Christmas and general scribbles
1Doing a blog is hard work isn’t it? You may just think all you do is think of anything and type, but it’s more than that, my blogs need to have a meaning, maybe not for you or for your friend, but for me… it has to mean something to me, or else, what’s the point?
This blog is about Christmas – well it’s supposed to be anyway – while writing this I’m looking at my calendar, tomorrow will be December the 1st, 25 days until Christmas. What does Christmas mean for you? Well, I’m not 100% on what it means to me, but when I think about Christmas I picture myself waking up at 6AM, looking out the window to see if it has snowed over the night, then lumbering downstairs into the living room and looking at the lonely Christmas tree and the presents that surround it. Then around noon the family and friends would flock over to our place to enjoy company, opening up presents together and eating a traditional Christmas dinner.
Christmas dinner is very nice isn’t it? Too nice to have more than once a year, I think it’s because it’s take you the year in between Christmas’ to simply digest the colossus amount of food that you wouldn’t dream about eating any other day. There would be Mum working non-stop in the kitchen to provide food for the 10-or-so people at our place, usually around 4PM, it’s done and ready to eat. Walking into the dining room and seeing the somehow-longer-than-usual table creaking under the weight of separate bowls – or what ever they are called – of potatoes, sprouts, cranberry and bread sauce, carrots, peas, sweet corn, Christmas pudding, parsnips, sweet potatoes, Christmas Yule log, and a separate plate of crackers, cheese and bread. This is always the center-piece of the whole ensemble, the particular pesky part of the dinner that you have to order weeks – or even months – in advance: the turkey. I have nothing against turkey, but isn’t a weird thing? Now, chickens on the whole are a much nicer meat, so why do we insist of having a dryer meat? A meat which is endless to provide us with months of turkey sandwiches and pies. I’m not complaining, a turkey makes a Christmas dinner, a Christmas dinner.
Onto the less family centered aspect of Christmas: presents. It’s amazing how excited one can get when you witness a pile of presents underneath the Christmas tree, knowing that they are yours, that they on display, but you can’t have them for a few days, or week… that’s enough to make anyone excited. For me this year the item that’s going to get me excited weeks before Christmas is finally getting a new phone… it’s been 18 months since I last got a new phone… and 3 months since I’ve had a phone that is actually mine; I broke my K800i you see… dropping a phone in salt water is rarely good. Oh my lovely soon-to-be-mine C902 – limited edition titanium silver version, ahem – I’ve been looking at pictures of it on the internet, researching reviews and opinions, which I shouldn’t really because it just makes me more excited. I’ve also decided that with my Christmas money kindly given to me by family and friends of family, I’ll be buying a second generation Apple iPod Touch – 8GB version, from Amazon for just £158 – I have wanted one of this for a while now, I can’t wait.
What does Christmas mean to you? The snow, the family gatherings, the endless driving to distant relatives, the dinner, the special episodes of television shows, the cheap toys from the Christmas crackers – or the awful jokes that they produce, the Christmas tree or the decorations. What makes Christmas, Christmas for you?
Off of Christmas now, onto my week. The week has been okay I guess, not bad, not great… just okay. We had a two hour English exam on Thursday, everyone else was feeling depressed about this… I wasn’t, I was feeling excited – I love the English language, I love writing and occasionally I love reading books as well. The exam was about the perception of Sheffield from two different parties: George Orwell and the Sheffield tourist board. Orwell hated the place, in fact he seemed disgusted by it, describing it as a polluted, smoggy and ugly place. He even went on to criticize the people of Sheffield themselves, saying that if they were to go to the Cornish cliffs, they would complain that the fresh air was tasteless. The tourist board on the other hand, obviously may have been biased opposed Orwell’s views and described the city as “the greenest city in England.” The other part of the exam was to write about a place you know very well, so I chose Wollaston – the village I live in – because it has many positives and negatives about it, so I could do more writing. Let me tell you now, when your writing about something you dislike, you can write forever, anger is the only form of writing where the pen does everything for you, you could literally go on and on about something you hate. So this is what I did in my piece on Wollaston. The last part of the exam was to write a letter to someone who decided to run in the London marathon… how boring? Still managed to string something legible about that… kind of like this blog, isn’t it? In the end I did 8 A4 pages of writing, now according to Word – using lorem ipsum as a base – I did 4,495 words… I doubt I did that many, although can’t argue with Word, can you? When the results come back for that I’ll tell you, I’ll be disappointed with a B… I’m aiming for an A.
More about school, the previous Thursday we had the day of school… but it came with a catch, we have to go in for 30 minutes to something called “MAPing day”, where we set ourselves targets for the upcoming year, and in Year 11, discussion of potential 6th form options pop up, I’ve basically chosen my four options, these are: English language and media, information technology and psychology. How interesting? Well to me, very interesting. As I stated a paragraph back, I love language, so I chose English language where you learn more about the use of words and grammar and what effect this will have on people. I chose media because, well… I’m very good at it. Shame to let that go to waste. Information technology – although boring – is a good option as well because I’m very good at that as well. Last but, well, last… psychology, in this subject you learn about people, what they do and why they do it basically. That should be fun, oh I can’t wait for sixth form, I’ll be popping home every lunch time and free period to “study” and play on the PS2 – yeah PS2, I know – fun eh?
Oh it’s good to blog once in a while, I have a lot to say and this is the perfect way to say it. As I said before, even if no-one reads it, it makes my mind clearer for my thoughts and feelings to be out in the open. I’ve been writing this blog for a good hour now, regular tea breaks and thought showers of what to write about. What a nice way to spend time. Oh before I forget, come and visit my friends blog – it’s on MySpace, but don’t let that put you off if you don’t like MySpace, he’s a good friend and an even better blogger, visit Ashley Webb at his blog.
Thank you for reading my blog if you did, it really does mean a lot to me that at least one person visits my website now – and if no-one does, who cares. I love it anyway. Until the next time – probably next year, actually… I’ve exhausted myself for now – keep safe and have fun being you.
Steven Knight – Administrator.
Published on November 30th 2008 / Filed under Blessays
