'MERRY CHRISTMAS! And An Update On 'Operation Spread Christmas Spirit'

Here we are again folks! As Noddy Holder would scream ...It's Christmasssssssss!!! HA HA HA

Well, it may not be the dream Christmas Day outside (grey, wet, miserable) and there may not be a hint of a snow flake but last night I had a rollicking lot of fun delivering 46 'Santa cards' and two 'Secret Santa' prezzie drops!

Oh yes! I was out for a good couple of hours under the cover of darkness 'delivering' cards to the houses of people I've never met. Why? Well, when people go out of their way to put on a lovely, festive light display or put a beautiful and welcoming looking Christmas Tree in their living room window I think its nice when someone also makes the effort to let them know that they have seen and ENJOYED their efforts! It really does make my Christmas special when I walk along the streets and see all of the funny displays, 'Santa stop here' signs and homes 'glowing' with festivity each year. I can often imagine the wonderful family get-togethers and meals that will ensue and almost get a charge to my 'human battery' when I think of how so many people are going to be happy in that environment over the next few days.

I know that not all 'get-togethers' or parties are happy ones and not all families get along well over the festive period but when, like me, you do not have a family of your own, do not own your own house, do not have a job or a proper place in society it is heart warming to see that at least in this world there ARE some who HAVE managed to achieve those things. I may be a lot of things (and I am certainly an awkward git) but I have never 'done jealousy' preferring instead to choose to be HAPPY for that person or persons. Things are never always what they seem, however, and those I look at who appear to have everything often do not or are unhappy. Well, I like to make sure that my actions at least put a smile on faces at this time of the year and 'creeping about at night trying to deliver cards allegedly from Santa himself' is my way of doing that!

I tell you what was SUCH fun the other night. Oh my GOODNESS! Today's letterboxes are C_R_A_P! (HA HA) How a lovely house worth zillions and zillions can have all the best mod cons and a swanky driveway and then have a really AWFUL letterbox is beyond me! Most of the letter boxes I discovered last night were REALLY hard to get letters through! No wonder most of people's mail arrives bent or damaged - you try being a Postman and see how you get on! (HA HA)

Then of course there are the other 'hazards' like being torn to shreds by Dogs or putting the letter through the box using your hand and not being able to free your hand again! When you are DESPERATELY trying to deliver to a house without making a sound or attracting any attention its NOT GOOD when the pesky security light comes on, followed by a dog biting your hand as you try to put the card in a SQUEAKY and ULTRA STIFF letterbox! By the time you as 'Santa' have managed to deliver your message of good will the Police are on the way and there is a searchlight and the sound of a S.W.A.T. team jumping out of a van ringing in your ears! Trying to tell the secret services that there is only a 'box of fruit jellies' in the box while you are flat on the ground with your hands behind your back is REALLY not in the festive spirit!!!

It was FUN though last night 'sculking about' in the shadows of people's homes! I felt like a right villain even though all I was trying to do was 'deliver a smile and some happiness'. At one house I was just about to sneak up the drive when I saw a man get out of the car parked in it!!! EEKK!!!
I nearly did a 'Jim Carrey' and dived into the nearest hedge but AMAZINGLY he didn't see me! After he went into the house, I carefully slid open the door and got into the porch. I had a bottle of wine dressed up to look like a Christmas cracker and a card for him (I felt his house was the best effort of all) and so I carefully laid it at the foot of one of the decorations he had put outside his front door!
There was a notice telling me to smile as I was on CCTV but I just had to trust in the magical fairy dust of good will I had sprinkled that I would not get rumbled!! HA HA

Mind you, if there is such an offense as 'delivering more Christmas spirit than is allowed' or 'being nice without a license' I will be the happiest man in court in January!!

All in all I dropped 46 Santa cards on doormats ready for discovery this morning in peoples homes and left another home a box of fruit jellies and a card on their doorstep. I also had a LONNNNGGG chat with a friendly fellow by the name of Andy who just happened to be passing. We talked a lot about Christmas, God, Religion and faith and shared some interesting views and ideas. Was it fate that I should run into Andy (a Christian) doing 'Santa's work' on Christmas Eve? Well, I guess you could see it that way!!!

Have a LOVELY day today people and keep rockin'!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

'Jingle Bells!'

It has been a VERY odd year for me has 2015. I've seen a lot of changes, lost a few people from my life and have essentially 'ploughed my own furrow' as far as the world is concerned. The planet today is nothing like the world I used to know and while things were far from perfect before those who say we have 'come a long way' should ponder on just why it is then that the world is a FAR more violent, dangerous and unstable place now than it was in the 1970's ands 80's - with all its 'Cold Wars' and alleged 'ism's'...

It is precisely why I have felt 2015 to be a strange and 'raw' year that I decided to record something a bit out of the ordinary as my Christmas Youtube Video Single for this year. What about a PUNK version of 'Jingle Bells', I thought? I know! I could include a Dick Emery Vicar who gets his choirboys to shout 'OI! OI! OI! in the choruses and get the guitarist to suddenly burst into a drunken version of 'Rule Britannia' half way through...YES! What a good idea!!!

Well, in spite of having to talk my friend and LONG suffering Producer, Harvey Summers down from the top of high buildings TWICE that is EXACTLY what he and I recorded having enlisted the vocal help of another friend of mine (and unsung Punk Rock pioneer) Sue Butchers. Sue was in the band, 'Siren' in Sheffield back in the late 70's and they were one of the earliest all-girl punk groups. she then went on to front the popular gigging band, 'Debar' before appearing in Tenpole Tudor's video for 'The Hayrick Song' and getting arrested for wearing a Maggie Thatcher mask while filming a video for 'the Angelic Upstarts' in Brighton!

Now, Punk Rock is not very 'Christmassy' but I think a good old raucous knees up is just what the doctor ordered to see out a year which has LONG needed a good kick in the pants out the door!

So, without further ado, sit back and enjoy this festive fun-fest and let's all hope that 2016 is a hell of a lot kinder, nicer and more fun for all!!

P.S)

I would like to dedicate this video to the memory of DICK EMERY, whose fabulous Vicar character was the inspiration behind this idea...

'Merry Christmas!'

Well, todays the day! I hope you all have something fabulous lined up to make the day a memorable one. My Christmas is not going to be a spectacular event this year but at least I am not flooded out like a lot of poor souls and spending quality time with loved ones is never time wasted...

Funnily enough though I have been thinking about the years I spent Christmas on holiday the last day or two. Its always refreshing to travel and see a bit of the world but as my Christmas holiday to Kufstein in Austria proved, the grass (or snow in this case) is not always greener on the other side.

A department store in Kufstein. Typically for my luck they were closed while I was there!

I was going through a bit of a depression in 2007 and so decided that the best thing I could do was to book up a Christmas  break and head off to the land of snow and mountains. At that time I was in work at a music merchandise company called 'Masons Music Ltd' and the workload up until Christmas there was always incredible. Virtually every day would involve doing some overtime and the amount of phone calls we used to get was amazing. It was hard work and very tiring but my boss was a great bloke and was always very generous to us all at the end of it. He used to take us all out for a meal, give us extra wages AND let us take a present from the warehouse so putting in so much effort was never difficult just tiring.

Anyway, with all that work ahead of me I knew that I needed something to look forward to and so a holiday to 'Kufstein' in Austria in a 4 star hotel seemed ideal. Snow, snow, slopes, fairy lights, carols and MORE snow was I felt sure to be on the agenda and a 4 star hotel should be quite a swanky place to stay as well! To be pampered and to be forced to be jolly and make new friends seemed like the ideal remedy to my woes...

Snowless Kufstein - Nice lights though!

As ever, however, things did not quite go to plan! Sure, Austria had all the snow anyone could want but Kufstein itself was almost snow free. My idea of soft, crunchy, fluffy snow also went out of the window as an excursion to Kitzbuhel on Boxing Day proved when all I found there was a wet and quite dirty looking place where no where was open! Salzburg was lovely but it was just one day out of seven and the 4 days of traveling there and back on a coach almost killed me...

Worst of all though was my 4 star hotel. The 'luxury' I expected to find turned out so bad in fact that I made the following two videos to upload on Youtube when I got home...

Things did not start out well from the minute we arrived at the hotel. My name and the names of another couple were not on the guest list and because of that I think they and I ended up getting the 'spare rooms' usually designated for our drivers. The fact that neither of our drivers ended up staying at the hotel seems to back this up though they might not have chosen to do so  because they'd been there before!

A friend of mine always tells me that I become very funny whenever I get depressed. The upside of this story is that both of the videos above turned out to be huge hits on Youtube. Because of this I really got the bug for making films and as of now have over 240 on my Maybrick44 channel! I wouldn't want to put you off going to Austria for Christmas because it is a beautiful place but if you do go make sure you go for longer than 7 days if you are traveling by coach because for three days actually there the traveling spoils it. If you can, stay in Salzburg because it has a lot of winter charm and is full of festive atmosphere. Be VERY careful where you stay though and make sure you check out your hotel online BEFORE you book up.

I DID get my 'revenge' on the hotel staff though because I had packed a complete Father Christmas outfit into my case and came down Christmas Day dressed up in it. I went in to where they were holding the disco, took over the mic and made a few speeches/had a few jokes with the people I knew from my coach. NO ONE realised who the hell I was so it was quite hilarious really - the staff did not know whether to grab me and throw me out or not!!!

Me as Father Christmas in Kufstein, Austria 2007

This Christmas story does have a happy ending though. Aside from gaining a new interest in making films I got some great footage and pictures of Salzburg and the Von Trappe Mansion (The Sound Of Music?) which I subsequently used for the artwork of my 'In Words, In Music...Of Life, Of Death' poetry/music album. Some of the other footage I got on that holiday went into my videos for 'Its Christmas Time' and my latest festive song 'A Winters Tale' so all in all it wasn't a disaster just not the uplifting experience I hoped for at the time...

Merry Christmas! xxxx 

'The Magic Of Candlelight'

We suffered a power cut at home last night due to the weather. One minute I was browsing the Internet on my laptop in my bedroom - the next I was plunged into total darkness bar the light from my computer screen...

The power came on again but then went off once more and so I lit a candle, turned off my laptop and just sat back and soaked up the atmosphere. With the wind howling away outside and the draft from my slightly ajar bedroom window making the flame of my candle dance and cast creepy shadows everywhere I felt just as if I had been transported back in time to the days of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Was I too about to be visited by three ghosts? There was no use in hiding under the bedclothes like old Scrooge that was for sure! I got out my camera and took a few pictures of my candle burning bright in its brand new 'Wizzard' candle holder. I bought that during my visit to Seaford earlier this year as a present for someone else. As usual, however, in the end I bought them something different but (for once!) was quite happy that I did because I had wanted to keep it for myself all along!


'Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble' my little Wizzard looked just like the 70's television character 'Catweazle' with a hat on! I met the actor who played "Catweazle', Geoffrey Bayldon, earlier this year when I attended the 'Catweazle Fan Club' weekend get-together in East Horsley. The residue from the fallout of that weekend haunted me for some time actually as the fan club objected to a series of films I made of my time there for my Youtube channel. When I refused to take them off the net I was banned and thrown out of the club so my happiness at sharing in something dear to me and at meeting my hero was short-lived. Its a pity there isn't a ghost of 'hindsight' because we could all do with being visited by him or her regularly!

I can see now why people associate candlelight with relaxation. There is something natural, almost primeval about a flickering flame as opposed to modern lighting. I HATE the new bulbs anyway! They take an AGE to get bright, are full of Mercury and look ugly yet we are being forced to use them by the E.U. I won't start off about The E.U. and my hatred of it here as this is a Christmas blog  but lets just say that its very existence is one of the things that makes me such a retro loving person. Sure, 'the good old days' were never as good as we remember them but the modern day could certainly learn a lot from the past in my humble opinion.

One of my Christmas fantasies revolves around having the money to start up a business re-creating 'A Victorian Christmas'. How cool would it be to be able to go and stay in a HUGE mansion over Christmas bedecked in all of the traditional decorations! Not only that but I would BAN mobile phones, Laptops etc. 'Guests' would be picked up at an agreed location by hansom cab complete with black horses and driver and kitted out with Victorian costumes to wear during their time at the mansion on arrival. I would hire a combination of ordinary staff and actors to help re-create an authentic feel to things and entertainments would revolve around parlour games, masked balls and story telling. The cost of doing all this would of course be horrendous but if I won the lottery I'd gladly do it at least once just to have the experience of it myself!

Oh well, enough dreaming for one day. Have a cracking Christmas Eve - whatever the weather xx