Have you ever wondered how it is that Santa, who is a tad on the portly side, manages to get down all those teeny-tiny chimneys? There’s a good chance, particularly in your younger years, that you have mused on the physics of present delivering on Christmas Eve, and if so, Continue Reading
Movie review: Avatar – The Way of Water
In the world of Hollywood, emotively-rich dramas sit on one side of the storytelling equation and big, brassy, visually resplendent blockbusters sit on the other, and never, usually, the twain shall meet. But just occasionally, in a happy marriage of lushly visual FX, gripping narrative and compelling characters, a blockbuster Continue Reading
On 7th day of Christmas … I read The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan
While we all like to think that life is endlessly possible and lustrously malleable, the truth is, often to quite accidentally, that we end up in craterous ruts of our own making. We don’t mean to send our life down some dead-end road to nowhere but one badly handled sliding Continue Reading
Book review: Station Jim by Louis de Bernières (illus. by Emma Chichester Clark)
One of the things that makes Christmas such an attractive time of the year is the compelling idea that it might be when someone finds their forever home. Maybe it’s because many people seem happier at this time of year, or the world simply looks more attractive garlanded in lights Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 10 more ornaments – Lightyear & Zurg, Sonic, Jawa & R2D2, Eeyore & Piglet, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Indiana Jones + more
You could be mistaken for thinking that I spend all my waking moments doing nothing but buying Christmas ornaments such is the volume of these gorgeously festive bits of plastic that are delivered to my apartment with such frequency that we are now on first name terms with the delivery Continue Reading
#Christmas movie review: The Noel Diary
That almost imperceptible sound you hear rustling above the snow is the gossamer-thin wistfully romantic softness of a thousand Christmas movies floating above your head on a wind laden with gingerbread spice and tinsel threads. Festive films are by their very nature constructions of hopes and dreams and seasonal happiness, Continue Reading
On 5th day of Christmas … I listened to the Estefan Family Christmas
The idea of a family recording a Christmas album, especially across multiple generations, is an enticing one since the season is, like many religious festivals, a communal one. This delightful idea finds perfectly warm and cosy form in the Estefan Family Christmas, the second Christmas album from the seven-time Grammy Continue Reading
Book review: What Would Mary Berry Do? by Claire Sandy
Mary Berry is one of the undisputed doyennes of British food cooking, writing and presenting, an amazingly talented person who has achieved a considerable amount in her 87 years on earth. But is she role model material? You get the feeling that Mary herself would demur any suggestion that you Continue Reading
On 4th day of Christmas … I watched Spirited (movie review)
Who among us is brave enough to take on yet another adaption of the perennial Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol? Why, yes, Sean Anders I see you raising your hand, emboldened by a clever, witty, wildly original script you co-wrote with John Morris and bolstered by the presence of Continue Reading
Just not festively into it anymore … Thoughts on TV series Over Christmas (ÜberWeihnachten)
In theory, if you believe all the songs and movies and books and lore draped in fire-lit scenes and flickeringly colourful lights, Christmas is supposed to be nothing but idyllic fun, a warm glow of stepped-from-the-everyday contented happiness that follows you from eggnog-sipping to present opening, from carolling out in Continue Reading