This Year's "One New Thing"...

As I mentioned in my Guide to the Stress-free Christmas, I quite like the notion of building a strong foundation for Christmas and then each year adopting a "one new thing" rule - in order to avoid things becoming samey and repetitive, each year try to identify one new thing to try.

However, this year I think our "one new thing" is actually going to be "no new thing" - partly because Christmas worked so well last year that I'm keen just to keep things the same, and partly because we're rather over-stretched at the moment and so this is a year to just keep things on narrow rails. Which is fine - for various reasons we're all going to be somewhat busier this year than last (some of which I can't talk about), so not taking anything extra on feels like a good step.

That being the case, Christmas this year is going to look somewhat like this:

• Obviously, we have presents to buy and wrap for a number of people. This has started, but has quite a long way to go. I'd like to get all the presents bought in the next two weeks, and then wrapped in the week after, but we'll see.
• Likewise, we have cards to send to a number of people. I'd hope to get this dealt with fairly soon, too.
• The Christmas tree and other decorations will go up over the weekend, officially on Sunday. (I then have a second tree to put up on Monday...)
• We need to place an order with the butcher in the next couple of weeks.
• There's the village Christmas Lights Switch-on, which happens tonight. My band's competing event has been cancelled this year, likely permanently, and it looks like our annual visit to the Zoo lights has likewise fallen by the wayside.
• However, we will go to the Mill Farm Christmas event, including a visit to Santa there.
• Funsize has a number of performances with her Stage School over the next few weeks.
• My work night out is the Friday before Christmas (and LC the week before). I'm not planning as later a night as last year - I think I'd prefer just to get to bed.
• The weekend before Christmas I'm hoping to do some Christmas baking. Not as much as last year (as we had too much), and a different selection, but a couple of nice things.
• The Big Shop will hopefully be on the last Friday before Christmas, but may slip a little later. Then, a day or two before Christmas we need to pick our order up from the butcher.
• Then, on Christmas Eve I'm hoping to take the children over to my parents' for a visit, followed by the Christingle service, and then bed.
• Christmas Day should then have the same format as last year - a relatively slow morning involving presents, breakfast, and a nice walk (weather permitting), followed by the big meal, and then a fairly lazy afternoon/evening. At some point we'll watch a nice film or something on TV.
• Then, on Boxing Day it's over to my parents' again, this time for the big family gathering. Fun!

And that's basically it. Which, in fairness, is quite a lot.

Thoughts on the Budget

I must admit, I had expected today's budget to be absolutely horrendous - the various bits of speculation I'd seen online had suggested it would be a near-perfect attack on every aspect of my finances, and that has proven not to be the case.

In the event, the effects we'll face are likely twofold: the freezing of the tax bands will mean paying slightly more tax than might have been expected... but in the way that frankly is unlikely to be noticeable, and the change to NI payments on salary sacrifice pensions means paying a little more in NI (though by my calculations is a pretty small increase). That's not horrible (though I can well understand that people living in very expensive properties, or those in London, people saving large amounts in cash ISAs, or people who use electric cars might feel differently).

And, frankly, the removal of the two-child limit for child support (and the corresponding "rape clause") can only be a good thing.

So, a cause for hints of optimism, I think.

However...

I was extremely bemused to see that the OBR published their report (by "mistake") ahead of the budget, meaning that the key analysis was all in place before Rachel Reeves even stood up to talk.

But more to the point, there was all the speculation beforehand, which as I said had given me the impression that this was going to be a horror show. The thing is, all that speculation involved a great deal of talking down the economy, of suggesting all manner of badness, which will have prompted a load of people to take actions that now are ill-judged (such as, for instance, the suggestion that the rules for pension lump sums were going to change, encouraging people to take them early, or the likely damage to investor confidence). There's a decent change that that very speculation caused damage to the economy.

Needless to say, this is something of a problem. (And, incidentally, I don't recall this level of feverish speculation about any other Budget. I don't like pointing to misogyny as the sole root cause of things, because it tends to be reductive, but in this case I can't help but think that it was a big part of it. Either that, or our right-wing press really hate Labour, which they do, and thought this could be a useful target.)

That said, I don't really know what could be done about that - I'm really loathe to advocate restrictions to the press without absolute need.

End of a (Quite Short) Era...

On Sunday Funsize and I finished our read-through of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". Rereading this book for the first time since it was first published, I'm reminded of my two previous conclusions regarding the book: on the one hand, it's a great ending to the series, and itself ends really well; on the other it is by far the weakest book in the series, and for large stretches of it just isn't very good. (Basically, there about about 200 pages in the first half of the book that should just be dropped.)

But that's not really the topic of this post.

As we were getting close to the end, Funsize was presented with a choice: we could then tackle "The Lord of the Rings" ("The Hobbit" was not quite the first book I read to her), or we could make a switch: LC would take over her bedtime, and I would instead read to Surprise!.

In the event, Funsize elected to make the switch. So instead Surprise! and I will be making a start on (probably) Winnie the Pooh, or maybe Thomas the Tank Engine. And then we'll see - there are lots of books ahead of us.

As I said, the end of an era, albeit a fairly short one.

#27: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", by J.K. Rowling (a book for Funsize)

Counts as Fun

One of the consequences of getting everything locked down in spreadsheets is that I now have a monthly ritual: at the end of the month I cross-reference my bank balance against my spreadsheet of expenses and proceed to move some things around: the credit card gets paid, some money gets moved into a pot for the bigger expenses that come in the second half of the year, and then whatever is left goes into savings.

In theory, I then forget all about this until the same time next month; in practice, there's constant adjusting, tweaking, and general obsessing over the spreadsheet.

All of which pretty much counts as fun these days. Which is perhaps a measure of how everything else is going right now. Oh well.

The Tale of the Lost Book

Book #26 for the year was supposed to be "Warriors of God", by Andrzej Sapkowski. I had started it some weeks ago, and was making rapid progress, when disaster struck - there came the morning when I had it at home, then didn't have it when I reached the office, and yet it was neither at home, nor in the office, nor in the car. Somehow, it had disappeared.

I very rarely lose things - I do quite often misplace them, but they generally turn up (often where I left them last time I had them; sometimes where they have been hidden by the hiding-things fairies). And it drives me mental - it doesn't really matter what it is, but having something disappear like that creates a gap in the mental model of the universe, which is just endlessly frustrating.

In this instance, it also created a conundrum, because I've already picked out my remaining books for the year. As noted, book #26 was supposed to be "Warriors of God", which is part two of a trilogy, with the third part also on the list. I also had "Skyward Flight", but having just finished "Defiant" I had been hoping to delay that one a little. Book #27 will be the final Harry Potter, which I'm currently reading to Funsize.

But the final book that I had picked out was one that I at that time had on pre-order, as it had not yet been published at this time this all went down. So I couldn't really start that one. Suddenly, all my best laid plans had very much gone agley.

Anyway, the upshot of all of that is this: "Skyward Flight" is a collection of three novellas, so I ready the first while waiting for the new book to be published. Then I read that (see below). In the meantime, I ordered, and have now received, a replacement copy of "Warriors of God", which I will resume next. And that, more or less, puts the sequence back where it should be: book #26 is finished, #27 is the Harry Potter that will finish imminently, then #28 is "Warriors of God", #29 is "Skyward Flight", and then we finish with the third volume of that trilogy.

Unless things change again...

#26: "Firefly: Aim to Misbehave", by Rosiee Thor

Experimental Cookery 2025: Slow Cooker Vegan Chilli

We're having a pot-luck lunch at work, and I have decided that my offering is going to be a vegetarian chilli. So I've had a look around, and found a method on the internet. Today was the test drive.

As might be expected from a slow cooker recipe, this one was quick and easy - chop things up, put them in the cooker, stir to mix, and then wait a very long time.

We had the resultant chilli with a mix of baked potatoes and rice, some pickled jalapeños, guacamole, and (non-vegan) sour cream and cheese. Oh, and some Doritos. It was something of a feast!

The verdict: yeah, that was good. The jalapeños definitely helped - it was perhaps slightly lacking in a kick without... but then, tastes vary on that one, so providing the option is the way to go. But it was hot, filling, and flavourful - all the things you want from a meal. And it's ideal for the purpose I need it for in a few weeks.

We'll definitely have this one again, though it's unlikely to entirely replace our regular (non-vegan) chilli recipe!

Officially Underway

This morning I purchased the first of my Christmas presents for the year. So I'm now officially underway!

Obviously, the hope is to get all the presents bought by the end of the first week in December, get them all in hand by mid-December (earlier would be good, but isn't actually possible), and get them all wrapped by the end of the 18th of December. We'll see how that goes - at the moment I don't even know all the people that I'm buying for, which rather hampers my ability to select a gift.

(I say "obviously", but of course it's not obvious at all. Those deadlines are entirely arbitrary. But as part of my "stress-free" Christmas, I like to get ahead on those things that are amenable to getting ahead on, and buying presents definitely falls into that category.)

You may note that I've discarded my previous stance that I don't start on Christmas until December. That's a consequence of having children - in the past I was in the habit of taking a day off work early in December to get everything organised, and indeed I had time at other times to actually do things. These days, I absolutely can't use one of my days off for this purpose (I just don't have any to spare), and my available time for anything is sorely limited. Which means that things just take longer. So now my rule is that I start Christmas after we get past the Armistice, giving a few weeks to get things done, with the hope of concluding the present buying at the same time as previously.

To Stop, or to Do It Forever?

It is now eight years since we moved into our current home. As is basically standard practice, at the point that we moved we forwarded our mail, and made sure that "everyone" was aware of our new contact details. The previous owners of our current house did likewise. Those redirections have, of course, long since expired.

Shortly after one of those redirections expired, we started receiving a small number of letter addressed to the previous owners. So we reached out, got a forwarding address, and sent them on. All of which is to the good, except that about once a year we still receive a letter (and only one) addressed to the previous owner. I'm almost certain, but not entirely so, that it's junk mail.

So I find myself at a quandary.

On the one hand, it basically costs nothing just to keep readdressing the letter and chucking it back in the mail - there's a post box close enough to being "on the way" that it's just the cost of a little ink and a few steps.

On the other hand, eight years is probably long enough that if they'd wanted this company to know their new address they would have let them know.

I'm also struck by the reality that either we have to stop forwarding these letters at some point, or we have to commit to doing so effectively forever. And, of course, if they ever move again, I'd just be creating another new problem for another set of new owners...

So... yeah, I think I'm done. I forwarded this week's letter, and I'll continue to forward anything that looks like it isn't from a business (on the off chance that a long-lost friend tries to get back in touch), but for anything that looks like it's just spam I'm now going to introduce it to the shredder.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Lovely Home-made Gravy

We've just had a fairly indifferent dinner - venison sausages, mashed potato, and gravy (plus peas and sweetcorn for me). The sausages were nice, the mash was okay but a bit bland (could have done with boiling the potatoes for another minute or two, and perhaps adding some mustard to give it a kick - but we didn't have any), and the peas and sweetcorn were as you would expect.

The method for the gravy came from the Hairy Bikers "Perfect Pies" book, which advocated slicing and frying an onion, adding some wine and some flour, some stock, boiling it down and straining. Nothing much to it, really.

I think that what went wrong was two-fold: too much flour, and boiling down a little too long. The outcome, therefore, was a really thick gravy that tasted fine but looked fairly unappealing - not really what I was aiming for.

I actually have loads of different methods for gravy scattered among my many books, most of which go unnoticed (since I don't generally care for gravy, we only ever have it fairly seldom, and when we do I tend to just bust out the granules as a lazy solution). But it's something that it's good to have in the back pocket, if only for special occasions. So I'll be making gravy again... just not necessarily this one. Though I should perhaps note, if it wasn't obvious, that the weaknesses of this meal were more down to my preparation of the components rather than anything in the books.