Every year I try to have my photo taken in front of a Christmas tree somewhere in London, for use as an e-card to the world. This one’s outside St Pancras Grand restaurant, in St Pancras station. Taken around 3pm on December 24th 2010, by my friend Ms Silke.
I couldn’t manage a smile which didn’t turn out too smirky, too smug or too camp, as in punchably camp rather than adorably camp. So I went with a mad stare instead.
Now, what does my stare look like? A terror of the future (this is my last Christmas in my 30s)? A defiant out-staring of the future, basilisk-like? Or a Jimmy Wales tactic? In banner adverts over at Wikipedia, Wiki-boss Mr Wales has been staring the world into donating money for the site.
Well, that wasn’t my intention with the photo but if it works I should really do one of my occasional rattlings of the DE tip jar. I’m currently living on less than the full dole due to my surreal/hilarious/unhappy experience with the DWP earlier this year, and I’m now having trouble affording even a hair cut, as you can see. Plus I need the encouragement to write here more often.
(rattles tip jar)
Thank you. And now, the e-card.
. 
Here’s what Christmas Day 2010 looked like in Waterlow Park, London N6.
Officially it wasn’t a White Christmas, as there hadn’t been any fresh snow falling. But the snow from earlier in the week was still very much laying round and, if you will, about. Waterlow Park’s duck pond was completely frozen over, for the first time (I think) in my umpteen years of playing Santa to the waterfowl. The mallards and coots had gone, but a few moorhens were strutting about nervously on the ice. They seemed happy enough to gorge on my Proper Non-Bread Duck Food Pellets.
My friend Ms Silke, who also was spending Christmas alone in N6, brought a flask of mulled wine and some stollen cake, and we spent an entirely lovely Christmas Day lunchtime on a nearby bench.
I’d told my parents a while ago that I was looking for a letter opener, ideally vintage. This Christmas, they gave me a rather unique one as a present. It had previously belonged to my Aunt Renee, and is entirely handmade, seemingly from a piece of scrap metal welded to a large army bullet, with a British royal crest stamped on the handle.
On the blade is engraved ‘Loos. Le 25 Septembre 1915’.
The letter opener came with a WW1 medal. ‘The Great War For Civilisation 1914-1919.’ On the milled edge it says: ‘2 Lieut. L.W. Strugnell, RAF’. Mum thinks he was a friend of the family rather than an ancestor.
I’ll be putting the letter opener into active service once more.
(P.S. Re the iPhone box in the last photo. I’m flatsitting for a friend, and the box is hers. I’ve still yet to own an iPhone or iPad. I was, however, given a Kindle, which I love and which I really should write about soon.)
Tags: Christmas Day, Proper Letters
