Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Hands up if you've finishing shopping yet.

Hands up if you've started it.

Christmas hasn't quite been going to plan so far, as somehow I've managed to almost forget about it, to the extent of expecting people to be working at 3 o'clock on the Friday before Christmas. Which given that various people I know didn't get in to work at all on Friday, was possibly being a bit optimistic. But I'm not one to let the presence of onion bhajis and strange bunches of asparagus wrapped something miscellaneous distract me from my task (bizarrely I was so goal-orientated I forgot to liberate any the food). Of course all that happened was that most of the office walked out before I could corner them, so I was left waiting for the last remaining person in the office to finish guiding someone through the inner workings of a server by phone before I could find out that nothing would happen until January.

After which I hit the sod-it stage, and went Christmas shopping instead, which consisted of going over the road to the shop I can see into from my normal base. A few chunks of glass and wax later I give up, having bought presents for those most buyable, and not really got anywhere on the rest. I'm quite annoyed though, as I've reverted; lumps of coloured glass and candles used to be my default when I couldn't think of anything more useful to give people (and what should one give friends who tend to have already bought what they want, and each year gives me cheap chocolate of one form or another. Her usual excuse is that she bought me something good, but forgot to pack it, so the replacement was grabbed from the village shop, which is basically the equivalent of the petrol station in areas to sparse to support a petrol station). But on the other hand, they were half price.

Anyway, one friend will lose it on the way home (from the amount of presents, both coming and going, that disappear, anyone would think her luggage goes via Bermuda, much like Inact's [or possibly Dan's parcels]) and the other will either take it back or give it to her mother. I'm hoping she goes for the maternal route, so she doesn't discover that her present cost all of £2.45.

But while I'm on the subject, I did notice Habitat's cunning idea of combining the candle and the candlestick. They now make wax candlesticks, so instead of some hefty chunk of excessively ornate silver, one can now get a hefty chunk of excessively ornate (moulding permitting) red wax, complete with a little niche to fit normal candles into it.

Is anyone else seeing potential problems with this idea? Like having a candlestick made from a material which becomes structurally unstable and flammable at relatively low temperatures. I know technically any candle placed within the candlestick will only be a minute nub by the stage the candlestick starts to get heated, so it's not as if the candle is going to melt the foundations and topple over, but still it just sounds innately like a bad idea (for a start, if wax candlesticks are such a good idea, why haven't they been done before?).

Before anyone asks, the candlestick had no apparent wick and so wasn't intended as some ironic candle.

All of which fascinating (or possibly scintillating) waxiness brings me to... well, it doesn't bring me anywhere useful, but I've had enough of talking about candles.

Anyway, I've got a really annoying song stuck in my head.
My life is pure, my life is great, my mother said, I was a great mistake.

Yep, I have managed to mentally segue from James Blunt to The Eels while not quite getting either right. It's also quite embarrassing that of "modern" music, I know James Blunt better than various other things. A total lack of anything on television last night led to The Hits being watched. It was going through the best 50 rock songs of 2005. I spent quite a long time not recognising anyone or anything. I eventually realised I knew of Scandirockers Him (complete with their British Standards Institute Kitemark logo) from their long ago songs which feature heavy Tellytubbyage. Hadn't heard the recent thing, or rather hadn't memorably heard it (still haven't).

Once we got to the derivative bad-hairness of the Kings of Leon (see Slade or Wizzard) I gave up concluding that I hadn't missed much.

I'm sure there was other stuff I intended to add, but I can't remember it now.

Merry Christmas.

I'd better go and pack.

Anyhoo,

PS. For the Christmas card, a la Dan and Az, go and delve on Flickr. You might also find various stuff which I've finally got round to explaining, having uploaded on en masse a while ago.

PPS. No Christmas is complete with some form of quiz (I used to include annual crosswords with the cards. I gave up after I discovered slightly too late that it isn't "intresting". People still finished though). So tell me (ignoring the fact it's been unanswered since November), where is this?