Christmas 2022

Okay Christmas entry here we go after being away for a few days for Christmas having packed a sweater, skirt and a dress to wear being familar with this side of me as much as we've battled over it in the past.

Yes really!

There will be a full entry on this at some point in the new year but basically it is the four cd book form set of songs from 1980-84 Now didn't include the the individual yearbooks and extra volumes.

Call Rupert the Bear an addiction going well into boyhood, a name some used to describe my dress style back then and this is this years Rupert annual with a nexture of reprints and fresh material that makes me feel great.

This is card wrappers worth of books starting with this years Beano annual which like the comic is firmly set in the modern day even if some characters we grew up remain as does Bash Street School.

Then we have the Dandy Annual, the comic outside of the Summer Special no longer exists so we have fresh stories based on our favourites such as Korky the Cat, Winker Watson, the Jocks And The Geordies, Keyhole Kate and Desperate Dan.

The modern world is around them but things are more as they were. Love it!

Then we have the compilation with the theme Things That Go Bump In the Night which draws from old stories from the Beano, Dandy and others in the old D C Thompson stable around that theme which pulls you into the past well.

I enjoy this series of compilations a lot for that.

 The Big Present this year was a three lp version that takes three concerts from San Francisco's Fillmore undertaken in 1997 by Tom Petty that go beyond the greatest hits and the new album but into songs from artists such as the Byrds and Grateful Dead that aren't in their recorded catalogue otherwise and in any event were some the best concerts the band ever did.

I also had a copy of the Record Store Day lp issue of Duran Duran's 1982 Hammersmith Odeon concert which is a double album on gold coloured vinyl.

Christmas greetings

So after a few weeks of Advent posts, we come the one before the actual day where you're always thinking about how people who normally don't see you all decide to drop in being unfamilar with our feminine ways.

Sometimes I feel it's best that when it comes to people coming to you while not leaving anything really "out there" around, you just present as your feminine boy self, even say a festive santa outfit that girls might wear.

The best present is of course to be just you.

WISHING EVERY FOLLOWER A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE BEST FOR 2023

* Image credit: zerochan

Moving ahead in the cold

Cold enough?

It's been a very cold few days here with temperatures well in the minus region - we don't do degrees f here - so being out has meant being wrapped up even when its been okay to be out on wobbly paws.

Catmas is beginning to take shape with a christmas carols by the tree event being held last Saturday for everyone young and old who was up to it.

Yesterday one Mr S Claus put an appearance in as the christmas lights, reindeer and sleighs are multiplying in the gardens coupled with local shops being decorated out.

 

This is one of two official trees, outside a local church, the damp excuse of a tree provided by the council, wilting and at a bit of angle due to the ongoing subsidence issues here is being ignored by us cos it just isn't a proper Christmas tree we can use for things.

Isn't this how you'd sooner spend Christmas with your family?

Advent is here!

 Hey, we're in December now!

We begin the Christmas countdown here with something that  a friend has already started as they make a pictorial Advent Calendar at one site every year which I really like.

Christmas is really for Children and whose of us who may in law be adults but retain much of our childhood selves, enjoying all the little rituals we re-enact year after year and one for me involves advent calendars.

While things are different than they were, as the sort of ones I had often had things connected more with the Christmas Story like angels, shepherds and the like, this one, based on the hit tv series Paw Patrol is one the one I've got.

It's simple, no toys behind each square or anything like that, just the choco but simple is really what I'm wanting not those more adult type ones certain people are pushing that cost tens of pounds.

It also means I can read a bit per week of this years Beano comic christmas special with 68 full colour pages just as I did back then.

It was colder out this week, temperatures down to three degrees but although the hat, gloves and dufflecoat were on so were the dresses and skirts, still out on the street, interacting with folk.

I usually tend to run down this blog over christmas as I like to spend time making it happen, being with my folks and that so we should pause in two weeks time until Boxing Day Monday.