A big fat turkey with a side order of adultery.

Its the time of year when every celebrity chef you could shake a stick at enters our television screens and blesses us with their wisdom and knowledge of how it is CORRECT TO DO CHRISTMAS. Whether it be Nigella's over use of the dairy food-group/any product with an unhealthy fat content, Jamie's rustic cooking style and incessant use of the word 'tiger', or Heston's use of whale vomit as a delectable ingredient, we are inundated with various ways of how to make our Christmas almost as good as theirs will be. The issue with celebrity chefs 'doing Christmas' is that they seem to bypass the idea that we may not have a production team and band of loyal 'servants' who will grate our cheese and measure each ingrediant before putting it into small pyrex dishes so as the extent of work we have to do is merely to tip each ingrediant into a slightly bigger bowl and stir. Therefore, for us to make such an array of over-the-top dishes, it could take us a little longer than the allotted hour that the chef's appears to have. Those tricksters!

The ads! We all know Christmas has arrived when we first catch a glimpe of that beautiful Coca Cola advert. At any other time of the year I would immediately switch over to another channel as soon as someone utters the words 'See you after the break!' (even if the only option is Traffic Cops or Tess Daley's 'dead-behind-the-eyes' face). But once those festive adverts come on I can't avert my eyes. My personal favourite has got to be a toss up between Sainbury's (due to the wonder that is Jamie Oliver), Waitrose, or, of course, Marks and Spencers. You may notice a theme of food. Well, I admit, the thing that most draws me to Christmas is sheer gluttony.

 Soaps at this time of year are wonderfully depressing. For some reason the producers seem to think that Christmas has a tendency to get a little too jolly and they must put an end to that in any way they can. Being the producer of a soap that, of course, means our much loved/hated characters get fully imbursed in the horrors that coinsidently coinside with the Christmas holidays. So get ready for lots of screaming in the streets, inappropriate sexual antics, a possible jail sentence, ooh and it wouldn't be Christmas without a murder thrown in for good measure.

Of course there are also the films that never fail to pop up on our screens at Christmas time. Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang are a must watch. But merely because the British like tradition so much- although at no other time of the year would we sit down and think 'I know what I'll do, I'll slap on a bit of Julie Andrews with an umbrella and a big bag!'- we feel it acceptable to spend hours watching films for the nineteenth time with a box of Lindt chocolates BECAUSE ITS CHRISTMAS.

Merry Christmas one and all!

My new years resolution (see last year for more details)

2009 is drawing to a close and we will soon be forced to say goodbye to the noughties. For me it has been the most memorable of all decades (due to the fact that I have been above the age of eight and so can retain the likes of 'memories'). We have seen a black President be elected in the United States, music and the charts have been taken over by Sir Simon Cowell (I salute you), the 'King of Pop', Michael Jackson tragically passed away, we witnessed the moment Susan Boyle shocked the nation with her beautiful voice and unruly eyebrows, we said farewell to Harry Potter, and most devestatingly of all; Katie Price and Peter Andre split up.

The media has developed over the last ten years like a woman after 90 boob jobs. The internet with social networking sites has become more advanced than we could have anticipated. With the likes of Twitter captivating the country, we can read updates and statements from our favourite celebrities or public figues with just a tap of our iPhone. Straight from the horses mouth (no offence intended).
With the internet offering us newspaper/magazine websites, email updates, and Twitter we have instant access to any news or gossip the media would like to throw at us. Because of this, the media has become ever more powerful in todays society and the lives of not only mainstream celebrities but politicians and such are under constant scrutiny.

So where will we be in 10 years time? Perhaps reading things like this off a screen in the palm of our hand whilst our speech-sensitive kitchen knocks us up a cheese toastie.
We can be certain that Simon Cowell will have taken over the world, we will be referring to Ms Cole as 'Dame Cheryl', Jedward will be presenting the Ten O'clock News, and Joe McElderry... sorry who?

My news years resolution is to learn about topics a little more substantial than the X Factor and 'Ooh, aren't R-Pattz and Zac Efron looking H.O.T'.
It that case I will start planning blog posts on the relevant and topical issues of; '[Insert Celebrity name] could do with a burger!' and 'Vanessa Hudgens is a bitch'.

Happy New Year!

The horrors of being/having/knowing a teenager.

We've all been one, whether you admit it or not. There are those few years in time when we become a spotty-faced, binge-drinking, socially inept human being who is anything but a pleasure to be around.
When I look back at my 'teenager-ish' years I am hit with a surge of shame. For I was probably what you would call the epitome of a horrible teenager. For me, nothing mattered except my boyfriend and my friends. I didn't care about school work (something that I still stand by to some degree), I 'hated' my family, I rebelled from any authority or restrictions and was just 'too damn cool' to get off my backside if it wasnt for a party or to makeout with my boyfriend. Thinking about this now actually makes me want to shoot the memory clean out of my brain.
Although I still have 'teen' at the end of my age I feel I have passed the worst of this soul destroying time in ones life.

I am sure everyone goes through the symptoms of teen-arsewhole-itis to varying degrees but I defy you to completely deny it! My younger brother is presently going through the various stages. He enjoys sitting on his X-Box, conversing with the rest of the family for as limited an amount of time as he can get away with, and grunting about 15 seconds after he is asked a question.
He is a joy, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Who knows why we all are forced to commit to a few years of tireless teenage tendencies, all I know is that it happens to the best of us. Even those of us who deny completely the idea of being a 'teenager' at all. For example my older brother is possibly the person most against being a teenager that you will ever come across. From the age of 13 to 18 he denied being called a teenager no matter how much we tried to persaude him that 'you have 'teen' at the end of your age mate, there's no getting away from it!'. And he was one of the most argumentative, MOST TEENAGER-Y teenagers I've ever met.

*starts to plan a future involving anything but having children*

Grumpy people who hate Christmas.

 They are all around, just waiting for an opportune moment to complain about the latest thing. Gordon Brown, The X Factor, immigrants, spotty faced teenagers and at this time of year: Christmas.
Christmas is a time that should bring joy to all. The shops and streets are daubed in twinkly lights and christmas trees, but the grumpy people among us get fed up with the constant carol singing, chocolate giving local churches who insist on inviting you to the millions of services they feel it is acceptable to hold at this time of year.
Christmas, for me, makes me want to implode with glee. You get a chocolate every day without having to traipse to the newsagents and you get to over-play the same songs that endlessly stick in your head- with the aid of that drug that damn Lady GaGa puts in hers- all through December (although I tend to start slightly earlier: October anyone?). And Christmas dinner, oh Christmas dinner. A plump Turkey that your mother has stuffed with chestnuts and sausage meat in a very indecent fashion (rather her than me). Little sausages wrapped in bacon that the elder generation insist on calling 'pigs in blankets'- I really wish they wouldn't. Roast potatoes and parsnips, I am copiously salivating at the thought, I must desist. Oh and the sprouts, the vegetable that tastes most like fart, but is necessary to endure at Christmas time.
However, these wonderful little perks of the month of December seem to get the grumpier of us in a bit of a tizz. It seems to give them an extra special opportunity to moan and groan with the added benefit that the rest of us are thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

At the end of September when you get your first leaflet through the door adorned with a christmas tree or a sprig of holly in the corner you can tell those who are going to be revelling in the horror of Christmas or those who at the age of 35 will still be spending Christmas Eve unable to sleep.
I am one of the latter. The first Christmas advert I saw this year caused me to jump up from the sofa and cry, 'CHRISTMAS IS HERE' at the top of my voice to the great surprise of my mother and father who had just exclaimed 'ITS ONLY BLOODY AUGUST!'.


As Christmas creeps up, closer and closer, these Christmas grumps are in their element. They can grumble about the cold, but the fact that 'Eoghan Quigg will make it in the US before we get a white christmas in this country!'. The price of all the presents they are forced to buy for people they don't even like and the shops trying to trick us out of our money with their cheesey adverts. And, of course, how our Christmas is never going to be as perfect as the one on the Marks and Spencer's advert so we might as well give up now.

I say, have some babies and then you'll be forced to don the Santa suit and sing carols around the fire YOU SCROOGE!