Christmas Songs

There is no artist of the week this week with having Lucy here and most of the early part week being spent at home rather than driving about I thought it would be better to have a list of favourite christmas songs of mine. So without delay here they are:

1. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
2. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow - Dean Martin
3. All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
4. Winter Wonderland - Bing Crosby
5. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra
6. Fairytale of New York - The Pogues
7. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon
8. Merry Christmas everybody -Slade
9. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town -Bruce Springsteen
10. Walking In The Air - Aled Jones

I know everyone has there own list and as I made this one other people tried to add their own to it but this is the ones that come to mind and I'm sure there are many more I have missed off that are firm favourites of my own and others. These were the one I first thought of. Have a wonderful time listening to some of them in a supermarket near you!

Freezing Sunday

Some people might say we are lucky in at least we haven't had the snow that has fallen all around us, and I guess we are, but it is still bitterly cold and with the wind chill factored the temperature outside feels like it is minus ten. Looking at the forecast things look to stay the same for at least another three days to come and the mess that is going to cause to everyones travel plans continues. I just hope it doesn't ruin too many peoples Christmas's including my own.

Today see's the start of a extended stay for our little Lucy. She is staying here for four nights with me while her mummy is away on holiday. I hope she has a super time while she is here and it was with this thought in my head that I listened to the church bells in Oakham some two miles away this morning. It is a sound I hadn't heard for ages. To give you some idea it must have been at least two Christmas's ago that I can remember hearing them and then it was on Christmas day. I guess normally the traffic on the A606, which although hardly audible outside, drowns out the very faint sound of the bells. I guess it just an indication of how little traffic there is at the moment.

The morning was spent just relaxing and having a lovely coffee, reading the news on the BBC website until it was time to pick up Lucy at elven o'clock. After cleaning the car window of ice I set off to Oakham to get her and all the toys that came with her. Her mummy gave her an extra big cuddle before we left. As usual she was more than happy to see me and we chatted all the way home with the occasional cough along the way.

Lucy spent the first bit of her time here watching a film on the the television, but it did't hold her attention for long and soon she was playing with all kinds of toys she found in the family room and made a royal mess. She seemed a lot better than the last time she was here and I'm confident her cold will be gone by the time Christmas day comes along. It was while she was playing that we got a call the Catherine and Emily would be delayed by a day. The weather in Leeds is really icy and the roads are mainly untreated. Safety comes first and although I was disappointed it is probably for the best. 

With money being tight and Christmas just round the corner the only place we went in the afternoon was to the supermarket after dinner to get some food. It didn't seem to bother Lucy where she went and she had a lovely time making people smile. She such a good girl in the shops and she is hardly ever demanding which is wonderful in a child of her age. 

After we got back home she help clean out the hamster before she returned to downstairs to play some more and make some more mess, mainly in the family room thankfully. I'm not sure what Emily and Catherine will make of it, but I guess there will be time in the morning for me and Lucy to clean up most of it. Eventually she settled down to watching a little television snuggled under blanket. This took her trough to dinner.

After dinner there just a little time to play before it was off upstairs to have her bath. She had a lovely time in the bath. After her bath I tucked her up in bed and read her some stories. She wanted to play with her toy car before bed and I let her. As I read her last story I changed it to see she was would notice. Her face was a picture and something I wont forget when I said that the spaceship wanted new tyres, the frog was red and that the cat was dog. It was really funny. After a kiss and cuddle from all the people she loves and a special one at the end she went down to sleep with her hands over her ears. It is funny she is doing the hands thing because it something quite new. I asked her why but she could really explain, all I can think of it is noisy at her home in Oakham for some reason, voices or something.

It been a nice day as it always is when Lucy if here. I have missed Emily and Catherine but I understand about the roads in Leeds and it nice to know they are safe a warm, rather having to have traveled on dangerous roads. I know the snow up there and the ice is far worse than it here. Having said that I'm really looking forward to see them tomorrow lunchtime.

Colds and Cold

The cold weather has really set in again with the daytime temperature remaining in the negatives for all of the day. Thankfully there hasn't been much snow but there is lots of ice everywhere and going out in the car is a guessing game as to witch roads have been gritted and are wet and those that look wet and are covered in black ice. This was the picture in Rutland when I woke up this morning.

With snow on the ground it was a slightly early start to the day to allow time to clean the car before setting off for school. Not the thing that is popular with Emily who loves her bed so much in the morning but one she accepted this she was quickly dressed and ready for school. Of course there is no such problem with Catherine who was ready for school without any coaching. I do hope that Emily one day grows out of her love of her bed first thing and becomes like Catherine but somehow I don't think it is not a good idea to hold ones breath on that happening.

With the girls safely at school despite the weather there was time for a coffee and then it was off to get Lucy form Oakham. Earlier in the morning I had received a email saying that she had a cold, to be honest I wasn't to surprised after all she was here when Emily and Catherine started developing theirs. I just hope she wasn't as bad as they were at the start. When I saw her she was coughing away but seemed in good form and was soon chatting away. It seems the period of quietness when I picked her up has gone away. Lets hope it stay's that way, I was rather concerned by it as it was so unlike her to be like that. 

With Lucy in a good mood we headed off to the petrol station to get some fuel for the car for later and, for in the day, some lollipops that Lucy wanted for her sisters. All the way there we chatted and then all the way back home. When we arrived we was greeted by one very exceptionally excited George, to whom she gave a treat too before even getting her coat off.

Soon it was off to the family room to play with her toys while coughing away. Thankfully I had got some cough medicine she could have and gave her some of that to ease her cough. It wasn't bothering her too much but it did sound bad at one point and for a while she took herself off to the sofa to cuddle up under blanket and watch television. One thing she did love was watch Peppa Pig on my phone, while sitting on my lap, which she thought was great fun.

With lunchtime approaching we headed out to do some special window shopping at Peterborough via Corby for a bite to eat at Greggs the bakers. Lucy love's Greggs and today wasn't any different and she had a ham roll and a drink before we head off again. I took her to "Toy's R Us" to see what sort of thing took her fancy and gather idea's for Christmas presents for her. I already had some idea's from the last time we took her in to a shop with toy's but I wanted to make sure she hadn't changed her mind. She had a great time in the shop, we all did, as she went round trying out some of the toys they had on display and it only went on to confirm that her interest hadn't change much since last time she was in a similar shop, although I think she can forget £250 electric car, the budget won't stretch that far, well not for quite a while.

When it came time to leave there was not fuss and she happily marched out the shop and we head back to Oakham to pick her big sister, Emily, from school. It isn't a long drive and we were soon waiting outside the school for Emily to arrive complete with a trifle she had cooked and a lovely cushion that she had designed made. It was funny it was the design she always wanted for her bedroom in Leeds and when she when she first moved to Rutland. The room never got finished, it was barely started after Catherine spilt all the paint, although I'm not sure why it never got done later, time I guess. It is one of those jobs that will need doing when the spring comes around again, we did Lucy's room last spring. When we eventually got back to Langham Catherine was waiting for us and she gave Lucy a massive hug before they all started playing together. One of the games they played involved dressing up Lucy in as many arm clothes as they could fit on her. She loved it, they all did and all you could here was their roars of laughter.

Soon it was time for dinner and they all sat down together before the inventible getting Lucy ready go back to Oakham moment arrived. Tonight she didn't want to leave but that is nothing new. It has constantly made made us late recently and if it wasn't for the lollipops we brought earlier as a reward then it would have even taken longer get her to leave. I love the hugs and kisses she gives out to everyone before she goes back. I'm just sad it has to happen at all and not what I wanted for Lucy. With Lucy back in Oakham it was back in the car and then off towards Leeds to take the girls to see their mum. Thankfully the roads were clear and the trip wasn't to bad and I was soon safe back in Langham. 

I hope Lucy doesn't pass on her cold anyone. It's not a every nice one as I started to find out just after she left. My head felt funny, my tummy ached and my throat was sore. It just what I didn't need at the run up to Christmas when there is so much to do. I just hope her cold goes by the time the presents arrive in her bedroom and it doesn't get in the way of her Christmas. I'm so looking forward to seeing her Sunday when she comes to stay for four nights. It is going to be so much fun having back with her other sisters and it will feel like she belongs here again.

Radio

Over the years, from the time I spent without a television, I have really fell in love with radio again as an entertainment form. Why I say "again" was as a child I listened to a lot of radio, In the past I use to listen to BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio5. Since then with the advent of DAB with have more stations to listen too from the BBC I have loved the music BBC 6 Music and the comedy and drama on BBC Radio 7. If you don't have a DAB radio then get one and listen to what you have been missing out on, it not just the BBC that use it there are loads of other stations to listen to.

I know my love of radio started when I was very young when I use to listen drama and comedy on BBC Radio 4 and later late night listening to LBC secretly while I was in bed and meant to be sleeping. Even my love of cricket comes from the radio through years of listening to Test Match Special as I did my paper round as a child. The introduction of BBC Radio 5 was ideal for me with it's mix of news and magazine format shows and that is one station I still listen to for my news and comment, before that it was the today programme on BBC Radio 4. When I discovered DAB radio and BBC 7 I started reliving my past with their great radio shows from the past that are still relevant today as they were when were first broadcast. Great comedy in my opinion is timeless. 

Like many radio was a great introduction to music while growing up. In the morning my mum would listen to Radio 1 while I had my breakfast and I got older I moved onto classic pop stations about like Radio Luxembourg, Radio Caroline, which was a pirate station that broadcast from a ship in the north sea, and the new commercial radio stations that had just started to appear as my musical tastes formed. Without radio back then there was no real means of listening to music without physically going down to the record shop and buying it. I remained a loyal commercial radio station listener for years to come before finally listing to Virgin Radio which I once managed to get a request played on much to my amazement. Then there was few lean years until I discovered BBC 6 Music which became my stable radio station of choice and where I discovered lots of new music. So for me it was bad news when the BBC announced it would be winding up the station sometime in the future and just make sure it lost listeners it started making it sound like BBC Radio 2. So at the moment I am Musically devoid of a station to listen to and now go looking for new bands and music on the internet.

So what of the future of radio, well that is going to be interesting in todays world of the internet and downloads. What I see is a bright future for talk radio while I see the popular music stations suffering. There are whole generations growing up now where their source of music is the internet and they have never heard radio in the same way as the generations before them have. This new generation is accustomed to picking and mixing there own music and playing it when and where they want to. It is this choice that will see the numbers of young people listening to music on the radio decrease year in and year out. Music stations won't die altogether but a lot of the smaller commercial stations and medium ones won't be able to generate the incomes to carry on broadcasting and with the pressure on the BBC to save money even some of their music services will go. I hope I'm wrong because radio is an ideal platform for music broadcasting.

Harriers last flight

Today was a sad day for the people of RAF Cottesmore and the people of Rutland it saw the last flight of the Harriers that are based at the RAF base that is due to be closed in 2013. The base itself was closed by the previous Labour Government but the Collation Government have decided to sell off the aircraft that are based there with 14 aircraft rumoured to be going to India. The Government have said it was the hardest defence decision they have taken but it in reality it might just turn out to be the most stupid. The country is building new carriers with no planes to put on them and it will make us look like fools, and for what a small saving when bigger savings could be achieved by retiring other aircraft with poorer serviceability. 

It even came as a surprise to me that the over ninety five percent of the Harrier force is serviceable at one time compared to the ageing Tornados with only seventy five percent of the fleet able to fly and then with on going problems of engine oil leaks that limits there range. It is reported that the last batch of Tornados that went to the Falkland Islands had to go by sea because their engines wouldn't make the flight without running out of oil. But that is not the whole story, the Harriers are one of the top ten combat aircraft in service and in the Falklands war were nicknamed the black death. They shot down over twenty aircraft in air to air combat without losing a single aircraft. Since then they have gone on to fight in the Gulf ways and more recently in Afghanistan. The Harrier is unique it can fly from anywhere and doesn't need a base as such. It is ideal for the current actions be fought by the United kingdom even if it lacks the weapon load of more conventional aircraft. You don't need concert runways, just a clearing and firm ground for them to fly from and trees to hide them in. There can be deployed anywhere.

I have said this before and I will say it again, the reason why we can't afford these aircraft is that we had to bail out the banks and the mess they have caused. They are the biggest threat to this country and without regulation they will continue to be so. They have done more to damage the UK than any terrorist group could hope for. What we are seeing in terms of cuts and the affect it will have on the nation is monumental. They have done to the UK what the terrorists we are fighting could only dream of doing know that it was nothing but a dream.  

I will miss the Harriers over the skies of Rutland and I feel sorry all the jobs that will be lost. These are people families with children. I know what it is like to live on thin air. They have that to come and it is not a nice place to be. What is worse it make the plans Hawksmeed and the planed developments in the North West of Oakham look like a fool hardy at best, but more of that in a later post. For now it is a sad day to see such a wonderful aircraft leave our skies forever.