Christmas shopping

Just past my house, on the way to the bus stop

I got the bus into Cheltenham and met the rest of my family, already there on various errands, for lunch. The bus driver was a bit of a joker: when I asked for a single to Cheltenham, he said "I'm sorry, this is the Birmingham Festival bus". I believed I might have made a mistake when he said "I'm sorry", even though any bus that stopped at my stop would go to Cheltenham, as I hadn't had time to think, but when he got to the bit about Birmingham I knew he was joking (the passengers in the front seats giggling was another clue) so I joined in and said "Alright, I'll go to Birmingham then"

When I told mum about it, she said he was probably flirting with me, and that the deadpan cobblers had been too. I'm not quite sure about that- they seemed more like people who just like having a joke, and in any case today I hadn't washed my hair so I wasn't exactly looking my best and you'd think that would put people off. But I'm handicapped by not being able to tell when people are flirting with me- this could explain why I've been single for the past six years. So maybe she's right.

We went to an Italian restaurant by the bus terminus that my brother's been wanting to try for years, since he used to pass it every day on his way to sixth form college. The food was very nice, but I regretted having a starter- I couldn't finish all my main course (tagliatelle with vegetables in a creamy tomato sauce), and for once it was nicer than the starter (deep fried breaded mozzarella sandwich). Even though we usually eat together at home (when we're all in), it's nice eating out together- it feels like more of an occasion, and everybody's usually relaxed and in a better mood, so we have more of a laugh.

Dad didn't hang around to do any shopping afterwards- I think he's got most of (maybe even all of) his presents already. Since Mum, by long tradition dating from the time when he worked and she stayed at home and looked after me and my brother, but probably more because she's better at deciding what people would like, buys all the presents for family friends, relations, and my brother and me, he only has to buy presents for her, so I suppose that's not so time-consuming. And as he now works freelance from home, he's had plenty of opportunity to get them. So my brother went round the shops with me and Mum. I didn't really get any presents myself- I didn't think I would- but I helped Mum with the decision process. My brother also chipped in, not quite so helpfully, and waited patiently for us to get to the shop Mum had recommended to him in his search for a coat (it was where she got hers).

The Promenade, Cheltenham, with Christmas lights

It seemed to be a very long afternoon. We went round quite a few shops before getting to that point where you lose your critical faculty to a certain extent and just decide that someone will probably like the thing you've just picked up, based on some tenuous connection to their lifestyle. We even wrapped a present in the post office- with newly bought paper and sellotape but without the use of scissors*- so it could be in time for the last posting day. By the end, I was quite fed up of walking round, standing still and looking at things- and very sick of the shopping bags. I'd got some wrapping paper and some gold and silver paper, as well as carrying some of Mum's presents. Then we had to walk a long way to the car, because Mum always parks quite far out, which is great from a not-having-to-pay-for-parking point of view, but not so good in terms of getting back to it after a long day's shopping. I wouldn't mind walking that distance ordinarily, but with heavy bags on feet that have spent hours walking, and worse, standing still, and with in addition a pair of tights that are trying their best to fall down...



We decorated the Christmas tree this evening. Normally this is a job that starts in the daylight, with the bringing in of the tree and the prolonged process of setting it up on a coffee table, or in recent years a low chest that we acquired some time ago, as a plinth (sounds simple, but of course takes up to an hour). But we did this part on Sunday (I think it was), and got as far as putting the lights on (which we do first) before managing to break them. So it was postponed till (a) we could get some more and (b) the next evening thereafter that Mum was in.

The new lights turned out not to be numerous enough to go round the tree very many times. We were planning to get some more to supplement them (though not this time to postpone the decorating till this had been done), but then Dad found some replacement bulbs in the box of the old ones- which we'd been going to throw away as no longer necessary since the lights were now useless- and managed to mend the first lot of lighrts using them, so we just used those, with the new set. Why had we not just gone for replacement bulbs in the first place, rather than a whole new set? (What wastefull times we live in, etc etc)

Breaking the Lights: Long version
While putting the lights round the tree on the first occasion (Sunday**), we found that they didn't come on when the switch was switched***. This in spite of their having spent the past year working perfectly while stretched round the walls near the ceiling (last year we couldn't face totally getting rid of their bright-and-cheerfullness after Christmas was over, while winter was still dark and cold and very much with us). We tried pushing all the bulbs in firmly, but nothing. We were just giving up and unwinding them again, with the intention of getting a new set, when, a couple of coils before the bottom of the tree, they suddenly came on. Dad went over them and got them sorted, but there were about four bulbs that weren't on (though the filament looked intact. I'd been volunteering throughout to get replacement bulbs, and as we put them back on the tree, they finally agreed- they'd been unsure that you could get replacement bulbs, for some reason, and also wondered how I'd work out which ones to get (I think we hadn't come upon the box at this point). Dad took one of the bulbs out for me to take with me so I could get the right kind, as I'd suggested. Or rather, he tried to. Instead of the bulb pulling out, the glass came away from the plastic base, and the lights all went out again. I thought this was just due to an accident, and that all it needed was one more replacement bulb than before, but my parents apparently thought that this meant the bulbs were not removeable, and thus that I could not get replacements. I was convinced that in fact I could, that I'd seen them before, but I could see that I wasn't going to persuade my parents of this- when I tried, tentatively, Mum pointed out that when Dad had just tried to remove a bulb it had broken. So I just thought fine, new lights then. But of course, when we found the replacement bulbs in the box it showed that they were supposed to be removeable and Dad then had another go at it.

The project has been going fairly well. In order to measure left-right political leaning among the residents of the local authorities, I have been compiling a list of how many seats on each council are held by each political party. I found a list which had this information for each council all in one place, but it only listed separate figures for the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens- all other parties were lumped together under 'Other'. So I was looking at each council's website to find out whether any of the 'Other' was easily left-right classifiable things like the BNP, or whether it was all the unknowable Independent, in the process of which I discovered that the big list wasn't 100% accurate- which in fact it didn't claim to be, since it was based on election results and didn't take account of things like defections of already elected councillors from one party to another. So I was looking up the information on the individual council websites for every single council.

This was of course taking a Very Long Time. In two days of work (not two solid days, I admit, more like one day's proper work), I'd got down to D in my list. So I had to decide this was impractical in terms of time (I want to have all the data stored in readily usable form before Christmas- and I'm going to be away most of Thursday and Friday, and want to tidy my room on Saturday, and don't want to work on Christmas Eve...). I decided it didn't matter about the inaccuracy of the big list- after all, it was based on what people voted for, and that was what I was interested in, not what the elected people decided to do afterwards. The lumping together of other parties was more problematic. If it's just one or two seats- maybe even as many as 10- it's not too bad, but in some cases something like half the seats are occupied by 'Other'. So I've decided I'll look up those ones on the council websites- say any council where 25% or more of the seats are 'Other'. Of course, they may well turn out to be Independent in which case I still don't know if they're left or right, but at least I've tried. The other councils I'll just treat those seats as 'unknown' in left-right terms- even if, had I looked, I would have found they were all occupied by a coalition of UKIP and the BNP. This of course is somewhat flawed. But I shall point this out in my write-up, so that's ok (I hope).

It's quite a relief to be able to give up (most of the) wrestling with council websites. Some of them very obligingly had an easy-to-find table of how many seats were held by each party. Some had a not so easy to find table. Far too many had no table at all, but let you list the councillors by party so you could count them all. These were not the most annoying ones. Quite a few didn't let you do that, so you had to pick out and count up the parties from an alphabetical list of councillors + addresses + political affiliations. These were also not the most annoying ones. The process could be made easier by using Find... The most annoying ones were the ones that had a similar list, but a coloured block or logo instead of the party in word form- they of course had to be counted by hand. Strangely the ones that just refused to mention political party at all weren't the most aggravating- for those I felt entitled to just give up and use the details from the big list.

*I made a very sharp crease in the paper, and slit along it with my LSE ID card (which was the first one I pulled out of my wallet). Normally, I wouldn't bother with the card bit- but the paper was quite thin, as wrapping paper tends to be, and wasn't tearing nicely by hand

**Probably

***The sitting room has a socket that's operated by a wall switch on the other side of the room, by the door (and no overhead light operated by a wall switch or otherwise- well, it's an old house). We always plug the Christmas tree lights into that one- partly because it's nearest to the tree (always a good basis for picking a given socket) and partly because this makes it easy to turn the lights on and off when you go in and out of the room