Fucking Friday Fnnrgghh Frrooaaar!
FUCKING COURIER FUCKING COMPANIES! The Meursault album is currently in FUCKING DUMFRIES, whence I have had to despatch a courier to collect the bastard things and drive back here immediately. This means that assuming all goes well, which of course it always does when matters are urgent like this, I might just have them in my sweaty little mitts by half five. Maybe.
Anyway, to soothe my fevered brow, apart from a pint of neat gin with a little tiny squeeze of lime, I probably need some music. Some quiet music too – something calming. Breathe in… …and out… …and drink… …and drink… and breathe in… …and out.
Well, whatever happens, things tonight should be tremendous fun. I’ll be shit-faced by ten, presumably, but all in all I think it should be a brilliant night. So to warm up for the evening we shall have our now-traditional Five Friday Favourites, as pinched from GUT. De-lurk and take part, people, nothing you say has to be clever or witty or anything, just slap down your answers and watch us bicker amongst ourselves. And the offer is always there to write next Friday’s five if you want to – just bung me an email with your choices and I’ll use them.
1. Favourite Christmas Tradition.
2. Worst Christmas present some distant relative insists on giving you every fucking Christmas.
3. If it’s not turkey, then what?
4. Work’s Christmas night out: the best bit.
5. Work’s Christmas night out: the worst bit.
Ella Fitzgerald – I Get a Kick Out of You (Cinematic Orchestra Remix)
Howe Gelb – Nail in the Sky
(The Real) Tuesday Weld – Nightingales
Morning Bride – Isabelline
Ndidi Onukwulu – Goodnight JF
1. Has to be all the eating. Oh and Star Wars.
2. My Dad’s brother and his wife have a long-standing habit of giving biblically awful presents at all occasions. They’re really nice people too, which makes it even harder, because they clearly put lots of thought and expense into it – some Canadian art for around the house, some lovingly crafted ornamental sculpture, home-made toys. I just pray they don’t bother with this internet bollocks or I’m dead!
3. Goose for us this year I think. Although we had duck a couple of years back and that was amazing.
4. Having an excuse for smacking the used car salesman upstairs in the mush.
5. The alcohol goes down so incredibly fast you can be flat on your back by 8pm if you’re not careful.
Now to phone that courier company.
1. playing board games with my whole family whilst picking at loads of food at the same time as maintaining that I couldn’t possibly eat another thing.
2. PJ’s, usually with some disney character on them. Thanks Auntie Ann
3. It is turkey
4.That bit between wondering why you have to spend a night with people you see 40hrs a week (and don’t really have anything in common with) and being sick on yourself, the fun bit.
5. Monday morning when everyone wants to discuss you being sick over and over and over and over…
1. The eating and the drinking. It’s my birthday in between xmas and new year, so it normally descends into a week long frenzy of booze and food.
2. I always get underwear. Though since I never ever buy underwear, that’s actually pretty good. Also, my Granny always buys me a Northern Ireland calendar. But actually, that’s quite useful too. Fuck it – I love Christmas.
3. Nut Roast.
You heard me.
4. Finishing work early.
5. Having the three month build up, then the fucking endless discussions about who did what with who. It’s like the only night in the year these people go out.
(See you all later.)
1. When I was younger it was all crashing around to one friend’s house on Christmas night to start drinking all over again and play games for hours.
2. My grandmother continues to do a good line in a ‘to my grandson’ cards with pictures of footballers or trains on them, despite my being 40 now.
3. Last year it was a big beef rib joint, year before that I was at my mums and cooked a leg of pork, sometimes chickens (this year I think), never turkey.
4. We’ve established a breakaway works’ christmas night out group after what used to be a brilliant do in school was exported out to a terrible all you can eat chinese place, so it’s all good now, brilliant little pub, lovely beer, nice food, small scale secret santa.
5. It used to be getting home after seriously overdoing it, being horribly ill whilst on a packed train (sorry, if you were there) being horribly ill on the station. Getting home and then going out carrol singing far too loud and very off key (sorry, again).
1. Getting up at the crack of dawn to open presents with the wife (heretofore to be called M.Chutney – she’s aiming at respectability, hahahah!) and then crawling back to bed for xmas snuggling.
2. Sis always gives me books on things she wants me to knit her. Subtly is not a family trait :-p
3. This year we’ll be in Munchen and eating venison with dumplings, mmmm
4. Mistletoe
5. Mistletoe
And I’ll have you know I got up early today just to do this Friday Five on time! Thanks very much. Ha.
1. Bucksfizz before breakfast, the drink definitely not the band
2. A ‘Lynx deodorant giftset’. I can understand though, as who doesn’t want to smell like a desperate 14 year old?
3. Good old steak, none of this turkey and whatever, don’t mind the stuffing though (the sage and onion variety not the boy on boy love way)
4. Watching the boss get druunk
5. The point where your beersodden brain starts to think ‘maybe she isn’t all that ugly’…..
1. leaving a glass of milk and a mince pie out for Santa
2. every year i get nothing off my brother…..it’s getting a bit fucking tedious!!
3. a nice little roast partridge
4. I’ll tell you after the xmas party next week
5. Depends if Riccardo gets his dog-knob out or not
1. Getting up at a ridiculously early hour like i did as a little boy.
2. Crap tops from Burtons – which i never wear.
3. armadillo
4. 11am cocktails
5. the hangover the next morning.
Happy Meursault album launch tonight Toad. If I was in Edinburgh, I’d be there…
Anyway, to the task in hand:
1. Locking myself into my house with a vast stash of quality food and drink
2. Now I’m over 30, my mum has stopped buying me underwear, so not sure. Thankfully my aunts have stopped buying me presents altogether. Their last one was on my 21st birthday and was a trouser press. Number of times I’ve used it… well…
3. Goose, lamb, beef, even pork. Anything but bloody turkey. I’d rather roast a decent chicken
4.Watching senior colleagues embarrassing themselves, then bringing it up at a later appropriate point
5. Ending up talking to someone with whom you can’t talk about anything else other than work. Alcohol can help with this.
1. Favourite Christmas Tradition.
It’s got to be the monkey-juggling.
2. Worst Christmas present some distant relative insists on giving you every fucking Christmas.
Herpes.
3. If it’s not turkey, then what?
Bacon.
4. Work’s Christmas night out: the best bit.
All the sex.
5. Work’s Christmas night out: the worst bit.
All the satanic stuff really makes me uncomfortable sometimes.
1. my family’s tradition of trying to out-ridiculous each other with gifts. over the years, i have received a small purple wind-up hopping fluffy chicken, a bright green plastic knobbly ball, on a spring, with a handle (which my aunt refused to explain) and a cow-mermaid doorstop.
2. one year i seemed to get nothing but beach-towels. also my nanna always sellotapes twenty dollars into a tacky christmas card and then posts it, which is ace, except when you live in scotland (where they scorn your wash-proof money).
3. its always barbequed salmon, loads of prawns and a lobster or two.
4. as a rule, the best bit of any work christmas night out is getting struck by lightening on the way to work, then falling down a well, being eaten alive by ants, sticking a spoon in your own eye and sadly not being able to attend.
having said that, the best work christmas thing i’ve ever been on was lunch at a lawn bowls club, we all got pished and went bowling, much to the entertainment/horror of the club members (i think we fucked up their beautiful green with our non-regulation shoes).
5. the worst bit is when there are no electrical storms, wells, ants or spoons.
Jesus, what time do you have to start to be on your back pished by 8pm?!
Is that as in Madame Chutney?
At my mum’s it’s often the other way around.
Yes you do.
I’d rather roast a scabby geriatric donkey than a turkey. Fucking horrible stuff.
Haha! Briliant story.. Although I think it may have been the non-regulation pissedness as much as the shoes, Nic!
Okay, my turn or Euan will tell me off.
1. New Year’s Eve parties.
2. We’ve never really done Christmas with extended family so I don’t have an answer for this one. How dull. Sorry!
3. Goose or Beef for me, thanks.
4. The last works’ do I went in Wales was probably a good one, it was in City Hall. They put about six bottles of wine on each table to start with, and kept continually bringing a fresh bottle to replace each one you finished. I clearly remember placing my knife and fork together on the plate when I finished the main course. Next thing I woke up in the Cardiff Travelodge around mid-day the next day.
5. The photos.
1. Having a comic book of some description
2. I’ve been lucky on this front…though I had relatives abroad who for many years sent fucking awful clothes
3. Nut Roast, but with all the trimmings that I would have otherwise. Even sprouts!
4. This is the first year I’ve been at this school, so no idea…the fact that it’s a lunch not an evening do…
5. When people ask me why I’m a vegetarian. Being sat next to someone and struggling to find anything at all to talk about. Or the people who insist on talking shop…
1. Watching Carols by Candlelight on Christmas Eve with my mum and sisters and mounting ruthless personal attacks on each and every performer, especially the women, as it makes us feel better about ourselves.
2. She’s not a distant relative, but my grandma always buys really dodgy presents from the cheap variety shop and then wraps them and makes it into a lucky dip kinda thing. So far my favourite gift has been the dog shampoo. Or maybe the keyring with the name of some random on it. Or the really attractive angel tree decoration that looks like it’s constipated.
3. It’s definitely not turkey, it’s ham on the bone. And roast lamb. And sausages. And potato salad. And coleslaw. And pavlova. And lemon meringue pie. And chocolate ripple cake. And…
4. I’m leaving my current workplace at the end of the year so hopefully the best bit will be the giant present they buy me to thank me for all my selfless hard work this past year. A little slice of eternal gratitude wouldn’t go astray either.
5. My colleagues not coming through on the whole eternal gratitude bit.
I’m officially inviting myself to Agnes’ for Christmas dessert!
And Dylan, it’s Mango Chutney … as in her favorite euphemism for shagging. She’ll never be cured of her lascivious nature, only tempered by fear of being exposed at work!
What is nut roast? Never heard of the thing.
1. Eating at Jerry’s Deli with all the Jews. That, and watching A Christmas Story on cable one and a half times during the annual 24-hour marathon.
2. An American Express gift/money card (I know, not terrible, but the point is I consistently get this from the relative I haven’t seen in years and only exchange holiday cards with). On the other hand, I used to have a grandma give me anything from a Homer Simpson Chia Pet to a porcelain carousel to toothpaste.
3. Once had an Italian style dinner with homemade pasta and cassata, but typically it’s a deli sandwich while surrounded by Jews.
4. Not paying for my overpriced happy hour appetizers.
5. Pretending I like my secret santa gift, and then struggling to make office chit chat for two hours.
1. Favourite Christmas Tradition.
Tripping over my dad pissed up and passed out at the top of the stairs after his office night out. Fist fighting with relatives after too much drink and bragging (It’s an Irish thing)
2. Worst Christmas present some distant relative insists on giving you every fucking Christmas.
A fist to the face
3. If it’s not turkey, then what?
Buckled over the bog/sink? Thats what my dad usually does once he awakes from his stair top slumber
4. Work’s Christmas night out: the best bit
Best bit was pushing an annoying work colleague through george square in a shopping trolley, letting go to see what would happen and watching him career into a lampost
5. Work’s Christmas night out: the worst bit
When he came round
Can we call her Madame Chutney anyway? I like the sound of that!
Consider yourself doubly invited Tart!
i’m much too late to respond to this but i should be working, so, without further ado…
1. oh god, i just love chrismus. i can’t even get sarcastic about it. i love all of it.
2. When i was a kid distant relatives were always sending me girly-girly stuff. I’m no butch, by any means, (not that i don’t love a nice sexy butch, rrrrr!) but I was no hollie-hobbie either, and when I got little starter-makeup kits and such, i felt both invisible and socially unacceptable. i was vastly relieved when i hit some magic age and it all stopped.
3. ham usually. sometimes duck.
4. seeing everyone get drunk.
5. seeing everyone get drunk.
is it totally obvious that i had nothing to say except for #2?
and you can call me whatever you like as long as you don’t ‘out’ me to the…. yeah. to certain key people who could get me fired from work.
not ‘out’ me as a rug-muncher, everyone knows i’m married to a girl – but ‘out’ me as a total sick n twisted perve.
which i’m not, of course, now that my name is m.chutney instead of meatpocket. i’ve reformed. honest.
xoxo
M. Chutney. So much more refined.
If you added a couple more ‘M’s, you could have “Mmmm… Chutney”, which I should think Euan would appreciate.
oh Dylan, you’re horrible! …. but I must add, Mmmm Chutney was rather good this morning,