Category Archives: Weekly Posts

Dear World… 

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I’ve wanted to say this for a while now.

I’m not meaning to jump on any sort of bandwagon (especially since my post concerns more than what’s happening YouTube),  but considering the conversation is buzzing in in web now seems like a better time than any to give my two pence on the issues we’re facing in society today. And by issues  I mean the racism,  the accusations and the general disrespect and discrimination of other’s opinions.

Now, I know the voice of one person on a fairly young blog with a small readership won’t make much of a dent on society’s way of thinking, but it’s good to get the conversation out there in these turbulent times if we’re going to have any chance of resolving it.

Respect is something that every human being is capable of producing and if you want it, you should give it.

Opinions are something else everyone has the right to posses and you don’t have to agree with everybody’s opinion. But you should respect it. Whilst it can be argued that facts are formed from an agreed set of opinions at the time of definition, the terminology isn’t reversible. Opinions are not fact, so (in my opinion) you should never force them down each others throats as if they were.

It seems surrounding (but not accusing them directly) the recent world events of the conflict in the east, to Brexit in the UK and the inauguration of President Trump’s Administration it seems these basic rules have been forgotten and the concept of “labels” has turned from adjectives to describe the interests and personality of people to nouns to define a class of people on the basis of their beliefs and opinions.

This is wrong.

Just because somebody has a particular opinion or happens to have a little more melanin in their skin, doesn’t mean they can be associated with a stereotype. Just because someone has black skin doesn’t make them a gang member, nor does a women wearing a burqa mean she belongs to a family of terrorists. When you have no solid evidence on your personal claim, it sounds pretty obvious right? So does that make it OK to call a Brexiter or Rupublican a racist? Or a guy that happens to wear Burberry, but whom is just stood in the street a chav? or perhaps a videographer makes a poor choice of subject matter to mock a particular issue an anti-semite?

Of course it doesn’t!

We are all human beings at the end of the day. We might come from different backgrounds and sometimes we make mistakes in hurting each other through ignorance, poor judgement or misunderstanding, but that doesn’t mean we can be put into a box and assume that our entire personality aligns to that one belief.

If you have read any Dystopian fiction in your time or even high fantasy, you should already well know that these labels don’t last and the people who follow the association are often made to look like fools. Just because Slytherins were described as “cunning folk [that] use any means, To achieve their ends”, doesn’t mean everyone in that house in Harry Potter were automatically evil. As Harry explains to his son Albus in the film adaption of the Deathly Hallows, “You were named after two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was the bravest man I’d ever known.” If you’ve not read the story yet, I won’t spoil it for you by explaining, but if you have – you know. Other popular stories long prior and following this have tried to show the same message such as Katniss Everdeen of the poor District 12 in the Hunger Games, Tris in Divergent trilogy whom transformed from her Abnegation beginnings or even the actions of History Wiping Winston of Minitrue in Nighteen Eighty Four.

There’s nothing wrong with people being a little different to yourself. So somebody you meet is a vegetarian and you’re a meat loving omnivore. That doesn’t mean you two can’t be friends, just respect each other’s boundries and values and don’t try to convert each other to your side. I myself am a Linux user on computers after changing to it from a couple of years ago. That doesn’t mean I think any less of Windows users (considering I still use it 5 days a week at work). I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s interfaces on iPhones, iPads and macOS and yes I have a bit of friendly banter and joke with the 5 people in the office that use a Mac in one way or another and most of them being iPhone users too or possessing an iPad, but we never ridicule each other for our choices, nor do we seek to prevent each other from having these experiences in our lives. So why is it okay for others to do that on a larger scale in politics?

Why is it okay to stop people coming into our country? For women to discriminate men for things and say it’s not sexist because they were like that in the past? To attack people because they don’t follow the same lifestyle nor pray everyday to the same god you do? Because it’s not.

It still makes me wonder with many people living off and referencing fiction, even in the digital age through watching TV or on demand services like Now TV or Netflix how people were happy to apply some of the principles of these into pop culture, but never quite grasped the message.

For those that are happy to preach and label others, let me ask you 3 questions. What are you achieving? Where’s your evidence the person you’re labelling is who you say they are? And does this mean we can label you as a ‘moron’ if it turns out you’re wrong? I really hope for your sakes your answers will be along the lines of ‘nothing’, ‘none’ and ‘no’. Because as YouTubers such as Boogie2988, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Philip DeFranco all state, we aren’t the identities and labels people are putting on us. We are humans, with feelings and opinions and if we all want to get on in this world, we have to realise we don’t all agree all the time. But with respect for each other’s opinions without agression or hate and malice, you might just get some back next time you say something that’s against the grain.

And if you’re really not sure about a something, don’t just follow the crowd or blindly back the source that’s telling you. Do some research of your own and form your own opinion from purely that. For instance if you want to tell me terrorism is formed as an Islamic order based on what all Muslims read in the Qu’ran, show me the verse(es) that explicitly say that. If you believe that all chavs rob houses and people as well as deal drugs, show me all the CCTV evidence you can get your hands on. If you think Pewdiepie is anti-semite that’s publishing this in his videos, show me the specific source videos in full.

Disagree with anything I said? Cool, Let me know calmly in the comments below why and what your own opinions are and, if required, some source evidence to back up anything you claim as fact.

And next time you want to raise an issue or opinion about someone or something, as John Agard would put it:

come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu min

…then tell me the other half of the story.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the English version of a Danish TV network advert I discovered through FBE’s REACT series (which I then sourced and watched in it’s full original form) that sums up my long-winded opinion on all of this:

Respect isn’t a right some of us are born with. It’s something we can all give out and something we can all earn. But we can only all earn it, if we all learn to give it out.

Yours Faithfully,

Mike

Home

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In most working lives you’re expected to take a bit of time off for yourself and on my week this time I thought I would pay a visit to Nottingham to see my dad and his partner as well as a few childhood friends.

After living away for each period of time it’s often nice to go back to your roots and in my case (granted at least one thing always changes) it feels like you can get back to lose line you never left.

Trying to continue your current life with your old one however doesn’t always work out.  For instance,  when i came home from undergraduate university life,  it was often tricky getting back into living under a parental roof,  not being steps away from the nightlife and feeling a little less independent.  In this its year’s case,  it was tricky trying to keep pace with posting and catching up with friends (and also finding that signal wasn’t as readily available for Friday’s failed live blog).

In this case I’ve learned the value of planning further ahead and taking protected time to prepare in the case type not going to be there (though I’ve spent that previous week playing catchup elsewhere).

You can can then use your time when you are off to actually be, well, off. Time to relax (or if you’re like me and usually need something to do: reassign),  reset and perpare return feeling renewed. This is the stage in at now ready to return to work,  but always with home in mind,  working and achieving to a point when a break is needed and the cycle begins again.

Relax/Reassign, Reset,  Return,  Renewed,  Repeat. If you’re a working machine, try it out. You might just surprise yourself.

Mike

Game Day

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After many weeks, there often comes the time for things to come to a head. For many today of course that follow American Football, this will be the Super Bowl kicking off in a couple of hours.

For people playing sports in their own respective teams may have been participating this weekend or even today.

For others who may have had experiences I’ve described in the posts over the last couple of weeks may have now made their decision and now must take actions based on it.

Whatever your current situation, taking on your game day always requires a quick pep talk to ensure you have the right tactics – not only a win for your team (be that work, sports or family and friends) but also an accomplishment for yourself.

Admittedly this is a little hypocritical coming from the guy who either works it out as he goes, or makes a plan and then 99% of the time will deviate from it for whatever reason. But for those that are more organised or could probably benefit from some sort of idea of what’s going on, creating a game plan for yourself will often help alleviating the scary prospect of excess thinking on your feet should something unexpected happening.

How you do this, depends on what you need to achieve. If it’s like me trying to write blogs and to keep up with it on top of a job and life, then perhaps some scheduling may benefit. I myself after obtaining a free promotional wall planner am taking the responsibility to prevent things from running away from me like in weeks past by using Mondays to try and plan the week ahead where possible for content and where possible strike out ideas for the future weeks. If you’d like one of your own, one I would recommend that I used to have have hung on my wall in my student house as a warden (until the frame broke) – a whiteboard version that allowed you to build up whichever month it is, write out your plans and when you get to the last day, you can wipe it off and start the next month – saving you a bit of dosh in the long term!

If you’re more of a person that needs something a little more portable, consider a trip to your local stationer and invest in a planner or a diary to keep your ideas and commitments in. For the digital types a cheaper alternative is to make use of the base apps on your smartphone such as the synchronised Google Calender on Android, Calender for iOS or the calender app on BlackberryOS.

Other great tools include planning applications online (Evernote, Todoist and Trello are personal recommendations I’ve tried in the past – not sponsored!) as well as working on team platforms such as Invision and Slack (again, not sponsored but would happily recommend – wouldn’t say no to a sponsorship though 😉 ).

As you outline your game plan, be sure to work out any contingencies to ensure that you have every base covered in some way, even if this is just a list of what to do if things don’t work out.

However you choose to come up with your own schedule or plan, I wish you an amazing week and if you’re watching tonight like me, regardless of whom you back you have an amazing game night!

Mike

Enter Title Here

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Another week has passed and more big news has come. I wasn’t joking about life’s great junction and it seems a few more people have reached theirs.

Now one thing to remember is that the choices these people make can sometimes affect other people too – such as a driver changing into your lane in front of you or your favourite watering hole closing down temporarily because the landlord decided to move to work at the brewery that owned it – and sometimes this may present opportunities to you and suddenly before you know it, it’s your turn to go left, right or straight on.

How you proceed is of course, up to you and it’s you that you should be looking out for. But it really gives you a numinous feeling knowing that the butterfly effect can even crop up in your everyday decisions.

I find this idea fascinating sometimes (and if you’re still reading this 3 weeks into the topic, I can only assume you’re either humouring me or are interested in the same manner) and how similar it can relate to media such as ‘choose your own adventure’ books and  recent video games such as much of the Telltale collection of games, DONTNOD Entertainment’s “Life Is Strange” and Supermassive Games’ “Until Dawn”. Running through these media not only allow good replayability and good value for money, but let you answer that “What If?” curiosity that many of us posses. If we were allowed a rewind superpower or the ability to quickly press “reset” on life and to replay from where we last saved, our lives would be perfect!

Or would it? I suppose it would be theoretically impossible to be right for everyone as we would have to have infinite parallel timelines to satisfy this, where in only one or a small number of the outcomes would allow us to be happy (not that we’d know unless we had a magical TV channel selection like in Rick & Morty). But even if only one or a small number of us had the power to change and re-change the world over indefinitely, would we appreciate the perfect life? Would we eventually know what perfect was given nothing will have gone wrong in so long that we can no longer appreciate what ‘wrong’ is? Who knows, but thankfully having both right and wrong in life ironically allows us one constant in our dynamic day to day lives that we so often managed to take for granted.

So whilst we might only get one go around and we often can’t see all of the outcomes first, we know that many people before us had to make this decision and we won’t be the last to either (unless a number of certain world leaders all make the decision to type in some given codes and launch some pretty world ending stuff, then that might be, but hopefully that won’t happen anytime soon!), so if it’s your turn, go ahead and give it some thought, but be sue to make it before those lights change and the opportunity passes you by.  And if you’re not the best decision maker, maybe have a look at some of the suggestions above to give it a practice – over time you might just surprise yourself.

I’ll see how my story goes and if any junctions may or may not come up for me in the meantime.

Happy Travels!

Mike

The Wisdom of Old Tom

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This week has been a bit of a roller-coaster. From the rising and falling of day to day workload to the emotions about a dear colleague at work moving onto a new place and leaving our team.

On the one hand I’m happy for the new challenges moving on from the relentless workload of the last few months and the opportunity to do different things each day and happy our dear colleague can do the same. 

But at the same time we have a little sadness with the team breaking down a little bit and the knowledge that whilst we all move forwards,  the sobering reminder that the things around us are as dynamic as we try  to be and that not everything always moves at the same pace or in the same phase as us. 

We’re often told that there’s a time and a place for everything – often conveniently a short time after we’ve said something at a bad time –   but it’s meaning rooms true on many more occasions in life.  You can plan opportunities for months at a time only to nearly miss the opportunity of doing it.  Similarly you can take a risk that doesn’t work out and whilst it’s you should have waited a little longer before acting. 

Once half of the battle in life is making progress. The other is knowing when our where to take the actions that lead to it., lest you looking back on it in the future and feeling remorse. Sometimes it takes skill and experience to get a higher chance of getting it right,  other times is total guesswork and faith,  but making the choice is often better than ignoring it and remembering that justifying sitting something out is different than not bothering to decide at all. 

So have a think when the next junction comes up for you:  go left,  right or straight on.  When you consult your ‘map’ or experience from your journey you’ll be able to decide easier. Just remember that when the light turns green,  it will change again eventually,  so don’t miss your turn or you’ll never move forward (and like driving,  will inevitably drive those behind you insane for loitering). 

Happy Sunday everyone. 

Mike

At Least I’m Moving Forward

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With Blue Monday fast approaching and (at least for us in Preston) a weekend of cold, grey skies and rain (and many other places facing much worse), it feels like a great excuse to curl up in a duvet, stick on the streams and to lay there and just forget the world. I’ll admit, I did it for a few hours yesterday and it felt great, until I realised I’d have to stop and do something useful with myself so I hadn’t totally wasted the day.

That’s the dangerous thing about vegging out – once you’re down on your pad of choice, you’re usually done for the day, which is why many try to get stuff done before they flop out after work or lectures as they know how hard it is to start again afterwards.

If motivation is waning for you, remember the end goal and try to see that flop out as your treat. At the same time though, don’t try to kill yourself with exertion!

I feel proud of the things I’ve managed to achieve so far in my year of doing. After many delays in the vision of making tech support a little bit more remote controlled to benefit both ourselves and the stressed out people we sometimes need to keep waiting whilst we undo the mess another has made or perhaps due to them being a fair distance from where we are at any one time, we’ve finally got a number of rooms functional in the centres (still waiting on the configuration files for our more complex setup we had built for us in a Lecture Space last year though…) and myself and my dear colleague are rapidly trying to learn our way around it all so we can be ready to deploy it.

I’ve also had the opportunity to dabble in alternate realities of both the augmented and mixed variety (VR is still on the bucket list!) with development for mobiles and tablets starting this week in a basic form with our new styled room guides and experiencing, albeit with some tweaking, patience, without any texturing on it and it flying around the room as I tried to get the hang of the transform controls, one of the models I built of our classroom chairs that makes a debut in some of our earlier testing content for Digital Signage, my eLearning package for our AV Training program come to life through the “3D Viewer BETA” app on the Hololens Developer Edition headset

 

Holoens in Context

Kind of what it looked like in context

Not bad for someone at a junior level eh? Better yet, I’m also going into next week with half an idea of what the week should look like in the ideal world.Whether it’ll happen or not is another story, but you never know what’s around the corner until you come to it (unless you have a periscope).

Now understandably, I realise it’s easier said than done sometimes. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. I know I’ve got to make some pretty big decisions soon for all sorts of reasons. It reminds me a lot of Hoobastank’s song of whom the title of this week’s post is based on. Whilst the actual interpretation of the song itself is yet to be revealed by the band, I interpret it in a similar manner to the ideas I based a song on for a uni assignment named “The Middle of the Day” (still available to listen here). But if we stand still, we’ll never know the outcome and may spend forever cursing the missed opportunity. So take the risk, make your choice and thank yourself that you moved forward a little bit today.

Chin up, we’ll get through tomorrow if we’re prepared to get it all done before we veg out and we’ll be back in the saddle before we know it.

Good Luck!

Mike

The Year of Doing

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So I’m sure a week and a bit in you’re probably sick to death of hearing ‘Happy New Year!’ every 5 minutes and you’re at that state where you’re either revelling in your new found activity you’ve chosen to take up or you’re regretting those weird, wonderful and/or drunken resolutions you pledged to do on the big night (I for one still stand by my tweet that I will learn AD&D this year starting with Boulder’s Gate and go on to face the more gruelling chambers in the main RPG story-lines in time).

This year, I’m trying to push myself into doing more of the wild and crazy things I consider. Last year was one of healing, moving and adapting – where many things were pushed back due to financial or work commitments and when the time finally came back around, the motivation to get back to it was replaced by laziness or procrastination. This year for me will be “The Year of Doing”. Now I know that’s a little cliché as it’s what everyone does say before things inevitably fizzle out, but this time I’m not focussing on the success, I’m focusing on the getting up off my arse and making those wheels turn. If it fails, it fails, if it succeeds all the better. The important thing is whatever was hypothesised or proposed, it was done or at least attempted to be done. As motivation to help fuel this, many things have been announced on the main Rose Tinted Archer blog and if it’s big and project related, I’ll keep on telling you all, so you can hold me to keep you informed!

I hope to apply the mantra to my everyday ideas and decisions too (which is convenient being at a bit of a crossroads on a couple of things in life), and if you’re like me and can struggle with motivation sometimes I encourage you to do the same. Write down what you want to achieve this year in a format similar to a bucket list – it could be big or small, from making that big move to a new place to starting your new diet to asking out that person you pass in the library every week for a beverage. Try to keep it realistic though as you’ve only got 12 months to do it in (or at least start it) and you’re going to have to try and stick to it! If you think you’ll break easily, maybe add a forfeit to keep yourself motivated – almost like a swear jar collection or a regular treat or yourself in your house which you either give to charity or reinvest in your resolution. If you want even more motivation, flip it so you have a reward of sorts to enjoy at the end of the year and each time you fail, you remove a portion of it.

Whatever you’ve chosen to take on this year I hope you manage to keep to it and I wish you all the best for the 51 weeks ahead.

 

Mike

The 2017 Roast Toast

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So this is it. The beginning of a new year. To some that would probably be a sigh of relief, because let’s be honest 2016 wasn’t exactly the cliché answer to the hopes of “better than 2015” or “the best year ever!” globally.

We’ve lost a good few famous people this year (owing to the baby boomer generation starting to reach and exceed the general life expectancy) arguably half of the UK were disappointed with the Referendum result on our EU membership and the populous of the US who didn’t vote for Donald Trump with the result of the election for the next president over there. We’ve also been exposed to more news on the Middle Eastern conflicts, particularly with #Aleppo making a trend on Twitter as well as some of the scarier demonstrations of the so called Islamic State on the world.

But it wasn’t all bad! There were many good that occurred too. For those that supported Trump and Brexit, congratulations on the history defining moments. For Children in Need, Revelmode, Project For Awesome and many more, congratulations on raising phenomenal amounts of money for various charities to help those around the world that need that extra bit of support right now. Congratulations to Felix Kjellberg (aka Pewdiepie) for continuing to define history for the internet’s largest video platform by reaching and surpassing 50 Million Subscribers to your content (51,766,646 at the time of writing) and maintaining the most subscribed individual on ‘popular’ social media at the moment (feel free to correct me otherwise).

I feel proud of my own achievements this year, from coordinating my first place to live outside of work, relationships & university accommodation from start to finish (with continued thanks to my wonderful parents and their amazing partners for the kind help in getting set up) to getting back onto the internet and setting up a place to share content with you all again (as well as setting the crazy task of trying to run 4 regular blogs on different topics!), to participating in providing live sound support and mixing advice for our largest filmed multimedia project to rebuild part of our Mandatory training for staff using our in house designed “Living the Values” series of videos with help from professional actors and scriptwriters, to setting up, compiling and running the largest live multimedia project we’ve done to date for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals we | awards 2016 and working with our partners at Pure AV to help put on a great show for our Workforce and Education Directorate, to finishing and now polishing up my completely overhauled and now blended training programme for AV compliance within the Health Academy (that may only expand further in scope and levels), to sitting here right now and writing out this essay of a post and hoping it doesn’t sound totally lame for and end of year post (that ironically is published the day after).

But that’s just me.

I sincerely hope that whatever your plans are tonight be it partying with friends, family, the TV or total strangers, or indeed just going to bed and waking up in the new year, I really hope you have a wonderful evening and I wish you all… (not the best, cause many of us said that last year and that didn’t go so well!) … a prosperous and productive new year with opportunity, hope and happiness and that you can look back on 2016 with the same or greater pride that despite all that has happened over the last 12 months you made your mark on the world and wrote some history of your own.

Here’s to 2017, I’ll see you on the other side

Mike

The Decembertide Roast 2016

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Well,  we’ve finally made it here after a long and challenging year. The first Decembertide Roast and it’s on a big day itself!

Speaking of big,  looking back on the year we’ve certainly had big events occur both in real life and online affecting people across the world and challenging thinking for the future ahead.

With all this in the back of my mind,  I’m thankful this December time for one constant in my life that hasn’t changed –  family. We all have ‘family’  in different forms,  be it the one we’re born into,  the one were fostered or adopted into, our closest friends we can call brothers and sisters,  our fraternal or sororal relations or even our respective religious congregations.

Whilst my biological family is spread out all over the country,  Christmas is a time when we all get in touch and come together to wish season’s greetings to each other and to eat and drink and laugh too much.  It’s also a good excuse for a quick catch up to find out how everybody is doing on the occasion we’ve not spoken in a while.

For friendship,  Christmas can also be a good time with many of us in different places since leaving school and taking advantage of either my birthday on the summer and almost certainly my oldest friend Richard Dooley‘s birthday to enjoy a Christmas catch up.

When you look towards the other large  holiday that begins from today (thanks for the correction!), Hanukkah and Kwanzaa that begins tomorrow,  the theme of family is also crucial,  with celebrations happening daily that should always be experienced with the ones we love.

I realise though that not everybody has the same privilege of this (for sake of a better term)  ‘on tap’ and at this time of year,  we should always extend the hand of friendship.

If you have close family and friends you can keep in touch with,  regardless of your religious or non religious holiday, this time of the year is about spending it with them in some capacity, be it just a phone call, a Skype session or inviting them around for Christmas day (or just tea or you prefer). It’s often easy to forget,  particularly in our high speed 24 hour modern lifestyles and worth social media taking centre stage is easy to make an excuse that you’ll tag them in a post and say Happy Hanukkah/Christmas/Other holiday  and thinking that’ll do or just asking “Habari gani? ” and hoping somebody will reply to your tweet.  But as the priest in my mother and her partner’s Catholic Church said this morning in the Christmas Day sermon,  we sometimes need to simply stop to appreciate and to reflect.

Those we call our family are out closest connections. These are the people who will love you unconditionally and will morally  be the people that are always be there when nobody else is, so perhaps use this time of year to celebrate and cultivate those connections.

If you know somebody who might be spending Christmas alone this year,  why not invite them around for a bit. If you’re not quite comfortable inviting them into your home, then meet somewhere neutral like a café or a park. I’ve done part of Christmas alone before and whilst you get that Home Alone feeling for the morning, it really does suck later on. Nobody should have to deal with it if they didn’t choose to.

If you wish you could take an alternative route and  volunteer over Christmas and help make a complete stranger’s Christmas. Organisations and groups such as soup kitchens,  shelters The Salvation Army and religious organisations will all be out working on the big day and over the period to help those in need.  You never know you might just help yourself with that fuzzy feeling too.

Whatever your plans this year,  I really hope everybody has a wonderful and peaceful time this year full of love laughter cheer and celebration.

So Merry Christmas,  Xmas and  Happy Hanukkah and Habari gani for tomorrow, Seasons Greetings to all who’s celebrations I’m yet to learn of  and I wish you all a splendid Decembertide.

Mike

Wrapping Up

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In the final week before Christmas, I’ve finally decided to make an effort to make my flat look a little bit festive in the downstairs area (despite not really getting visitors nor actually being here for Christmas itself), write cards, and do my shopping for family gifts. It’s also the time for me to actually put my plans into action so I can travel across the country and see said people over the holidays.

Online-wise, preparations are underway to write up as much content for those of you who  read the blogs  whilst I’m on the move and future planning for projects and content in the new year – more of which I’ll announce soon.

For many of you I’m sure it’ll be much of the same craziness  and more – getting those last few presents wrapped, ensuring you know where you’re going or what time people will be arriving on the big day –  who to phone and who will call you. Some of you might even be doing Christmas,  Hanukkah,  Kwanzaa or [insert your celebration here]  online with family and friends across the world.

Whatever your plans,  it’s important not to lose sight of it all. Yes, the weather seems to be taking its toll,  your Menorah seems to be mysteriously a candle short,  the 200 lamp tree lights went out thanks to a mystery fitting  and despite trekking out and braving the crowds  you’re panicking because your son or daughter has changed their mind again about something they want Santa to bring. The important thing is ensuring you have your time with your family,  friends and significant others and if you’re religiously or culturally aligned,  you remember the values and cultures of this December season.

Also once everyone inevitably decides to drop into a food coma,  drunken stupor or just melt into watching the specials on TV ,  or you’re bored of spinning the dreidel,  don’t forget to sign on next week as I will be posting a Christmas Roast. Don’t worry,  it won’t be (too much)  of a Queen’s speech or Alternative  Christmas Message,  but just a more festive post and of course a follow up on New Year’s Day.

For now I wish you a all a Merry Christmas (or  Xmas is you prefer),  Happy Hanukkah for those celebrating from the 26th onwards and for those celebrating Kwanzaa  (also from the 26th onwards),  “Habari gani?” To the rest of you celebrating smaller celebrations I’m yet to learn of,  or perhaps something a little more personal this December,  Seasons Greetings to you, and I’ll speak to you all again soon.

Mike