Poor old Amy Winehouse. As if her catalogue of problems weren’t enough to contend with, now The Times think she’s not quite all ’she’ is cracked up to be, at least judging by their mouse-over text…

Original here.

‹snigger›

…I’ll be pissed, so I thought I might jot a few lines whilst I have sobriety in my favour and then set it to ping up later tonight. Except I’ve forgotten how to do it so just read it now. Er. Anyway.

Hoorah! Hooray! It’s Christmas Eve!

I did all of 20 minutes work today and spent the remaining few hours reading A Christmas Carol whilst everyone else nattered and skived. This was followed by yet another fraught-with-danger drive back home (well, not really: the gritters have finally been out) via the supermarket for to get more booze and some brandy butter: this was because we always forget something and just love diving in with all the other insane trolley-pushers as you can’t beat a bit of festive stress.
Well, actually you can. To hell with it all (in a handcart if I had my way), I much prefer to keep Christmas properly. Therefore, the order of events from tonight forth shall be:

XMAS EVE
Now to 11.30pm:
Continuation of getting Rascally Drunk this evening.
11.30 pm to whenever:
Walk to church for Midnight Mass (T is a Lapsed Kafflick and I’m mindful of who’s supposed birthday it is tomorrow).

XMAS DAY
Around 9 am to 11 am:
Hungover lie-in in the morning followed by pressie-opening.
Some time after 11 am:
Lorrie and Kronky arriving to partake of Bucks Fizz, further pressie opening and making a Snowman (hopefully).
1 ish pm:
Start cooking Xmas Chicken with frozen Veg.
2.30 pm:
Eat dinner. Pull crackers. Be drunken pillocks.
3pm:
Watch either Queens Speech and heckle loudly, or watch other speech on Channel 4 and heckle loudly.
3.15pm to midnight and onward:
Drink, Belch and Fart way through remainder of day whilst watching awful programs on telly/playing RISK/singing badly.

BOXING DAY
11 am:
Wake on sofa wondering what time/day it is until cold realisation dawns of imminent visit to Parents. Scream loudly then go and get ready.

See? It’s a doddle being a growed up. Oh, except every year I absolutely have to watch The Snowman by Raymond Briggs and listen to Jiminy Cricket’s reading of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas because I’d quite happily be 5 years old again and let everyone else worry about ‘important’ things.

Go on then, here it is:

Whatever you do or don’t believe in and whether you have much, little or nothing, please at least believe in yourselves and I wish you all, sincerely, a Merry Christmas.

‹Settles down with Wife, bottle of single malt, two glasses and lots of very relaxed cats›

No, not the music. Urgh *shudder*
I refer to technology in general, which by it’s very nature has a habit of being surprising. Pleasantly so in many cases, especially when the connection to someone’s imagination is so very clear.

Take, for example, the funny little communicators used in Star Trek so many years ago. Now look at just about any mobile phone. Uncanny.

Then you have 2001: A Space Oddysey. If you’ve read the book you might well remember Dr Floyd’s trip up to the Moon where he’s reading the daily newspapers on a small portable computer screen which is full of thumbnail files, selecting of a file expands it so that the full article can be read. A bit familiar to the device you’re reading this drivel on now, perhaps?

Maybe you’ve also read that mighty tome ‘The Liar’ by Stephen Fry. There’s a bit in that describing Professor Trefusis’s insistence that books are nothing more than a method of imparting information and that no value of any sort should be attached thereto, no matter how rare that first edition might be and that the sooner technology comes up with something to replace cumbersome lumps of bound paper, the better.

Well, it has. I was very pleasantly suprised to receive at the weekend, from my very very splendid Wifey, a lovely digital book reader. Previously I had thought these would merely replicate book pages on a small screen very much like a small PDA or similar, but no. Oh deary me muchly no! Technology really has replaced the humble book PROPERLY without having to stare at yet another bloody computer screen - the screen on this digital book reader looks exactly like the page of a normal book! You can even look at the screen from any angle and it still looks just as if it were printed words on a bit of paper.
It doesn’t light up, it doesn’t do hard sums, it doesn’t make peculiar and irritating noises at inconvenient times, it simply lets you read books. Lots of them. I currently have 125 classic novels stored in my book reader with room for many more.
It’s great! I could get my entire library onto this little gizmo!

There are only two down-sides:
1. I daren’t read in the bath any more. If not my life then certainly something I’ve very much attached to in a very real any physical sense would be forefeit.
2. I’ve just discovered that Charles Dickens doesn’t half go on. I mean really, why settle for 3 or 4 words when a couple of thousand would easily do?

If you can spare what must be around a million diamond-encrusted pounds, then I suggest you buy yourself one of these book readers, too. You’ll not regret it!

‹No, Hutters, it doesn’t read the books for you.›