Shot In The Dark

My friend Tony doesn't like card games so, when he was given one for Christmas, he passed it on to me. It's called Shot In The Dark Xmas. [As a child I was taught to regard Xmas as an unacceptable, perhaps even evil, abbreviation but let's move on from that]

I am an inveterate and highly competitive gamer but, since I won't have the opportunity to play this one for another 11¾ months, I thought I should try some of the questions on you people. Brains at the ready! Some leeway will be allowed; bonus points for exactly correct answers.

Q1. How many Olympic-sized swimming pools can be filled with the beer that is consumed on the UK over the Christmas period?

Q2. How many medium-sized baubles are needed to decorate an average six foot Christmas tree?

Q3. How much would it have cost to buy 100g of gold, frankincense and myrrh on Christmas Day 2019?

Q4. In 2019, what was the world record for eating the most Brussels sprouts in 60 seconds?

Q5. In Greenland, what Christmas delicacy is supposed to taste like fresh coconut:

• A. blubber wrapped in whale skin
• B. eels cooked in milk
• C. polar bear tongue OR
• D. boiled penguin beak?

Q6. What is the length of the biggest Christmas cracker ever made?

Q7. In what year was the first Christmas tree decorated and by whom?

Q8. In the 1940s what was most commonly used as fake snow in films?

Q9. On what date does the average Brit eat their first mince pie of the year?

Q10. During a Christmas feast hosted by King Richard II of England in 1377, how many sheep and oxen were consumed in total?

Answers will appear on 9 January.

Acknowledgement to @ShotintheDarkGames (FB) shotinthedarkgame.co.uk

Movie Nights

I used to enjoy the lead ups to the Oscars and other movie award announcements. In the days when cinemas could be visited and the only dangers were teenagers flicking popcorn at each other and fellow oldies sniffling and coughing their way through winter colds and spreading their flu germs. Ah the good old days. Nowadays it's Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ in our sterile homes. Life is a constant stream of movie nights. I posted previously about Oscar-winning films but here is this year's update.

Last night I watched one and a quarter movies. Starting with The Lost Daughter starring Olivia Colman, whom I have liked only once in a film - as Queen Anne in The Favourite. It is billed as a psychological thriller but in the half hour before I gave up there were no thrills and many long sequences of Colman practising her range of facial expressions. I like my films to have either a narrative or a point - where is this movie going and why has it been made? For me it was dreary in the extreme and, to the extent there was any dramatic motivation, a disturbing and discombobulating focus on unhappy childhood scenes and memories. A thinking person's film. Not for me.

In contrast, Don't Look Up is a riotous, crazy, satirical film about a comet going to crash into the earth. And inept politicians. And greedy capitalists. A non-thinking person's film. A cast of Hollywood A listers led by Meryl Streep, Leonardo di Caprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill and Cate Blanchett seem to all have been told by the Director "here's your role; just over-act as if your life depends on it" - i.e. the comet is going to kill you all - is backed by impressive cameos by in particular Mark Rylance and Ariana Grande. And a Muppet. Streep is a (way OTT) President, Hill her son and Chief of Staff who calls Lawrence's grad student "dragon tattoo boy", Leo the Professor Nerd who goes bonkers with Blanchett's chat show host (you'll have to check it out to get my meanings). Grande provides some musical class; Rylance is the world domination tech guy with more than a touch of Dr. Strangelove.

It's pantomime. Not to mention the most glorious, Laugh Out Loud post credit moment you will ever see (I've learned my lesson). Oh, and once you've seen that, there's an endless (well five minutes' worth) list of boom operators, set decorators, casting directors' second assistants, matte artists, dolly grip thingies and whatnot - and finally ... another post credit scene (not such a good one though). Enjoy!

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

When invited to join hands and sing Auld Lang Syne, I generally hummed the tune and mumbled some vaguely Scottish sounding words. Which is I guess what most (English at least) people do, since the actual words are incomprehensible and ... well, foreign (And we'll tak a right gude-willy waught). However, it for some reason represents the dawning of the new year and, in an earlier post, I promised to publish my New Year resolutions. So here I go. Not necessarily in order of importance, imminence or achievability.

1. Lose 20 kg
2. Finish the Star Wars jigsaw puzzle
3. Finish reading David Copperfield and publish my Charles Dickens blog post
4. Locate the source(s) of the St Austell River and publish the blog post
5. Watch The Blair Witch Project
6. Not to forget my sons' wedding anniversaries

Anyway, have a happy and safe 2022 everyone. I'll keep working on blog posts to hopefully entertain you. And even maybe provide progress reports on my resolutions.

Finally, two New Year Resolutions I request from you, dear readers:

1. Continue to comment on my posts (I read them all)
2. Encourage a member of your family or friend to read my blog and write their comments
3. If you find an interesting post on my blog, share it on your Twitter or Facebook feed and in a WhatsApp group

Thank you!

Merry Christmas, New Year wishes and Resolutions

It's that time of year. Unlike last year, which was truly awful, I am able to visit Son #2 and family in Kent. A joyous experience involving two riotous grandkids, a bracing beach walk in Folkestone in a howling gale, a (so far) disappointing delivery failure of a gift for my son, a trip on a steam train with mulled wine, hopefully a visit from Santa tonight (reindeer food ready and waiting) and equally hopefully a Boxing Day visit to my  co-grandparents, lateral flow tests permitting. A cornucopia of Christmas delights.

I remain unable to visit Son #1 and family in Australia. Barnaby Joyce can come to London and shop in Oxford Street but he requires me to quarantine for two weeks in one of his hotels. Sounds fair? Obviously not, although he did catch covid which rather makes the point of the Australian self-blockade. Maybe next Christmas I'll be able to enjoy my three riotous grandkids, a visit to my other co-grandparents involving blazing sun, dipping in the pool and cold weak Aussie beer. How the other half of the world lives. 

Obviously my wishes for 2022 centre around the defeat and disappearance of COVID-19. Ugh. The completion of my house renovations despite the best efforts of unresponsive and unreliable contractors, Ipswich Town not getting relegated, Arsenal getting into next season's Champions League, Boris getting impeached. Respective % likelihood: 0, 75, 50, 25, 15.

New Year resolutions? Check in next week. Don't expect anything ambitious. 

Three votes

Obviously all those political bloggers out there will be analysing the result of the UK's North Shropshire parliamentary by-election. Speculating and raising questions such as:

• Is this a typical mid term by-election where voters like to give the government of the day a good kicking and then revert to their usual loyalty in a general election?
• Is a margin of nearly 6,000 votes (Lib Dem over Conservative) much greater than the expected tight call?
• Are the Lib Dems back?
• Is Boris a gonner?
• Is Labour irrelevant in this kind of rural constituency?
• Did Reform UK and UKIP takes votes totally from the Conservatives?
• Surely the "Party Party" candidate should have won this contest hands down?

Not me.

I'm much more interested in Yolande Kenward.

Yolande, standing for election without any party affiliation, received three votes.

Putting this into perspective, to be accepted as a candidate in a parliamentary election, you need to (politically ambitious readers need to know this):

• be a British or Irish citizen, or from certain Commonwealth countries
• be over 18
• not be in the police, the military, civil service or judiciary
• not be bankrupt
• pay £500 deposit
• be nominated by 10 registered voters in the  constituency

If you get at least 5% of the votes cast - that would have been 1,901 in this by-election - you will get your £500 back.

Yolande founded the Patient Support Trust in 2000. Its aims are broadly to support the NHS as a fully publicly funded, free service with particular emphasis on the rights of patients, especially children. She has stood for election to various bodies, and in various constituencies, previously in what seems to be a concerted effort to publicise her causes.

Yolande appears not to be resident in North Shropshire - she hails from Maidstone in Kent - so the 10 nominations don't include her. So she has 10 mates, seven of whom deserted her when the actual votes were cast. Shame on you deceivers!

At £500 a pop, garnering next to no support, it seems an expensive way to use your advertising budget. You won't catch me doing it any time soon.

Not heard of Amazon, Barnaby?

End of week trivia.

Australia's esteemed PM Barnaby Joyce travelled to London, went Christmas shopping in Oxford Street, caught Covid and whinged about it. "Bloody Poms gave me the lurgy" he said. Karma. Stay Home. Use Amazon like the rest of us.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, fresh from joining the US (and our Aussie friends) in threatening retaliatory action against Russia should they annex the (rest of) Ukraine, claimed that Britain's troops should train to "survive and carry out surveillance in temperatures as low as 40°C." 

Russia invades Lapland, captures Santa; Royal Marines rescue nine reindeer and repatriate them to the UK, leaving behind dozens of British interpreters. You heard it here first.

The UK has said that none of its diplomats will attend the Winter Olympics in February. Noting that the temperature at that time of year is close to zero (which it would have to be obviously, otherwise no snow), a Foreign Office spokesman stated "our diplomats will be busy with post-Christmas parties after which they will be investigated and therefore unable to attend". The Chinese are reported as buying up extra bottles of champagne to celebrate.

A YouGov poll found that 68% of people polled believed Boris Johnson's denial of there being a Christmas party in 2020, against prevailing Covid regulations. 68%? What on earth are the other 32% on?

In another survey, two-thirds of readers of this blog believed that the author often includes made-up "facts" in posts. The other reader had recently travelled from Australia and was shopping in Oxford Street.