If ever I am the subject of the Guardian Weekend magazine’s Q&A feature and I am asked “When and where were you happiest?”, I think the answer is going to be “in front of my laptop, watching this video”.
(If you are reading this on a phone, come back to it later and watch it on a bigger screen.)
OK, there isn’t a winner, I just couldn’t resist the headline. As I said before, I didn’t really have a plan as to which song went where on the advent calendar this year, but I did promise myself that if anyone voted for my personal favourite, they’d get the Christmas Eve slot. So I was delighted when Donna plumped for Mistletoe and Wine, because Donna is completely lovely and utterly deserving of the final place.
Donna and I used to work together, in the first proper job I ever had. Well, second, if you count four months doing 20 hours a week in Streatham Under Fives Centre, which I’m not sure I do. This job was in a bookshop, and in the late nineties and early two thousands Donna and I had the most fun anyone has ever had at work, because she is the sweetest, silliest, most genuine, forthright and hilarious person in the world, and spending eight hours a day in her company was sheer out-and-out delight.
When good things happened to Donna she would fill the room with beams of joy so intense they felt tangible. When bad things happened to Donna she would cry, then find a way to feel better about them, usually with the accompaniment of a lot of laughter. If I was in a bad mood, I would sit and glower silently. If Donna was in a bad mood, she’d announce it, explain it and within a few minutes we’d have talked around it from every angle and both be feeling better.
Everyone should have a Donna, especially if they are occasionally inclined to unhealthy levels of cynicism and negativity. Donna was so open and so engaged that I couldn’t sustain my sneering teenage posture, and had no choice but to become nicer, and for that I will always be grateful to her.
Happy Christmas, Donna! And happy Christmas to everyone who has read any of this year’s advent calendar. It’s been a lot of fun to do, and I’m only sorry that there wasn’t room for all the songs people nominated. But, you know, there’s always room for Cliff.
Lucy gave me several songs to choose from, but she will forever be associated in my mind with George Michael, and since we were both supposed to see him sing this year and neither of us did, I have chosen this, which I also know is lots of other people’s favourite Christmas song too. It is an excellent Christmas song, and although you have to sit through an ad to watch it, it’s worth it because the video is even better. It has the best hair – and the most hair – of any video I can think of, not including November Rain.
(Goes off into 9-minute November Rain reverie. God, I love November Rain, about as much as I love Phantom of the Opera, and for most of the same reasons. I still can’t believe we didn’t have it as our wedding song. It’s set at a wedding! And we got married in November!)
<Cough> Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, George Michael. I love George Michael, but not as much as Lucy does. Lucy and I were at university together. We weren’t in the same year or doing the same subject, but we were both subversive leftie troublemakers so we got to know each other anyway, and then we got to like each other because – I hope nobody takes offence at my saying this – not ALL subversive leftie troublemakers have much lightness of heart or sense of the ridiculous, and Lucy had, and has, both, and was, and is, one of the funniest people I know.
(I think I treasure funny above almost anything else, when it comes to my friends. I mean, always assuming they’re not actual murderers or Tories or anything.)
Lucy lives miles away now – or else I do, or else we both do – so I never see her, but we are still in touch and we have a shared history that means a lot to us both (marginally more to her, perhaps, since she is married to a part of it) and I know that if we bumped into each other tomorrow we’d pick up exactly where we left off. I’m not sure where that was, but I’m fairly certain that wine was involved, and I’m almost sure that it would be again. Ah, good times.
Happy Christmas, Lucy!
Mum wanted “When Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney – with actions”. I can’t imagine it’s actually her favourite Christmas song, and at one point I thought I might actually have to record myself performing it, but then this little girl came to my rescue.
Which is not to say I don’t know the actions. I know the actions to every song, because I am the daughter of a mother who ran music groups for children through most of my childhood. She is also the reason I know proper Christmas songs as well as Wizzard and Slade, because when I was little she used to play LPs of real choirs singing in Latin, in between Dad playing Roberta Flack on the piano or Davy Graham on the guitar. They also sang in a choir (“Oh MUM, do we HAVE to come to your concert?”), and at the summer camps we used to go to in Wales, and at our wedding (and at their wedding), so if you have enjoyed any bits of any of the Gladallover musical advent calendars over the years, you really have my parents to thank for it.
Happy Christmas, Mum!
P.S. Dad doesn’t do Twitter or Facebook, but I am reliably informed that he enjoyed this clip very much recently, and as it’s Christmas I don’t see why there can’t be two songs today:
I gave quite a lot of thought to who went where on my advent songs countdown. I wanted to make sure it didn’t look as though the most important people were going last, because they aren’t – it’s sort of half random and half based on how much I like the songs, with a vague effort not to have people who know each other well on consecutive days, in case it gets boring or repetitive.
But it was easy to figure out where to put Niall, because today we have been married for exactly one month. What is the month anniversary? If there isn’t an official one-month-married present, I hereby declare one month the champagne and sausages anniversary.
There’s lots I could say about Niall, but it would be cheesy and naff, so I will just say that he is in every possible way the exact person I want to be married to, even though he picked this song, “if only”, as he put it, “for this magnificently drunken rendering”.
Happy Christmas, Niall! I’ll get the sausages if you get the champagne.
Do you have a former flatmate who was your best friend, who liked the same stuff as you, introduced you to new stuff that you loved, picked up the pieces when your life fell apart and was always available for a cigarette or a rant if you needed either, even in the middle of the night? I, fortunate woman that I am, have lived with two perfect flatmates. They are both called Martin and I would live with both of them again in a heartbeat, were I living in a commune, which at present I am not.
But that’s OK because both of them let me visit from time to time. Before Sweeney – which is what we call the second Martin for reasons none of us seems to know – met Verena, we used to meet in pubs. But now they live in a beautiful flat and they lay on lavish parties and give people vast amounts of food and booze, because Verena is an exceptionally accomplished hostess, as well as being charming, funny and very elegant. So three cheers for Verena, both the Martins and everyone else who somehow became a grown-up without me noticing.
Happy Christmas, Verena!
The reason this morning’s advent song didn’t go up until midday is that I didn’t wake up until after 11am. The reason for that is that I didn’t get to bed until sometime after 4am, and the reason for that is that last night I went to Old Trafford to watch Crystal Palace beat Manchester United in the League Cup, in a night that I will remember for a very long time. As I said to the beloved on the way home, and I was only half-joking, who’d have thought the two best days of my life would happen within a fortnight of each other?
(I am not going to write about my wedding here: if you know me, there are a million photos on Facebook and if you don’t, you’re not interested.)
We travelled up by coach with 30-odd other away fans and club staff, on a package trip that included lunch at the hotel where the players were staying and a pre-match briefing from Lennie Lawrence, assistant manager at the club. There was also breakfast in the boardroom at Selhurst Park before we left, free CPFC goodies, a raffle and a quiz (we won neither), all of which was very exciting at the time, but it’s already faded in my mind, pushed out by the memories of the main event.
From the outside Old Trafford looks a bit like an out-of-town shopping centre, and inside it’s undeniably big but somehow not as mind-blowing as the Emirates or Stamford Bridge, for reasons which I can’t pinpoint. But it’s still Old Trafford and you can’t help feeling a thrill as you take your seat in the East Stand and look across the pitch at the Stretford End, slowly filling up with home support.
We had brought around 5,000 fans and the noise we made was fantastic, from well before kick-off until well after the final whistle. I don’t always join in with the singing – there is one song, especially, which I definitely can’t bring myself to sing along to – but away crowds are always louder, and I found myself carried away on a tide of excitement over which I didn’t entirely have control. I was a bit worried I’d have lost my voice today, but all seems to be well (I am self-medicating with chocolate, just in case).
I am not going to write a match report because I can never see who anyone is and I always miss at least half the action through looking the wrong way, but I will say that we looked as keen and as energetic as I’ve seen us in as long as I can remember: I don’t know what Dougie said to the players before the game, but it worked. Shaun Scannell especially was excellent before he went off injured, and I hope we can hang on to him for as long as possible. But I was even more impressed by our back four, who managed to keep United’s attacks contained to just two real chances, one which went wide and one which was saved by Lewis Price. Sky Sports’ post-match analysis told us that United had 68% of the possession, and I can well believe it, but although they had the ball for long periods, we never let them do much with it.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a game in such a state of heightened tension, last season’s final-day showdown at Hillsborough possibly excepted. Before it started, I was more or less resigned to losing but having a jolly day out nonetheless. But as soon as it became apparent that we were giving them a run for their money, I was a quivering bag of nerves. As John Cleese said in Clockwise: “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.” I suspect I wasn’t a fantastically entertaining viewing companion during the game: all I can remember is hysterical laughter, the kind you imagine you might come out with if a bomb missed you by yards, alternating with white-faced shaking and hiding my face in my hands.
But I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. When the final whistle went and we all leaped in the air, screaming incoherently and hugging whoever was in grabbing distance, I remembered exactly why every single football-related heartbreak is worth having, because they make the moments of joy so much sweeter. I can’t imagine a quarter-final victory meaning as much to supporters of a side who routinely expect to win cup ties as it did to Crystal Palace, who haven’t reached a semifinal in ten years and haven’t beaten Man United in twenty-two. In moments like those, it feels like the happiest accident in the world that I support a team for whom a big win like this is a glorious surprise rather than par for the course.
I think the lasting memory that I’ll take away is of the away fans standing in an almost-empty stadium after the home support had melted away, singing “We’re going to Wem-ber-ley” high into the echoing rafters, and in that instant, feeling like we were the best team in the world. Maybe we will go to Wembley and maybe we won’t, but whatever happens for the rest of this season, nobody can take last night away from us.
In the same way that it’s worth living in a country where it rains in order to experience the wonder of a sunny day, it’s sometimes worth being (a bit) ill, because it’s so nice to wake up and realise you’re well again. I spent yesterday in a vague haze of back and stomach pain, curled up on a sofa half-watching terrible Christmas films on a movie channel I’d never heard of and will no doubt never see again. I went to bed with a hot water bottle at ten past nine, and woke up at seven o’clock this morning feeling BRILLIANT. It’s quarter to nine and I have already been out for a newspaper and breakfast, made tea for two and solved a problem for my twelve-year-old god-daughter, and before the day is out I shall have been back out to the shops for proper food, recorded a voice demo (technology permitting), dealt with a plumber and a roofer and made – and eaten – dinner* for four. And I’m looking forward to all of it. It’s a shame it’s so grey and gloomy outside – but if it weren’t, the prospect of a sunny day to come wouldn’t be half so exciting.
*Talking of dinner, I made a revolutionary poultry-based discovery last night, which I will share later in a separate post.
Zooborns has an update today on Kambiri, the baby Western Lowland gorilla born at Franklin Park Zoo almost a year ago. This was Kambiri then:
And this is Kambiri now:
She got cuter, didn’t she? But the real reason I’m posting about her is because the Western Lowland gorilla has the best Latin name of all the animals, and on a grey and grizzly Monday you deserve to know about it. Meet gorilla gorilla gorilla.
It’s been so long since I posted that I’ve got too many things to write about and I don’t know where to start. I could write about the Hop Farm Festival, or our trip to Dorset, or my brand new niece:
(I know!)
And I have several separate blog posts to make about Glastonbury, if I ever get around to them, but I’ve just had a look at the searches that have led people here today, and one of them was “chorizo and halloumi recipes”, which reminded me that we’ve had the same dinner three times since we got back from Glastonbury, because it is easy, tasty and just about perfect for a warm summer evening. It’s inspired by a chorizo and halloumi wrap I bought from a Greek food stall sometime on the Sunday, which was by far the nicest thing I ate all weekend, and it goes like this:
Take two large handfuls of green salad leaves – whichever kind you like best, but sweetish ones rather than bitter ones – and add finely chopped cucumber, red onion (not too much) and the sweetest cherry tomatoes you can find (tip: greengrocers have sweeter ones than supermarkets, in my experience). Then take about half a chorizo sausage, the kind you buy folded in two, and a pack of halloumi (I use the whole thing; the beloved, being more of a meat fan, uses more sausage and less cheese), chop into mouthful-sized pieces and fry them together in a splash of olive oil. When the halloumi has started to brown on both sides, tip the meat, cheese and oil on top of the salad. Add some chopped lemon zest and eat with warmed pittas. Serves two.
I don’t have a photo of the recipe to show you, so here’s another photo of my niece instead:
(I know, right?)
Glad All Over 