The last few days at work have been the first time in a long time that I’ve felt on top of everything. Last night, in particular, we got everything done with time to spare. It felt good. I also really like nearly all the people I work with, and don’t want to leave them right now, so for the moment I haven’t applied for any more jobs. Project Happy continues in other areas, which I will explain at another time.
What I’ve been up to
The other Saturday I went to the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich for a former colleague’s retirement/birthday afternoon tea. I love the fact that I’m still invited to these things despite leaving two-and-a-half years ago. I was the only bloke there, surrounded as I was by 13 women, but then that’s kind of my life isn’t it? (That was a joke)
It was a good afternoon, actually, even if this photo makes it look like I’ve nodded off with my finger up my nose. The food was good, the company was good. Hopefully they’ll keep inviting me to their social events!
Fast forward a week, and I went to Norwich’s game against Bristol City with my friend Gavin – the one who made me walk 7 miles. I’m actually giving up my season ticket at Carrow Road after this season, and with this the penultimate home league game we sat in the River End, opposite my usual position in the Barclay, for the 1-1 draw. Norwich didn’t really turn up against a side that had nothing to play for and missed the chance to move up to 5th. Never mind. It’s Swansea at Carrow Road this weekend. Here’s me and Gavin looking like a couple of hunks:
The faces were deliberate. Well, mine was, anyway…
I had forgotten how good these songs were
Here are a couple of songs that I recommend to you this week, two that I hadn’t listened to for a while and had forgotten just how good they were.
First, Soft Cell’s 1981 no.4 hit Bedsitter:
And second, The Jam’s The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) from 1982.
It’s a new year, and I begin 2024 under both a literal and metaphorical cloud.
Here I am, soaked through and knackered, pushing trollies in the work car park last night. I took the photo because I didn’t think it would be believed that I actually had to go out there during Storm Henk. After an incredibly busy Christmas period, I am shattered. There are still two months until I get a week off work. I sense that I am on a downward slope.
Anyway, that’s enough self-pity. Here’s a few things that have caught my eye this week.
Daft news story: in the media, there are two ‘silly seasons’. One is in August, when everyone is on their summer holidays and nothing much is going on. The other is that weird week between Christmas and New Year. Last Thursday I was in a cafe with my mum and stepdad when my phone vibrated. The big breaking news story was that grand old Blackpool Tower was on fire! A bona fide English landmark was going up in flames! Not quite. It turned out to be some orange netting at the top of the tower blowing about in the wind. There was no fire. The media made a hasty retreat. In less than a week, the Blackpool Tower ‘fire’ has become a meme.
I once wrapped orange netting around the top of the Blackpool tower and fooled the whole country into thinking a national landmark was on fire. pic.twitter.com/vjP90uaBIG
A sporting sensation: Luke Littler, who is 16 but – let’s be honest – looks about 35, has taken darts by storm by cruising into the final of the World Championship in his debut year. Impressing everyone with his consistent high scoring and seemingly nerveless disposition, Littler only became world youth champion in November but has beaten Raymond van Barneveled and Rob Cross, who have six World Championship titles between them, in the main event. He plays the world number one and pre-tournament favourite Luke Humphries at Alexandra Palace in London tonight.
I love the darts. I used to watch it with my dad when I was a kid. Even now, I think the Christmas period only really starts when the World Championship begins. It’s immensely entertaining, and fantastic to watch people who are good at things do what they do. Last year, an incredible leg in the final between Michael Smith and Michael van Gerwen saw both players on course for a nine darter (the perfect leg of 501). van Gerwen missed the double 12, but Smith hit it. That got everyone talking – this year it’s Luke Littler that has captured the imagination.
A book I’m reading: my Christmas presents this year consisted mainly of books, which is fine by me. One of them was Everything To Play For: The QI Book Of Sports, which I’ve been thoroughly enjoying because it avoids the dreaded sporting cliches and takes a step outside of the bubble us sports fans tend to be in to take a forensic look at what sport actually is, how it began and why it exists. I recommend it, even if you don’t like sport, because it will explain to you that sport is far from a pointless activity and that it is actually built in to the human psyche.
Thanks for reading my musings this week. See you again soon.
It’s far from the only thing that I would say was better when I was younger, but I’m not sure it rings true quite as much with anything else. Christmas began as soon as I finished school for the year. I can remember once when the suburb of Norwich I lived in was covered by fog for what felt like a week, combined with the festive films on the TV lending a wonderful winter atmosphere to the build up. On Christmas Eve, a family tradition was to go to KFC for tea and then drive around the city looking at the lights on people’s houses. It really got you in the spirit.
As an only child (I have a half-sister, but she’s quite a bit older than me), I got lots of presents, as shallow as that makes me sound. I wasn’t one for getting up ridiculously early to open them – I once had to be woken up by my parents on Christmas morning – but there were definitely years when it was still dark outside. My dad would pretend to be interested in what I was unwrapping, but his real role was being in charge of the bin bag that all the paper went into.
Christmas Day would usually mean going to my grandmother’s house, where you were guaranteed a meal that would leave you unable to move. You were never knowingly underfed at nanny’s. She was an excellent cook, and her Yorkshire puddings were divine. We’d then collapse onto the sofa, slipping in and out of a food coma watching the big Christmas shows on TV.
Boxing Day saw us play hosts to dad’s side of the family. My sister and her family, along with my nanny and grandad (the one who would buy my hand-drawn comics from me) would come to our house. I would get to play with my nephew and niece, my mum would cook another lovely meal, and then the adults would play cards. I played along on a few occasions, but more often than not that time would be spent putting on a little show for my grandad. The great man would sit through whatever awful acting, singing or dancing (my niece would do that last one, rather than me) we put in front of him. One year, the three of us made our own film using a camcorder. I can’t remember if the camcorder had been a present for someone, but I can definitely remember filming my nephew at the top of the stairs, apparently murdered. The rest is sketchy. I think one of the characters was called Barry.
The fun didn’t stop there. New Year’s Day would be my sister’s turn to open her home. We’d have buffet style food, rather than a full meal, and we would watch the football scores coming in. These memories are incredibly vivid. Yet there are Christmases in the last decade that I couldn’t tell you about, as I have forgotten them.
Times change, of course. My mum and dad split up in 2007. All of our Christmas traditions up to that point ended immediately. In 2010, my mum couldn’t taste her Christmas dinner and ended up in A&E, eventually being diagnosed with bronchitis. On Boxing Day 2012, I took my dad – who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for a few years by then – to his last ever Norwich City match at Carrow Road. It had just become too difficult to get him there and back. We lost 1-0 to Chelsea. Then, on Christmas Eve 2013, dad was taken to hospital from his care home. He died on 1st February 2014. He was not well enough to read the card I’d bought him that year.
Another big difference between Christmas as a kid and now is that I’ve spent the last 12 Decembers working in a supermarket. Provided I haven’t been sacked and not told about it yet, this will be my 13th. Plenty of funny things have happened at work in those years. My favourite is probably when a woman came to the kiosk to ask me for ’50 grams of Golden Virginia’ but instead asked for ’50 grams of Golden Vagina’. Obviously, Christmas is the busiest time of year in that industry so, not only does the build up to it start before the kids have gone back to school, by the time the big day gets here you’re knackered. It wasn’t too bad when I first started, when I was just on the checkouts. I’d just go home with the same six Christmas songs ringing in my ears. But when I moved onto doing the trolleys, it would be like painting the Forth Bridge. By the time I’d brought a line of trolleys to the front of the store and gone to get another, the first line would be gone. It’d also be difficult to get the trolleys in at all, what with the cars queueing round the car park. In 2018, I came home from work the Sunday before Christmas in a state that I can only describe as broken.
Christmas 2018 – I was broken.
Since I’ve gradually been given more responsibility, Christmas is busier than ever. It sounds quaint now to think that when I was at school doing anything before 8am felt excruciatingly early, and after 4pm incredibly late. These days I can be at work at 5.45am, or I can still be serving someone with a massive trolley full of stuff at 11pm (though not on the same day, thankfully). All to the soundtrack of a choral cover of Santa Baby, or the frankly bizarre I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas. Last year, for the first time I was given the task of handing out food orders to customers, some of which they had put in as far back as October. It was superbly organised, but did involve me spending time in a dark and cold shipping container in the yard.
The company are kind enough to allow us to wear a Christmas jumper at this time of year. I cannot stand wearing a collar (I have a thing about things touching my neck) so I will take any opportunity to ditch the usual uniform. As I’m tight – I’m my father’s son – I have worn the same one every year since 2017 and that tradition will continue in 2022. It’s grey with a polar bear on the front. The bear used to light up but the jumper smelled so bad one year that we had no choice but to remove any battery-powered parts and put it in the washing machine.
The trusty jumper I’ve worn for work every year since 2017
Christmas is still something I look forward to. Even though work is busy, there’s a nice atmosphere of ‘we’re all in it together’ with my colleagues. The World Darts Championship signals the beginning of the festive period for me, starting a week or so before Christmas and finishing at New Year. As soon as I see the arrows on the telly, I feel warm inside. The day itself is spent with my mum and her other half Dave, the two most important people in my life, and we eat lots of food and have a great laugh.
Whatever December means to you, I hope it’s a good one. I think we all deserve it.
Remember my Durham holiday photo challenge? That stemmed from me trying to avoid getting bored during a week off work. Well – I’ve had another week off.
I always try to have a week off just before the Christmas rush starts, but I’m not very good at resting or doing nothing. So last week I decided to use one of my free days to go in search of something that had fascinated me for ages. I went looking for the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.
I had not been to London for a proper day out since last December. I’d been there for the play-off final at Wembley, but this was my first visit to the city itself in almost a year. As such, after getting off the train at Liverpool Street I wandered around for a while, taking in my surroundings and the big buildings before making my way anywhere.
Eventually I went to Canada Water station and took the London Overground to Crystal Palace. When you come from Norwich you are used to everything being pretty close by – it took about half an hour to get from Canary Wharf to Crystal Palace! When the train finally arrived, I walked out of the station and was immediately filled with hope.
When you’ve come all this way looking for Dinosaurs, this was a pleasing sign to find.
I was definitely on the right track.
In case you don’t know, the Crystal Palace was a huge glass building that was built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. When the exhibition closed, the Crystal Palace was moved from Hyde Park to Penge Common in South London. It had such an impact that the area it stood in itself became known as Crystal Palace.
The land surrounding the Crystal Palace was landscaped and became Crystal Palace Park. The Palace burned down in 1936, but you can still see where it would have been. And one of the elements of the original park that still remain are the dinosaurs.
I followed the path and got my first glimpse of the sculptures.
You don’t get those in Eaton Park.
These models have been in place since 1854. 161 years! They were the first attempt to make large scale models of dinosaurs in the world, and were designed using the Victorians’ best ideas of what they looked like -they were made a full six years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Scientifically speaking, we now consider the sculptures to be rather inaccurate. But for me that just makes them all the more interesting.
The Iguanodon models, the Park’s most famous residents.
A close up of Iguanodon.
There are not just dinosaur sculptures there. The idea was to make models of extinct animals from different eras. The dinosaurs were one part of that.
This is a Megaloceros. You can probably guess it is related to the deer.
It was well worth the trip out to see them. It takes a bit of extra time to get there, and it’s a little bit off the tourist track, but there is plenty to see out there. I might even come back when it’s a bit warmer.
After ticking the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs off my ‘to do’ list, I headed back to central London and did the usual things tourists do when they are in central London.
The London Eye is ready for Christmas.
Parliament, taken from the other side of Westminster Bridge.
It was then time to head home. And I managed to make it back, despite Greater Anglia’s best efforts. My train back to Norwich was cancelled so I had to make a detour to Cambridge in order to get home! I didn’t mind that much though, it had still been a decent day.
I have another week off work in January – I wonder what I’ll get up to then?
LEE PAYNE 