A Goose, A Collage and a Twitter

Christmas has started, despite my best efforts to fend it off, by the ordering of the Christmas Goose. Well, you have to do these things quickly, or the butcher gets all goosed out, and the next thing you know is that you end up having nut roast for Christmas Dinner because the Head Cheffette is a vegetarian.

I am not having nut roast for Christmas Dinner, I hasten to add. I intend to scour the VegSoc website/ Vegetarian Magazine/ etc etc and find something a lot more interesting than that.

Anyway, caught up with the excitement of securing the goose, and the re-appearance of Dan Corbett Weatherman Extraordinaire on the lunchtime news (hurrah!) after a way-too-long absence, I went and finished my Christmas shopping, too. Which means that I can now ignore the whole festive malarkey until, oh, 20th December at least.

But what, I thought, shall I do for Christmas this year that is special? After all, I have a new Grand-daughter. It will be her first Christmas. And as I thought this, I was staring at the wall in the living room, the wall which has borne several wallpaper samples of late to be assessed in various lights as to the best selection for the ambience of the room, and as soon as everyone comes around to the choice I want them to make, I shall get wallpapering. So far, my choice has received 'nil points' which although disappointing, is not surprising, and what I should really do, because a) I am the chief decorator and b) I am at home staring at walls all day is just go ahead and put up regardless.

Anyway, this wall is currently blank save for a couple of pictures, one of a beach scene, a legacy from my sister who was a talented artist, the other a legacy from a holiday in Yorkshire a few years ago, of some sheep. They have a lot of sheep in Yorkshire, and they don't mind whose car they fling themselves in front of, either.

And then I thought, 'I know! I'll do a Christmas collage! An ENORMOUS 3-D collage, of a snow scene, with fat, smiley tissue paper snowmen, and cheerful woolly robins, with an edging of padded felt holly leaves.' Oh yes, I can see it in my mind already. But then I see a lot of things in my mind, and I wouldn't want to turn them all into collage art to attached to the living room wall.

I thought of the pros - it would satisfy my creative bent, it would cover up the huge expanse of bare wall, and any wallpaper I decided to put up post-Christmas would be a welcome relief from the inane grins of snowmen and beady-eyed of robins.

I thought of the cons - 'Pandora, leave the collage alone', 'Pandora, leave the collage alone,' and 'Pandora, leave the effing collage alone you effing nuisance of an interfering cat.'

Well, that was settled then. Bring out the paper and start designing, put Pandora in a cupboard until January 6th. Or January 1st, because that's when I always take down the decorations because I don't like 'em hanging around the place into the New Year. New Year HAS to have a tidy start. End of.

And then, and please don't ask me why because I can't think what possessed me - I decided to hook up with Twitter. God Lord, what a palaver that was. I thought it would be a simple process, quickly executed whilst I was waiting for the potatoes to boil for the mash for the top of the spicy kidney bean 'n' vegetable non-shepherd's pie (my own invention!). But no. It involved me making a series of choices which will no doubt result in my identity being stolen and some Albanian Princess emptying my bank account. Actually, I had already considered this possibility, and lied about a few things vis a vis my identity. But other choices, which involved finding other people I know who Twitter, led to a dead end because AOL were being rubbish. But I did manage a tweet before I got pipped off with the whole doo-dah.

And when I went back to have a tweet just now, I signed in and was told 'Twitter is currently on overload - please come back later.'

What?????????? Overload????? What's that supposed to mean? That's never going to work for me - overload. If I want to tweet, I want to tweet NOW. Not later. I need to do this stuff in the window of time I set aside for collecting e-mail, blogging, random interwebbly research/ shopping and stuff like that. Once I'm gone for the day, I'm gone. I have obligations to other windows of time to fulfil. I can't be doing with hopping on and off the interwebbly as the whim takes me in order to catch Twitter at a point of underload. Or whatever. I'm not a mobile internetter, you know.