I found the following YouTube video over at New Zealand Story.

It follows the journey of Matt, a 30-year-old game designer working in Brisbane, Australia when one day he decided to quit his job and blow his savings travelling around the world.

That would be an impressive achievement of its own, but along the way he decided to record himself dancing at every location he visited.

It’s a very entertaining video with some truly awesome (in the original sense of the word) locations.

You can find out more detail about his travels on the website originally set up to keep his friends and family informed of where he was, but has evolved a little since: Where the Hell is Matt?

I hope Santa bought you all you wanted!

We had a great Christmas Day and Boxing Day visiting family and generally having a very entertaining time.

Unfortunately though, Santa also brought us a stomach bug for the days following, so we’re only gradually starting to feel alive again. I’ve also had a recent asthma check up which has shown me to be rather less healthy than I assumed I was (other than the cold, sinus infections and stomach bug that is) so we’re surviving on leftovers until one of us has the energy to drag themselves to Tesco.

There’s a very good chance that we will be surviving solely on Quality Street by New Year’s Day…

… and Li’l Bhaji is currently haunting the window watching all the cars go by because “Father Christmas is coming to MY house, Mummy”. Bless, I think he’s expecting him to arrive in a Nissan Micra.

For those children who prefer the more traditional image of Santa’s sleigh and reindeer team, may I (yet again) remind you of NORAD Tracks Santa – as I post he’s just flying over China on his delivery round. We’re all very excited here.

Lots of love to you all. May your Christmas be merry and full of squealing, delighted children (or not, if that sort of thing fills you with horror).

‘Tis the season… for everyone to complain how Christmas isn’t Christmas anymore. How political correctness is getting in the way of everyone’s celebrations and how councils up and down the land are becoming more and more Scrooge-like.

So it was rather refreshing to stumble across this little article in the Guardian posted earlier this month discussing some of our favourite and most enduring urban myths about the season.

Bah humbug, if there’s nothing left to complain about, where’s the fun?

What with NaNoWriMo, Li’l Bhaji getting two stomach bugs in succession and now this grotty cold (started with tonsillitis symptoms, transformed to heavy head cold and has now hit my sinuses hard – just waiting for the asthma to kick in for the hat trick) I haven’t been quite as organised as I should have been this close to the big C.

For one, I’ve only just started wrapping – and until I’ve finished wrapping, I can’t be 100% sure that I’ve bought all presents required. Wrapping is now an urgent priority (in between keeping the owners of the Kleenex brand in business).

The problem is, wrapping is my aachilies heel. Even if I’m really careful to only buy presents in nice square-edged boxes, after I’m let loose with gift wrap and tape the resulting parcel looks like it’s been mawled by a bear.

In one of my previous lives BC (before children), I once worked with a lovely lady called Martha who made every present she wrapped a work of art. She was a demon with the glittery ribbons and bows and her hands would be a blur with precise folds and decorative flourishes. At the end, not only would you have an exquisitely wrapped parcel but the covering would be intricately folded to look like a decorative shirt or some other impressive origami extravaganza.

Of course, we could all have asked her for wrapping tips, learned her art – but no… we just took our presents to her and begged her to wrap them for us instead.

This afternoon, I managed to wrap a grand total of five presents. There are many many more to go. Oh Martha, how I need you now.

Addendum: I have just seen this link on the BBC News Magazine site. It’s all about competitive wrapping, and now I feel much much worse!

Congratulations and welcome to little Isabella.

Several thoughts flitted through my brain while supine on the sofa, with CBeebies on constant loop and Li’l Bhaji nestling his head into the crook of my arm, drenching it with outpourings of snot, dribble and tears (just how much fluid can one two-year-old generate, anyway?!).

The first was – “Are Famous Amy and Wintermute parents yet?” I know that due to pregnancy complications, Amy was due to have a caesarian today. I hope all went well and send them all my love and best wishes.

The second thought that flitted through my brain was “I wonder what’s inside those two large Amazon parcels addressed to Akra that are sitting in the hallway?” I’m still like a small child, can’t bear the thought of an unopened package in the house.

My third and final remaining rational thought was probably the most important and with the most far-reaching implications of them all. “Why oh why has no-one told Bizi Lizi from SMarteenies that ladybirds have six legs, not eight…?”

Note to self: never ever post on an internet forum that, since you’ve been taking vitamins regularly, been on homeopathy and cut back on the caffeine, you’ve avoided the multitude of winter bugs that you normally succumb to the second October starts.

If you do, you’ll be sure to come down with tonsillitis within days…

Consider it just desserts for being so smug and intolerable.

The 12 Days of Christmas… Indian-style. Very silly and I had to share.

… so no carefully thought out blog posts today. Instead I thought I’d provide you with a tasteless joke I found on my wanderings recently.

Feel free to add messages of complaint or enjoyment in the comments, and hopefully my brain will hurt less tomorrow.

Jim and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital.

One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Jim suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled Jim out.

When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna’s heroic act, she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable.

When she went to tell Edna the news, she said, “Edna, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you’re being discharged. Since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of another patient, I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness. The bad news is that Jim, the patient you saved, hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he’s dead.”

Edna replied, “He didn’t hang himself, I put him there to dry. How soon can I go home?”