smooth

After a while, everything starts to be capable of being covered in chocolate, if you have one of these things. It arrived under the Christmas tree along with some bars of chocolate, so what else but to give it a spin? Instructions are for wimps, so the first attempt created an interesting jamming of the equipment, before eventually the chocolate started to flow. As you can see in the picture, the earlier dipping of strawberries, pineapple and other fruit gradually deteriorated to whatever was available, such as the salted mini-pretzel getting the treatment in the picture.

Any suggestions for imaginative uses for a half kilo of very smooth chocolate?

buzzin'

Boxing Day became the day for quizzes and general frivolity. In between the earnest music quiz with some 45 tracks crammed into 15 minutes there were other rounds including the buzzer based movie questions and not forgetting the later turn towards karaoke...wait for it...RnB style.

So no need for Amy Winehouse today because we'd decided to make our own equivalently intoxicating music.

evidence

My little trick worked.

The combination of a mince pie, some sherry and a carrot was too much for Santa. I have photographed the after effects from the next morning. Clearly someone had descended through the chimney (I'd made sure the fire was out). They'd eaten the mince pie, drank the sherry and the entire carrot was gone. There were also some new mystery parcels under the tree. We must have been more nice than naughty.

xmas music quiz

In between the quaffing, turkey, mince pies and general revelry, there will be the statutory rashbre xmas music quiz. If you are a physical visitor to rashbre acres over the festive season, please don't cheat and listen. Anyone else is free to take a peek and even guess the tracks. They start slow and easy and get faster and more tricky, including a few mashups and some obligatory WIll Young tracks demanded for inclusion by Julie. One click on the picture is all it takes to be transported to quiz-land.

party games

Survivors of rashbre central's previous seasonal festivities will know that there's a certain point when the silly hats and party games make an appearance. Not the Nintendo / X-Box360 / Playstation variety, but games involving old wrapping paper, sticky tape, fruit and the like. For the convenience of others, here's a few sure fire winners, which can be played at everything from amateur through to full Pro standard.

Required items: Wrapping paper, sticky tape, magazines, newspapers, highlighter pen, pins

1) Guess the name : Yes - simply providing the guests with paper hats or pin on labels which they can't see with the name of a sleb (celebrity) on it. They have to guess with the Yes/No answers. Classed as an icebreaker. Marilyn Monroe, George Bush, Frankenstein, Albert Einstein, Babe Ruth, Jason Bourne, 007, Mickey Mouse, Madonna, Britney Spears, Alesha. You get the idea.
2) Dress the person : Kinetic Game, two teams: 2-5 minutes. Select someone to be dressed using either old wrapping paper or a couple of recent magazines or newspapers.
3) Kipper racing : multiple teams. needs a long clear indoor space. cut or tear a largish fish shape from a sheet of wrapping paper or anything similar to hand. Add detail such as a hole for the eye, maybe a dorsal fin. Lie them flat on the floor and give other team members further sheets of paper/magazines to use to create air currents to propel the fish from a start line to a distant improvised finishing line.
4) Tell a tale : Pre select some groups of 7 unusual words from a magazine or newspaper article. Hand them to each team and and ask each team member in turn to tell a story using the seven words. Other teams have to try to guess the words.
(Example words from random article today : luckier; heterosexual; chevrolet; banana; promoted; quitter; eggs. and from another page: emissions; cruise; leisurely; overcome; scoop; howling; endurance...you get the idea.)
5) Pass the orange : Why wait until after the dinner has finished to play this game? goes great with coffee.
6) Pictionary: drawing fast pictures based upon words. The boxed set is best for this one.
7) GrEEn GlaSS dOOr : The person in charge suggests playing this and that everyone else can try to be selected to go through the green glass door by suggesting appropriate pairs of things. Things that get in are a pOOl but no water; glaSS but no picture; MiRRor but no reflection (ie the first thing needs a double letter in it.. Play till last person gets it)
8) GGD variants : Play GGD (7) where instead of double letters, each sentence said by the next person has to start with a vowel "...and blah blah bla; ...or blah blah blah ...obviously" and another variant vowel/then consonant and another variant is start with next letter of alphabet.
9) Alphabet Game : Choose topic (Animals, Cars, Candy Bars, Popstars, Drinks). Start at A and round robin through to Z.
10) Stirring the Mush : Announce you are stirring the mush and (eg stand up, sit down, scratch your ear etc). Then start stirring the mush by ay hand/body gesture you like. The invite someone to copy. the trick is thay have to do what you did BEFORE you started stirring the mush (eg scratch ear etc). Tell them whether they have passed or not then select next 'victim'. Repeat until all have worked it out.
11) Erect-a-pup : More newspaper for this two in -oner. Part one. Teams. who can make the longest tube in 2 minutes from rolled up paper? Sounds easy. Just watch what happens. Part Two. Now, in another three minutes make a model life sized puppy out of tubes of newspaper. Warning that some puppies will have 3, 5 legs at the end of this.

I think thats enough to get started. No animals harmed in the testing of these entertainments. You'll have to email me for the (ahem) rules of the frying pan and wooden spoon game...and don't forget charades!

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shopping strategy

Other than midnight, I suspect that, for non followers, this evening whilst "Strictly Come Dancing" is on television is an ideal time to visit M&S for Christmas Shopping.

C'mon Alesha.

alesha's lofi lipstick and agent x'd

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gas

I stopped for some F-yu-ooo-el yesterday and overheard a rather intriguing conversation in the filling station. It went along the lines:

"How many boxes?"
"Six thousand I think"
"Already?"
"Yeah, I know, but I think they got a deal on them"
"What - and they say 'easter' on them?
"Yep"
"We'll have to store them in the car wash".

cue an xmas tune

yule

I started today pretty early with a multi national conference meeting and call at about 0800 and then a morning of what I call 'hurdles' which is lots of short meetings one after another. There was one 'water jump' when one of the hurdle meetings was cancelled about five minutes before the start and thet gave me a few moments to recover my pace. The other amusing thing today was that everyone had thoughtfully provided breakfasts with their meetings, so the first one at 08:00 has bacon-filled baps with brown sauce, the next one had a trolley of fruit and pastries and then the third meeting (it was nine o'clock' by this time) has a combination of rolls, pastries, fruit, juices as well as the usual coffees and teas. To be honest I refrained from all of these options because at lunch time I had a team Christmas Lunch at a posh tudor building.

I was getting peckish by 12:00 and we set off in convoys of one sort or another to the venue where we had a champagne reception followed by a glorious lunch for our fairly diverse gang of people. Lots of talk, and even a short out break of carols, before we started to drift away in the late afternoon. I had one more meeting with Italy, but was able to do this as a conference call on my way home, so pleasingly, for me, the Holiday starts...

Here.

So

"Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas" and any other variants according to your nature and custom.

rashbre

office party time

nuff said.

scooby snacks

By the end of this week, the combination of work, extra errands, shopping, evening drinks and the occasional party mean that it will be quite good to be able to flop for a few minutes during the main Christmas period.

In addition to family time and further entertaining events, it will also be good to have a few quiet minutes to pause and think anew about the forthcoming year. There's been that inevitable acceleration from mid November towards Christmas and from having seemingly oodles of time to prepare and be organised, suddenly its almost upon us.

So as I speed around London on foot, in cars, on the tube and trains for the next few days, I know that I then have a few days at home to at least partially unwind. That's before the New Year starts and all the counters get reset for another dash. I'm already getting double booked during January.

claret

In the City, the week before the Christmas holidays and it is extremely noticeable that many folk are extending their lunch times. My rendezvous before a meeting was difficult to reach because of the sheer number of people walking along the street, all intent on shopping or lunchtime revelry.

Our purpose was more sober although afterwards we pitched out into the busy streets and headed for a nearby wine-bar. Most areas of the city are well provided often with large subterranean bars, like the numerous Balls Brothers (described as a Wicked Club in one guide to London) and Davy's with sawdust floors and "Wallop" served in large metal jugs.

In London tradition, we wanted the finest wines available to humanity, we wanted them here, and we wanted them now. In the end we settled for a simple claret in the Lime Street Balls Bros still thoroughly in keeping with the ambiance of the area. Later, and suitably lubricated we wandered the few steps back to Bank station before heading our separate ways home.

pogued

As a footnote to my recent post about the song "Fairy Tale of New York", which is the well known (in Britain) Christmas song about (amongst other things) the 'drunk tank' featuring a few choice words, it seems that a mere two or three days later the original song has been back in the news because of BBC censorship.

For politically correct reasons the BBC decided to fade down a few of the words in the lyrics but it all seems to have backfired and consequently the song has now been featured on the News, Newsnight and various other programmes intacto.

Considering only a couple of years ago, the BBC actually used it as a charity item sung by the cast of EastEnders (part of my previous post), then it does all seem somewhat volte-face to remonstrate about the lyrics.