Archive for December, 2009
The Tweet Before Christmas
Posted by Simon in Mere Blogging on December 25th, 2009
I wrote and tweeted this, verse by verse, lying in bed on Christmas Eve night. Like all tweets, it’s ephemera, but I kind of worried it would get lost forever, so decided to put it here in a more permanent form. Happy Christmas!
Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the net
Not a tweeter was stirring
(Well, some were, I bet)
The avatars and profiles
Were sprinkled with glitter
And hastags of #Xmas
Were all over Twitter
And ma on her laptop,
And me tapping touch screen
Had just settled down
To check on our tweet streams
I looked down my followers
At the top of the “new” pile
Was someone that made me
Quickly click on “view profile”
His jolly account page
had the “Verified” tick
So I knew in a moment
It must be Saint Nick!
I checked out his followers
He had quite a few!
And in no time at all
I was following too
And who was he following?
Well perhaps you can guess!
Just eight other tweeters
I can list each address:
@dasher, @dancer,
@prancer, @vixen,
@comet, @cupid,
@donder and @blitzen
The last thing he tweeted
Which I’d like to recite:
“Happy Christmas to all
And to all a good night!”
How to cook sprouts
Posted by Simon in Mere Blogging on December 24th, 2009
There’s a lot of debate at this time every year over how long sprouts should be cooked for. Put them on the boil on Guy Fawkes Night? Or steam them for a few seconds just before you serve the turkey?
The wrangling has gone on long enough, I’ve got my own fool-proof solution for sprouts, and I’m willing to share it with you.
How to Cook Sprouts
1. Bring a very large pan of slightly salted water to the boil.
2. Cut the sprouts from the stalk using a very sharp knife, removing the outer layer of leaves. Wash them in cold water.
3. Put the sprouts in a sturdy metal tin (if you’re anything like me, you’ll already have several empty tins of Quality Street available).
4. Drive the tin to your nearest building site.
5. Place the tin at the bottom of a pit and cover it with at least 2 metres of concrete.
6. Return home.
7. If anyone asks where the sprouts are, threaten them with a very large pan of slightly salted boiling water.
I’ve followed this recipe every year and never failed to have a completely delicious Christmas dinner. Bon appetit!
Sorry, you were in
Posted by Simon in Mere Opinion on December 23rd, 2009
The other day whilst sitting at home, I watched the postman draw up outside the house, post an item through our letterbox, and drive off.
I got up to see to see what he’d delivered. It was a small red card, entited “Sorry, you were out”, directing me to pick up a undeliverable parcel from the delivery office.
Oh, how strange, I thought. Despite being here all day I was apparently, by Royal Mail standards, “out”. Annoying too, because our local delivery office is a bugger to get to. I also wondered vaguely how he’d managed to decide we were out and write that card in the few seconds he’d been parked outside.
I’ve since learned that it’s fairly common practice these days for posties, when collecting the mail they have to deliver in the mornings, to make an “executive decision” not pick up bulky items that in all likelyhood they’re going to end up bringing back to the depot undelivered due to the recipients being at work.
Which is fair enough, I suppose. But with the Royal Mail increasingly under pressure from falling amounts of “snail mail” and parcels being one of the few areas still booming (due to the increasing amount of internet shopping) you’d think they’d make a special effort to try and deliver them, wouldn’t you?
They even write the little red cards while still at the post office. Saves even more time, and avoids that tricky situation of having someone open the the door while you’re busy writing the card saying that they’re out.
My wife has been at home (mostly) for more than half a year now, caring for a bump and then caring for the baby that it turned into. More than enough time, you would have thought, for the postie to begin to realise that there was a car with a baby seat parked out the front of our house for a reason, and save us the effort of going to collect parcels someone has paid to have delivered to the door.
But, these are hard times, and posties are stretched to do more with less time just like the rest of us. I think what annoys me most is that the existing card that the Royal Mail provide doesn’t cover the actual eventualities faced by it’s post-people, thus forcing them to effectively tell big fat porkies.
We got another “while you were out card” this morning, despite Jane being there all day. Perhaps it should have looked more like this:
Freak Weather Conditions Bring Internet to a Standstill
Posted by Simon in Mere Fakery on December 18th, 2009
The UK Internet was brought to a standstill last night by a heavy snowfall.
A spokesman for the Internet said “we have contigency plans for these situations, and our web gritters were out in force on all the major internet trunk routes, but when you have 5 million people tweeting that it’s snowing, all within the space of a few minutes, there’s very little we can do”.
Problems also spread to the most popular web destinations. The BBC email server is being dug out from under a huge drift of snow pictures and videos being sent in by members of the public with nothing better to do. The major cables in and out of London were blocked, and several TCP-IP packets were forced to sleep in their cars overnight.
Police were advising people to stay off the internet apart from essential surfing. The Chief Constable of the Internet Police said “you have to ask yourself: is posting your opinion about whether we’re going to have a white Christmas or not on ‘Have Your Say’ worth the danger to yourself and your family?”
Has your internet connection been affected by the snow? Send your telegrams, etchings and watercolours to “Brr It’s Chilly Isn’t It”, Mere Bagatelle House, Norfolk, NR1 FFS.
A post positively dripping with xmas spirit
You know those “bear factory” shops you get in malls? In this age of sensitivity to green issues, I think there should also be “bear recyling centres”.
Someone with a bear that’s reached the end of it’s useful life, or maybe just someone with a naughty child who doesn’t deserve a bear, could take it along and watch it being carefully rendered back into it’s constituent parts.
“Look Johnny, this is the machine where they remove Mr. Fluffles ears!”
I’m certain it would be popular, especially just after Christmas.