Every year there is a Christmas display in the shopping centre in our neighbouring town of Milton Keynes. This year is no different and even though I try and stay away from this crazy place and the waves of morons pushing their way past the shops with kids, pushchairs and a gazillion shopping bags full of useless stuff that they can not afford and have to pay for by credit cards which they won't be able to pay off when it appears on their statements in January, I had the misfortune to join them as we are apparently having 16 people invading our home for Christmas!
Now in past years the Christmas display had (as you would expect) a Christian theme but this is obviously not acceptable any more as it could be seen as discriminating against . . . well . . everything else!
Here are some pictures to explain what I am on about:
Santa's Grotto has been replaced by some house with creatures flying out through the top window! ???
There seems to be a pirate ship featuring in the nativity play these days!?
Seems like the 'fat bearded one' has been replaced by a pirate in red coat!
There are now trolls and goblins which seemed to have replaced the angels of the Lord!
and to top it all, the manger where the Lord Jesus Christ was born has been effectively replaced by a carousel, which seems to tell us that we are all on the merry-go-round of life!
So from now on would you kindly refer to Christmas as
The Feast of goblins, pirates and Red Indians*!
(* There was also a display of Red Indians smoking the peace pipe but I just couldn't bring myself to photograph it!)
Also . . .
I have been tagged by Yara and here then is my list of 10 simple pleasures:
Top 10 Simple Pleasures:
I am tagging Desert Songbird, Marnie and Momto3cubs
I know we don't have Thanksgiving in this country but last night we invited some friends for dinner just to celebrate 'friendships' and we had a wonderful time laughing and sharing stories.
I made Baked Camembert
followed by Creamy Sour Cream Chicken
followed by Baileys Yogurt Cream Dessert
It was delicious and don't even expect a weight update on Monday!! :-)
Alas . . this morning my car had a flat tyre and after I had limped to the garage it became obvious that I needed to have all 4 tyres renewed!
One hour later and £387 ($748) poorer (boohoo) I finally emerged from the garage bruised but not beaten!
Well, that's life!
I have changed my template!!
I know, I know it doesn't look like it but I have.
Unfortunately in the mayhem I have lost all of my blogger friends links!
I managed to get some of them back but I am certain I am missing others!
If you cannot see your blog on the link list to your right, would you please leave a message so I can add you again?!!! Oh . . and sorry!! :-)
I love:
What are your 10 love & hate entries??
The world has gone completely barking mad and here is yet another example to prove it!
This week (yes, for one week only) is anti-bullying week!! Oh, yes!!
So, if you are a bully, watch out!! . . or better still . . just take a week off!!
Here is the article! (My observations in red).
Get all you need for Anti-Bullying Week!
Free online interactive resources covering racist, cyber, inter-faith, homophobic and text bullying amongst lots more for secondary schools.
So if you are bullied, just ask them to wait a second while you complete this interactive course!
Free online interactive resources covering all types of bullying, bystanding and emotional intelligence concepts for primary schools.
Primary schools?? So let me get this right . . little people get to primary school and need to brush up on bullying, because certain parents haven’t dragged their brats up well enough to behave in a decent manner??
'What have you learned today, Johnnie? Your times-table, your alphabet?'
'No, but I now can spot a bully a mile off!!'
'Couldn’t you do that before?'
'Yes, but now I know what to call it when Jack kicks me in the head!'
BBClic, M8Z and Antbassadors learning resources
Antbassadors??? Are they the anti-bullying soldiers for Ants??
Maybe the people who wrote this would have been better of learning how to proof-read rather than fighting off bullies!
Competitions and games.
Games?? Bullying and games??
Oh, yes, let’s play some games rather than punishing the bullies!
That will make us all feel better and it is politically correct!!
Free charters and workshop outlines.
Wow! Everyone loves something for free!!
The Take A Stand campaign.
Take a stand? Yes, let’s take a stand!! Every little person should take a stand when confronted with a bunch of aggressive, ill-educated thugs! You’ll get the sh*t kicked out of you but at least you took a stand!!
Free toolkits for all staff, governors, parents, children and young people.
I don’t know about you but when I was in primary school I didn’t even know how to spell toolkit and now I need one??
Free teachers’ notes and lesson plans.
I don’t even want to go there!!
And finally, why not support Anti-Bullying Week by wearing a dog tag, glow-in-the-dark wristband or a badge? As worn by celebrities, the much-sought-after dog tags, glow-in-the-dark wrist bands and badges are now available at 50p each for Anti-Bullying Week for you to buy in bulk and raise money for your school.
This is brilliant!! Don’t make the bullies do (or wear) anything but all you decent young people will now have to wear a dog-tag (woof!!) and a glow-in-the-dark badge so bullies can single you out more easily during these dark winter evenings! (It can otherwise be very difficult to see clearly whom you have to beat up next!).
I know that even though you have done nothing wrong, you will need to spend 50 pence of your own money for this privilege but hey, . . . look on the bright side . . that’ll be 50 pence less you’ll have to hand over to the bullies when they rob you of your lunch money!
Now, doesn’t that make you sleep easier at night?!!
To all bullies anywhere in the vicinity of my family:
You start bullying any member of my family, . . . I will make you regret the day you had to be born!!
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My target weight is 199 pounds and if you haven’t sponsored me yet, please do so by going to http://www.justgiving.com/firefly and adding yourself to the list.
Throughout the next weeks you will be able to follow my progess (O God, I hope it will indeed be progress!!) on my Biff-o-meter and can comment on this blogsite with words of encouragment or by throwing abuse at me.
Here then is the Biff-o-meter after week 7 of my Challenge! 
Weight now = 209 pounds
Weight lost so far = 20 pounds
Here is a light-hearted post for all you Yanks out there!
Have a nice weekend!
George Bush goes to a primary school to talk to the kids to do a little PR.
After his talk he offers question time.
One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him his name.
"Stanley," responds the little boy.
"And what is your question, Stanley?"
"I have 4 questions:
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN?
Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes?
Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?"
Fourth, why are we so worried about gay-marriage when 1/2 of all Americans don't have health insurance?"
Just then, the bell rings for recess. George Bush informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess.
When they resume George says, "OK, where were we? Oh, that's right,question time. Who has a question?"
Another little boy puts up his hand. George points him out and asks him his name.
"John" he responds.
"And what is your question, John?"
"Actually Sir, I have 6 questions:
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN?
Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes?
Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?
Fourth, why are we so worried about gay marriage when 1/2 of all Americans don't have health insurance?
Fifth, why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early?
And sixth, what the hell happened to Stanley?"
Just heard a hilarious thing!
My friend Fran broke a saucer and, remembering that she still had an old tube of superglue in the fridge (don’t even ask!!), took it out to warm up.
She then started squeezing it but nothing much happened - or so she thought!!
The glue actually seeped out at the other end and before she realised, she had glued her fingers together.
In essence, the glue went everywhere except on her saucer!
Rushing to the sink to de-glue herself, she realised that her apron was stuck to the side of her work surface and when she tried to back off it, she nearly fell over as her slippers were stuck to the floor!!
I did have to laugh and wondered if any of you readers have done something equally silly or bizarre??
Thanks, Fran, for sharing this!!
A few years back when my friend Keith used to still live near us, we used to regularly play darts for a pub team and I had a dart board up in my garage where we spent many hours playing. Even though he was always much better at this game than me, I did manage to put some decent scores together every now and then.
Last night my wife, my daughter and I went to a local pub where we met up with daughter No. 1 and her fiancée and with his parents, who run this pub.
Since I am on this sponsored slim and currently eating very little, the 4 whiskies I had soon made me feel all fuzzy and weird.
Due to lack of practise over the years and the fact that the whiskies were dragging my eyes out of alignment, Jason (future son-in-law) had no problems beating me.
In fact, he could have thrown the darts with his feet and still would have won.
To add insult to injury my daughter No. 2, who (it has to be said) has the weirdest way of holding a pool cue, wiped the floor with me beating me hands-down as I struggled to pot any ball with the exception of the white one, which I didn’t want to pot!
