, in it's own way.

So it was nice, really nice, to get word from the school I'd visited on work experience during the summer, inviting me to their carols and staff party. I don't think I've sung Away in a Manger since I was 7 years old myself. Certainly not Little Donkey. Plenty of candles too, and a few Kings and a Joseph and a Mary trembling on the stage after holding pose for 10 minutes. Back at school, the staff had transformed the corridors into The Lion the witch and the wardrobe. They even has an Aslan (pictured). The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Essentials: sign of the times

BAA spokesperson:

"People are in the lounges and all over the airport. We have given out thousands of blankets, food vouchers, bottles of water and there is free wi-fi. Things are improving slowly."

Snow, snow, snow

Christmas shopping

This is very much a traumatic affair, an annual, traumatic affair.

This year I found myself in an awful, traumatic human tangle on the ground floor of the Oxford Street branch of John Lewis, fighting for access between display stands bearing thoughtfully packaged and well-presented foodstuffs, perfumes, lotions, superfluous stationary and all the other accompanying accoutrements of Christmas (board games, wooden toys, cards and gift wrapping, bored children with mittens on strings), in this mind-numbing, department store light. It all came to a head as I debated spending five pounds on gift tags- nothing more than a folded piece of card with a hole punched in one corner and a barcode on the back.

Even my attempts to skip off the masses with a digital bounce were thwarted this year. The book my brother wanted wasn't in stock. The snow and the ice has stopped any postal guarantee for internet purchases. The cheese website crashed, or wouldn't load, or something. I don't recall why I thought buying cheese over the internet seemed like a good idea, but it did at some point.

I finally caught a break yesterday. I had one more little something to get and the shop I had in mind was a ways away, but I had time and the inclination to wander.

I passed by L'Occitane on my way and a sales assistant inexplicably spraying the area around the door with one of those perfume atomizers with a cord and a spongy ball at the end. I walked past, stopped, turned back and went in. Could have been the perfume. Not really sure. In any case, I was presented with a glass of champagne the moment I entered. Here was something for nothing and I instantly congratulated myself on the best Christmas shopping decision of this year. I found something and bought it from the same sales assistant that had sprayed the door space and offered me the champagne. She processed the transaction, slipped the product in a bag and then she did something else inexplicable. She took a sheet of pink crepe paper, loosely stuffed it into the bag and then jammed the bottle of perfume in and sprayed a good puff-puff-puff, and another puff for good measure. People always seem to want to go the extra mile at Christmas time, even if it's a bafflingly strange gesture, like spraying the inside of a bag.

No car go, Stumpy, Making it further than Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain etc

Something wicked this way stalks

Yesterday marked the greatest moment of my working life in London. That’s not to say much, given it’s been only a year and in an entirely one-dimensional capacity, but even so, this was big. This was a coup, this was an Everest: Attenborough.

A brush with a hero is a rare occasion indeed. That’s part of heroes being heroes: they have a distance and an impenetrable aura about them that underwrites your reverence. If you bumped into a hero in your local cafe week, it would take a little lustre off. At least in my book, that’s how it works.

When I was a kid, at one stage, I remember liking two things in life quite obsessively: collecting books I never read, and animals. I was going to be a vet and one day I was going to read all of the books I had collected, just as soon as I finished the collection. All three of these things never happened- I’m not a vet, I never read those books and I still haven’t finished collecting books. I gave away all my old CDs, I streamlined my stuff between England, Scotland, Japan and England again and I toss out old clothes before I’ve bought new clothes. Books, though, I can’t really bear throwing away or donating or ditching.

So, I grew up with David Attenborough on the TV, sweating in a jungle and a headlock at the gangly, orange arms of an orangutang; at the poles, with the penguins and much later, just an absorbing voice speaking over gorgeous footage of things I’ll never lay eyes upon at the bottom of the sea or deep in caverns or stashed in wild ravines. He was always around animals. Not so much books. He became, and remains, a hero of mine.

Yesterday, investigating rights of some early ‘90s nature footage to license for broadcast in Japan, our contact at dear old Auntie came back with a message- we would have to run it by David Attenborough if Japan wanted to broadcast anything with him or his voice. And there was his address and his phone number.

As it turns out, Japan only wanted the penguins. King penguins. That wasn’t going to stop me calling up David though. Except, when the phone had rung through a dozen or so times and an anonymous, computerized approximation of a voice had invited me to leave a message, I thought it more respectful to call him Sir Attenborough. I explained the situation and asked him to call us back, although I thought this a ridiculous proposal. Imagine, Sir Attenborough telephoning T--------! Ha!

So today I drafted a letter. The printer at work (we have only one) is playing up and there are two white smears that run down the printed page it spits out, down the right side. I shifted everything left and tried again, but this only eliminated one white smear and left one column of letters half-way between type and hallucination. This simply wouldn’t do. Not for Sir Attenborough. Instead I plan to print it out from the library and send it myself. Or maybe even hand deliver.

I guess that rules out toys for Christmas