I know it's fashionable nowadays to roll our eyes at the first mention of Chrimbo and start muttering about how commercial it all is, but I love Christmas. I love panto (I went on Monday and had a great time), I love singing carols, I love wrapping presents, getting cards, eating dinner with the family, watching It's a Wonderful Life for the 100th time, playing trivial pursuit, getting drunk on sherry and eating far too much, reading A Christmas Carol, listening to Jona Lewie and Slade - every last bit of it.

Having recently started trying to learn who's who in the avian world, the sheer variety of birds around is increasingly a source of soul-salving delight.

On a walk during my lunch hour yesterday I saw mallards and goosanders toddling around on the river, three herons (one of which was standing on a patch of grass by a play park being stared at by some excited schoolboys), a young cormorant drying its wings on a tree stump, and then the stroll was rounded off by a flock of long-tailed tits flitting around mere inches from me. If I'd had the time I could have wandered over to the duck pond in the certainty of being approached by the resident moorhens.

The gift that keeps on giving. He is a tremendously funny man, and always makes me happy. Try not to laugh during the "Stick Breaking Giant" gag on Part Troll.

Nothing like coming down to a flooded kitchen floor at ten to 7 in the morning to get the day off to a bad start. A blocked drain which necessitated prising open a stuck drain cover, poking around with a long metal stick, fishing out slimy “deposits”, flushing caustic soda through the sytem and all that palaver. A grisly task? Well, yes. But not if you prepare by firing up the pod and selecting Ken Nordine’s Colors album to accompany proceedings. By 8 it was all sorted and I was, under the circumstances, in a strangely serene mood.

Here’s Track 21, “Black”. (And it’s just occured to me that Charlie Higson must have been listening to this when he created that painter character in the Fast Show.)

p.s. agree with all the pro-Christmas sentiments. As Half Man Half Biscuit so rightly maintain: “It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas”.

so cheese on toast, homemade soup and crumble, a nice chicken, a tasty stew, a spot of baking, fresh espresso.....
or
I am meeting some friends for christmas drinks tonight which will be good.
my ink cartridge lasted long enough to print all the christmas cards last night hurrah!

after six years in a one-bed flat with my piles of records and my wife's piles of books threatening to bury us. I still can't quite believe how much space I have now. I have a STUDY!! This in itself is wonderful.

Also: the new Neal Stephenson book 'Anathem', Ernest Ranglin, Adem's 'Takes', and using having a cold as an excuse for fry-ups are all making me feel good this week.

Just look around you

xmas day, the kind we don't get very often anymore thanks to global warming or whatever it's called. It was cold but sunny with a bright blue sky, started off with a wonderful pub lunch in a real English pub (none of this poncy gastro lark) sitting next to a log fire and the best pint of Rebellion ale I've had in ages.

Then walking it all off on the banks of the River Thames and seeing the sunset followed by an eerie mist with ghostly boats suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

A magical day!

leaving me open to stalkers, serial killers and psychopaths lurking amongst the Word Massive who might object to me slagging off Elbow!

It's the Marlow Brewery in Buckinghamshire http://www.rebellionbeer.co.uk/

this thread was about nice things!

Another one...last night and an evening footie game under floodlights - there's nothing quite like it. Best bit is just as you've finished your pint - or bovril on a night like yesterday's - and you take those first steps up and out into the stadium to take your seat.
The beautiful green of a perfectly manicured football pitch under floodlights - before 22 clod-hopping nutters have kicked the divots out of it - is such a marvellous sight!

Robert J Lang’s Blue Crab is piece of origami that I have never managed to finish. There’s a point in the folding sequence where I find myself reaching for a pair of flaps that aren’t there. I know that at some stage I was supposed to make them. I’m just not sure when.

I don’t care if I never complete the model. The early folds have given me more pleasure and insight than a paper model of a crab ever could. The process is an end in itself; one part in particular:

By step 27 there are several layers of paper concertinaed on top of each other. In a single fluid movement you push down on part of the top flap, sinking it into the model. At this point a small hinge forms which bends the flap slightly, allowing you to wrap a single layer of paper around it. This causes the whole assembly to invert itself.

The design is clever and complex. The execution is beautiful and graceful. As you fold, it confers these qualities onto you. It feels like you’re moving in harmony with the universe, carried along almost effortlessly towards the same singular purpose.

Whenever I find myself out of alignment with the world and it seems like I’m experiencing events a few seconds behind everyone else, this innocuous piece of paper engineering makes me feel like I’m on the right track after all. It’s so intricate, perfect and unforced. How could it be wrong?

over the Palace and West Piers in Brighton - up to 40,000 birds putting on an aerial acrobatic display just before sunset.

Discovering lots of new (to me) music at 8tracks.com same at NPR's all songs considered radio show. Both very eclectic.

Beautiful

No,not me.
A pint of the spicy stuff - from The Somerset Cider bus (with an added nip of apple brandy) - as served at the wonderful End of The Road Festival.

The smell the colours

I mean real Fresh Air try going to The North Of Scotland and fill your lungs

Stars look up in the sky in wonder if you can see through the smog and street lights.

The beauty of the moon and the planets,solar system universe where will it all end ?

Although I can't afford it

Lovely!
(Show off - ed.)

yum

I'm often seen beaming uncontrollably at gigs. Highlights this year were seeing Sparks perform "Over The Summer" for the first time (I think I indulged in a lot of inane grinning at those Sparks gigs!), and seeing Ingrid Michaelson at the Water Rats in London. Last time I saw Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby way back in October I realised what a priviledge it was to see the great man singing "Whole Wide World" (yet again).

specifically, Felines. Or to be exact, a particularly friendly, talkative black cat which lives at a house located on my weekday morning walk to the tube. I have found that if one stops and applies the required stroking/fussing type attention to said cat, whilst replying to all conversation in hopefully convincing cat vocalese, this encourages the development of regular early-morning human/feline social interaction. This morning, Black Cat had a particularly vital message to convey, with much direct eye contact and urgent MIAOW!!!!ing. Was it "The aliens are coming!! The aliens are coming!!" ... perhaps.... or maybe just "Ha, fooled you again. Now feed me". Made me snicker anyway.

... smiling.

Woke up to snow! Not enough for a snowman but gorgeous, with the sun just rising. Made getting up at unreasonable hours a bit more bearable.

As I've just spent the last week programming a 2 hour Christmas Day radio special, and an hour long Christmas Blues show, I should be all Christmassed out.

But it actually encouraged me to think nice thoughts, especially as there is a great deal of splendid Christmas music around, none of which you hear on the radio or on the telly.

I know I'm not allowed to tell you what internet radio station will be broadcasting all my finery, but there really is some great music out there.

As well as some hefty doses of r'n'b, there are sleazy rock numbers like 'Naughty Naughty Xmas' by Danger Danger and the best version of 'Jingle Bell Rock' ever by Tuff. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra and, of course, the second most famous Christmas baby, Lemmy, and his Billy Gibbons enhanced version of 'Run Rudolph Run'.

Quality.

I recommend listening to Danny Baker on the radio at any time, but as Christmas approaches his child-like glee, as well as his off-beat Christmas records collection, is extra infectious.
For someone like me, who needs to be artificially dosed up with Christmas spirit, it works a treat.
(BBC London, or Sky channel 152, 3-5pm weekdays)

Generally. Usually a radio programme containing DB is a sign of a show that will be witty, interesting and doesn't treat the audience like bags of mechanically recovered meat with ears.

His show with Zoe Ball on Radio 2 over the last couple of weeks has been great. Can we keep yer man and Zoe Ball on after the end of their short run instead of letting the increasingly irritating and narcissistic Jonathan Roas and his BELM sidekick back on? And his taste in music's better (JR's isn't awful but I think DB wins out). It's too much to hope for probably, but everyone has to have a wish.

must be time for the nicest part of the week, yep, the new Word Podcast!

In fact the whole of bloody nature while were at it

Think of your own

...crisp, sunny afternoon - could see the Isle of Wight and Brighton from the same spot, two men in their 40's talking nonsense, two damp labradors, 2 hours walking, then 2 pints in the pub.

It´s snowing outside my window right now, it´s falling slowly as it does some times, and it is indeed a silent night. It looks like the opening scene in It´s A Wonderful Life and is truly beautiful. I feel peaceful and the day has been calm. Kind of like Out On The Weekend by Neil Young. Tomorrow I will meet up with a friend for some tea and a chat and on Saturday I go back to work and don´t have another day of until the 24:th.

So love and mercy to you and your friends tonight.

also great song by ELO

We were out on the water checking navigation makers. We stopped in the middle of nowhere so the skipper and I could have a smoke.

No sooner had the engines stopped when we were surrounded by dolphins. There must have been twenty of them circling us, bobbing up and down, arcing through the water. They did a few laps and then swam off. It was magical, you can't plan for things like that.

Today is one of our rare cake days at work. The headmaster buys cream cakes from Waitrose for the staff. It's a simple thing, but I love it. 35 minutes to go until breaktime!

My partners big black cat propping itself up against me like a little old person in the sofa and watching The Wire together with me all last week through the day during an enforced early xmas holiday - cup of tea, quiet street, no-one in the house and the fire on, happy days!

Hearing blackbirds make their "pinking" sound in the garden at dusk. Hearing their song for the first time in the Spring.

The smell of orange blossom, jasmine, roses, freshly cut lemons

On a Christmas theme, being moved by carols from Kings on Christmas Eve, despite having no religious beliefs whatsoever.

With something atmospheric on the car stereo, knowing that (hopefully) everyone at home is tucked up in bed. As Phil Daniels would say, gives me an enormous sense of well-being.

I like talking to people in shops and queues, and am always delighted that they chat back. I was in the butcher's yesterday and a woman dropped several £20 notes, and 3 people lunged forward and handed them back. The place was transformed with chatter and laughs. (Thanks btw to the kind teenage girl who called me back to the cashpoint at Harrogate station where I had left £50 sticking out....)

Agree with the red kite comments - they are spectacular.

If you are down, try a big bunch of white lillies, the scent will whack you in the face every time you walk in to the room, mmmm lovely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_District

A bottle of Vega Sicilia
Limoncello
Japanese Beer
Fine old port
15 year old Laphroaig
A pint of Guinness on a rainy day
Vinho Verde

Are back on TV this Christmas with a brand new adventure. And some new editions of TOTP2 are promised.

its great for kids and adults alike. A really good 'happy' film for this time of year is Grumpy Old Men with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau plus Sophie Loren looking as sexy as hell in her dotage. Lovely feel good film. Christmas this year has also been enhanced by seeing a pair of buzzards nesting in the woods at the back of the house.

Apologies if you think I'm being crass, I'm not really. It's just that at the moment I'm dashing about a bit for work spending short bursts of time away.

It's always a joy to come home to my wife and daughter of course but the best bit is relaxing, at length, in my own bathroom using my very own 'facilities'.

My friends, as you get older, you will realise that by far and away the finest things any man could wish for are his own bed and his own bog.

Moving on from such fragrant statements I do like a lot of things I would happily refer to as nice;

Cold, frosty mornings
A strong coffee and a not too flaky croissant
My daughter's voice on the phone asking me when I'm coming home (oh god, that's a bit much isn't it?)
Any Frasier box set on a day off
Cotes du Rhone
Guinness
My Lasagne (last one I made anyway)

Plus a thousand other things too.

I thought I read Andy Frasers Box set - didnt know he had one and then I re-read it. Oh well.

Keep off the brown Jelly Tots.