'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

It's been too long since I was last in Brighton - probably last time I was here was for Christmas shopping last year. Unusually it's actually sunny! Most years it's been very wet and windy, but today it was merely windy (and less so than past years).

Really I'm here for Christmas shopping (the Lanes and the North Laines are usually excellent for unusual gifts), but I can't visit Brighton without heading to the beach. Oh, I live on the coast these days, but Brighton beach is different (for starters, Fareham doesn't have a beach!).


( Photos! )


I didn't stay for Burning the Clocks - it was starting to rain, and I didn't fancy hanging around in the cold and wet waiting for it. Perhaps another year!

(cross-posted from boggyb)

Yes, it's now December and international posting deadlines are fast approaching... so who'd like a Christmas Card all the way from Blighty (brexit and rain not included)?

If you'd like a card then comment with your address (comments are screened) or email it to cardplz@thomasmccorkell.me.uk.

PS: omgimsuchadork, crazyscot and rustica, you're already on the Christmas card list!

Merry Christmas!

I got given a frankly silly number of constructions kits this year - even more than in 2016 (and I never did get round to building all of those) - so here's kit number 1. Can you guess what it is?

For several years now I've tended to head to Brighton for my Christmas shopping - the Lanes and North Laines are full of so many quirky shops that are excellent for silly presents - and this year was no exception. For a change I drove down (to avoid having to rely on Southern Rail, or Southern Fail as they are known as these days), and it was actually a fairly straightforward drive. I even managed to park in Churchill Square with no problems.

I ended up meeting talismancer in town for lunch, followed by investigating various random shops in search of presents before he had to head off elsewhere. It's interesting to see all the changes in the shops - some old favourites are still there and have even expanded (Daydream Nation has moved from being well-hidden at the top of a clothing store to less well-hidden and taking over half the shop), some have evaporated (there used to be a good model shop near Churchill Square), and others are ticking over quite nicely (Dave's Comics and Dave's Books are exactly where they were in my university days). Anyway, I found a few presents for different people, and even one for myself - a small painting/print of West Pier caught my eye in a art shop that I've walked past several times, so I entered to discover a veritable Aladdin's Cave of random artwork. I swear extradimensional space is involved.

After shopping I trundled across to Sussex Uni for my traditional annual SWARM visit, where I hardly recognised anyone. It does look like less and less of the old SWARMites are turning up, though there's a few people I did remember from other visits and I ended up playing a couple of games (though not Magic, oddly enough). First up was Race for the Galaxy which I was managing a reasonable showing at until Kat stormed ahead to victory, followed by a new one for me: Machi Koro. This is an interesting construction game where actions can happen on anyone's turn - each player takes it in turn to be the active player and roll some dice, but depending on the resulting number and what other players have built it could be their opponents that benefit. Kat after a slow build once again stormed to victory (I'm beginning to spot a theme here...), but I'm happy as at least one long-shot strategy of mine paid off (a Tech Center with a ludicrous amount of tokens stashed on it, which I activated once and got nearly 30 coins out of).

Pasta night was replaced with Christmas night yesterday - it was the only Monday before Christmas that we were all around on! I say Christmas night, but the theme was actually cheese night with a collection of finger foods, two cheese fondue things, and a Christmas tree shaped cheese and Marmite straw tear'n'share thing. Om nom nom...

We also had a white elephant gift exchange. Our rules were that each gift could be stolen three times - on the third steal it became locked and the lucky winner got to keep it. We had an interesting collection, including a couple of kids games (they were very popular), a glow-in-the-dark moustache, a tin of baked beans (blame Beth for that), a literal white elephant plushie (elemnar's contribution) and I failed to hold onto a chocolate duck and instead "won" a copy of Damon Hill's autobiography.

And since it's advent, myself and elemnar have also started on each other's advent calendar. I can now reveal that hers consists at least partially of interesting teas from Arundel's Tea and Biscuit Club and Portsmouth's All About Tea. Mine also contains teas, at least one chocolate coin, and a bizarre plastic half-a-snowball with wheels and a surprised face. So far I've enjoyed:

English Breakfast tea
Turkish Apple tea (puts me in mind of Graze's toffee apple snack)
Smoky Lapsang tea
Strawberry and Cranberry infusion
Garden mint infusion

I wonder what tomorrow's pocket contains?

And now for something completely different!

Yesterday's housegroup was rather creative for a change. See, there's a Catholic tradition that on Epiphany, Catholics bless their house by chalking "20 C ✞ M ✞ B 17" above the front door. The "C M B" in the blessing stands for two things: it's short for Christus Mansionem Benedicat, which is Latin for "may Christ bless this house". It's also the initials of the three wise men or magi from the Nativity: Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. And the "20 17" is whatever the current year is.

So in housegroup, rather than chalking our doors we created our own banners to stick up just inside our front doors. Here's mine...



Speaking of Christmas, the mystery advent calendar went up to Christmas Day but as I was away I didn't get to open that until the other day. The contents: Great British Tea and a chocolate coin!

The plan is now that Christmas is over, elemnar and I will restock the calendars over the coming year with Mystery Items and swap them in time for December 2017. Mysterious!

With less than a fortnight until Christmas (crikey!), I dug out the tree and set about decorating it:

( Christmas decorations! )

Because elemnar asked nicely for it, here's my Christmas tree!

( Christmas tree )

At last night's Thanksgiving several people handed round Christmas cards, which reminded me that I'd better do this soon if I'm to make the last international posting dates. So...

Who would like a Christmas/Yuletide/New Year/excuse-to-eat-chocolate card all the way from England?

If you'd like a card, then comment with your address on this post (comments are screened) or email it to gimmegimmegimme@thomasmccorkell.me.uk (cold and damp British weather hopefully not included).

What happens when I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue meets A Christmas Carol: I'm Sorry I Haven't A Christmas Carol.