Christmas is coming...

[radegund]

...and the lunch-break of the Radzer begins to incorporate frantic little dashes through freezing drizzle into Grafton Street emporia.

Two observations from today's foray:

1. Oxfam's cards this year are disappointing in one respect: they all refer explicitly to Christmas. Normally, I get some with "Season's Greetings", because I have several friends to whom it makes a difference. After some dithering, I decided that the principle of buying my cards from Oxfam was more important than the principle of having the option of sending cards with a non-Christian greeting. I can always cross it out.

2. Tripping innocently through HMV, I was abruptly stopped in my tracks. There on a rack of Irish DVDs, bold as brass, was - are you sitting down? - The best of RTE's Wanderly Wagon, vol. 1. Youse (by which I mean those of you to whom this means anything at all) may all already have seen this, but I hadn't, and it Smacked My Gob.

(Amateur-language-nerd aside: When I was small, the kids where I lived all pronounced it "WUNN-derly". I suspect this was a hypercorrection: they were used to hearing British accents on television, and so "wanderly" was heard as a British pronunciation of "wonderly". There's something to say about the socio-economic status of the two countries, and the locus of the cultural norm, and so on, but I'm not going to attempt it here.)

Comments

[stephencass.livejournal.com]

Wanderly Wagon

That was in many ways, a freaky show. Judge and Mr. Crow especially. Still I remember feeling a little sad when, years after the show vanished from the air, I was visiting my father at RTE, and there, down by the prefabs where they keep the engineers, was what was left of the wagon itself: it wasn't much by then, mostly just the wheel chassis with a few small scraps of ornamented woodwork stuck on the sides...

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Buying Christmas cards already? Are you always this organised, or have the pressures of motherhood done something impressive to your brain?

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Judge and Mr. Crow! I'd forgotten them. I never really watched the programme, but it was often on in other people's houses.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

The pressures of motherhood are such that I now have a TINY, DIAMANTINE BRANE.

All our festive preparation has to happen in chunks of ten or fifteen minutes. There is no scope for impromptu shopping marathons in mid-December. The only way it will possibly all get done is if I start ridiculously early. Plus, the Oxfam shop is conveniently on the way back to work from where I had lunch today.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

It's not just Oxfam; a couple of years ago I remember looking at a Charity Christmas Card sale and there might have been one or two sets of cards that didn't say Christmas on them. I might not be a terribly observant Jew these days, but no, not for me ta.