the final straight…

The Christmas page is up! It was actually up for an entire day before I realised that nobody could actually get to it from anywhere, hence the handy little link-in-a-box which took me most of an afternoon.

The non-work Christmas organising continues apace; my beautiful tree is on her way after some time out last year, the travel is all organised, events and activities are planned and scheduled (and even some that don’t involve going to the cinema), and several food orders are in – the pre-emptive Stuff That Won’t Go Off order (mostly chocolate and crisps), the Christmas Proper order (actual food including vegetables) and the Just Got Back To London order which will tide me over until New Year upon my return on Sunday 28th. The cake is marzipanned, and – most important of all – the Christmas Radio Times is bought, establishing beyond doubt to all that things are well underway.

In my extensive experience it’s both a good and a bad thing at this time of year to have no real food dislikes, that is with the caveat that no shiitake mushrooms are involved; as somebody who will eat virtually anything and the more of it the better, these horrors are one of my few flat out no-goes. The only other one I can think of is sea urchin, which I once had to eat as part of a very expensive set menu, and to describe the experience I would need to borrow from whichever scale is used in measuring the uncharted and otherworldly levels of repulsiveness normally reserved for the likes of Pete Hegseth (or possibly Robert Jenrick, the ghastly little shit).

Thankfully nobody has to eat any of the above (most certainly including Pete Hegseth, although anybody who did would be well advised to abstain from driving for a few hours) when Pringles, Maltesers, mince pies and (my favourite) florentines exist. My close proximity to Waitrose doesn’t hurt, and an especially festive experience was had a few days ago when a kind man from Ole & Steen turned up to hand out chunks of Cinnamon Social for free next to the flowers (or more accurately speaking, free until I’ve run down to the bakery on London Wall and spent £20 on a whole one).

This week has also seen a trip up to the West End to see the Christmas lights and the Selfridges windows before it gets too busy – the 139 bus took over an hour to get from Orchard Street up Oxford Street and back down Regent Street to Trafalgar Square, so I had plenty of time to look before I threw in the towel and jumped on the Circle Line at Embankment instead. As we can see from the pictures New Bond Street (now the most expensive shopping street in the world, I think) was looking particularly low key and tasteful, and thank God for that. And last night I managed to get a ticket to the deservedly sold out screening of The Holdovers at the Prince Charles for the first of the Christmas visits – yay!

Song Of The Week is in partnership with Spotify, who this week announced that my listening age is seventy six. The reason for this is without doubt my work playlist since my civvy listening would be unsuitable for entertaining to say the least, but even so I might as well own it. This one didn’t actually make it onto the list, but as some of those reading will know, plenty of its mates did.

More soon! One more week to go, then I’m off…