Am I the only person who realises that Dickens was commissioned by the retailers of central London to write a story that promoted the true, consumerist, meaning of Christmas? A Christmas Carol is as blatant a piece of PR as anyone should ever recognise. Scrooge is quite right: Humbug! The whole damn country shuts down for about a week to ten days.
The best thing that happened in December is that I finally threw off the colds and food poisoning I’d had for the last two months, and then had to address the extra poundage I was carrying as a result of all that carb-heavy comfort eating. It took while for the guys at what’s now my regular lunchtime cafe to get that I just wanted meat-and-salad, but that’s what I eat now. Do it consistently and it works.
I read FUSE: The Russia Shift by Johnston and Greenwood; Rupert Smith’s eye-opening The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World; Neville Shute’s On The Beach; Richard Bentall’s Doctoring The Mind; Mat Ruff’s Bad Monkeys; Unziker and Jones’ Bankrupting Physics; and Philip Kerr’s March Violets, and The Pale Criminal.
I watched all of Elementary S1, Sons of Anarchy S5 and True Detective S1; we had the annual Peter Jackson family outing to Cineworld Feltham to see The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies; and The Grandmaster and Electricity at the Curzon Soho.
Sis and I had the worst supper we’ve ever had at the Golden Dragon in Chinatown, and I made it up to her with supper at Hix. Four of us from work filled a table at Tay Do on the Kingsland Road with starters and had an excellent meal; I had lunch at Randall and Auben, and at Balans as a friend knocked on the window and waved me in as I was passing by.
I worked the days between Christmas and New Years', using them to revise my SAS Base and document exactly how much I don't like using it. And I made sure I went training so I didn't make the mistake of taking a fortnight out and needing a month to get back to normal.
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