From the drafts: Crafty games

This was one of the final TinaLostInSpace posts that never made it. That's because I only added the photos. No comments, no writing, no nothing...I'll do that now.

It'll probably not surprise you that I was big into crafts when I was little. Every Christmas and birthday I got something that needed me to make, create, paint, set, do. I had them all, plaster of Paris, clay, Fimo modelling clay...and these fine examples of craftiness.

Latch hook is actually quite hard to do, which is why this remains mostly undone.

The weaving loom though...

Oh yeah, half done as well.

Sylvanian Families paint by numbers is done. Actually, this was a practice one just done on paper, not the 'canvas' they give you. So what, I liked to practice my crafts.

There was something I did particularly enjoy about the things I found - the box kids. You know, the ones that demonstrate what you're supposed to do and how well they can do it (which, no matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to recreate). Take these examples:

I don't know how old you have to be before you can be described as 'preppy' but I'd say that boy has reached it. (Discover Food Technology allowed to do experiments on mouldy bread and the like. You got your own petri dishes and everything.]

Oh hair, hair, hair. So big you don't notice the braces until at least the second look. (Bead and stitch, you probably had one yourself. Ahem.)

It's good to have your ribbons match your shirt and pinafore combo. (Clothes peg dolls could be the theme of a four Yorkshire (wo)men skit. Dolls? We used to dream of dolls, we used to make them out of clothes pegs. Clothes pegs? Luxury.)

I also found a few card games. Nothing was complete, except this one, The Neighbours Card Game.

It's like a version of Happy Families, you have to complete the families, which if you can't see are the Robinsons, the Mangels, the Clarkes, and the Ramseys. Proper old Neighbours like.

Well, you don't just lose your Neighbours cards, do you? 

Ah good 80s times!

From the drafts: old computers

This should have gone on August 17th, but I think I thought I was plaguing you with posts about my roof space tidy. So better now to post it when I'm plaguing you with posts in order to beat the deadline eh?

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Technically the tidying started last week. Dad started to throw away our old computers, like this one.

A Mackintosh PowerMac 5500. It boasted a 4GB hard drive and interweb capabilities.

This was its laptop cousin, a PowerBook 5300cs. No one in my house remembers actually buying it. Do let us know if you think it's yours.

Our very first computer, a Spectrum ZX. That's not a tape deck folks, that's where you load the games!

I found video of the screen you got when a game was loading on You Tube. There's no sound though, I remember there being a screechy kind of sound.

Our favourite games were Treasure Island and Postman Pat. Both are on You Tube, of course.



That's 128k technology right there my friend.

Then the Postman Pat game. You can click through to it here, I didn't want to post it because of the username of the person who posted it - you might be sensitive to such words. Bet you click through now though...

This game became famous in our house for the phrase 'Cup of tea Pat?'. Even now, every once in a while it's likely my parents will say it each other (neither of them are called Pat, you probably knew that though.)

From the drafts: I've got a golden ticket

[This is from June 22nd. As you might guess, I'm excited for 2012 arrive!]

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The email finally telling us what we got in the Olympics came last night. I had heard rumours that if you checked your 2012 account in the early hours of the morning then you'd see what they got. I tried that, as it happens at 23.59pm and nothing. At the stroke of midnight I hit refresh and bam! There were my bloody handball tickets listed in all their glory!

Obviously I got mum to check hers immediately and I am delighted to say that she got Athletics tickets for the last night! How exciting! The night includes:

- 4 x 100m Men's Final (no baton drops in the heats Team GB, USA or Jamaica please and thank you)

- 5000m Men's Final (Mo Farah, I hope you decide to double up)

- 800m Women's Final (Jenny Meadows? Come on girl!)

So today I have been reliving some 4 x 100m action. I must have watched this about five times today. My favourite things are Steve Cram saying 'In fact it was terrible!" and Maurice Green's seriously unimpressed face during the medal ceremony. Brilliant!

Slightly concerned that Team GB don't really have many sprinters left in their prime, never mind their baton dropping. So who knows if we'll see them even make the final.

And there's this one, which lacks Steve Cram's excitement. The commentators seem slightly underwhelmed by Jamaica breaking a world record which stood since the days of Carl Lewis. So you'll have to make your own excitement of the magic of 37.10.




[December edit: I was lucky enough to receive a How to Watch the Olympics book for Christmas. It's very good, although, strangely it lists the sport as Handball, not Bloody Handball as it is referred to in our house.]

'Resolutions'

My resolution this year was to write more. I wrote my dissertation, all 20,000 words of it (60,000 if you include appendices. Just saying.) So check that one off the list.

I also vowed to blog more. And I did do that too! Last year I blogged 64 times. This year, I'm up to 66. Oh yeah! I say 'up to' because obviously this one will make it 67. Plus if you include the drafts that I never quite published (but am about to) I'll beat the dizzy heights of 2009 level blogging. Not sure the glory days Princess blogging in 2005-2007 will ever return. Ah, glory days.

I'm not sure the point of resolutions is to do them on the last day, but I do like the pressure of a deadline.

Click here to read:
I've got a golden ticket
Old computers
Crafty games

Christmas activities

New Year's Eve. Ugh. Not only is Christmas over, it's followed by the most hyped two days of all. We've had a good Christmas, lots of reading (Michael Johnson's book, Gold Rush, and Bill Bryson's Troublesome Words, which made me never want to write again - I make so many mistakes), gaming (see below) and television watching. Right now I'm watching Who Do You Think You Are? Actually this one is called Who Do You Think You Are UK? because I recorded it from RTE (southerners say 'Who d'ya think ye aar? but OarTE. I know, you enjoy my deep observations on life.)

I was happy to chance upon it earlier this week because it's the one I saw being filmed on my way home from work one day. I blogged about it here. It was being made in the autumn of 2006, and depending how well you know/remember the life of Tina, I was away in Singapore 2007 so missed it's transmission. I had looked on repeats on BBC and on Yesterday or whatever channel they appear on, but then chanced upon it this week on RTE! Delighted, I was!

As I watched the opening credits I was a bit confused because there, staring off into the distance in front of some barn/battlefield/workhouse, were celebrities whose programmes I'd seen, like Chris Moyles and Kim Cattrall. Had I actually been back and missed it? Nope, the opening moments of the programme told me OarTE had repackaged the programme, with some Irish accented man narrating. So they must have picked out the 'best' ones too. I still checked the website to be doubley sure. Sure enough, Graham's was broadcast in October 2007. Yeeeoooo.

And sure enough when I watched the programme I saw the bit I saw being filmed.

My original photograph. My phone camera didn't have zoom. But it's him.

As I think this photo from the programme shows.

I forgot when I blogged about it first time of the Graham H connection and how if I had gone to get him he could have met his namesake. I speculated at the time that this might have made the cut. Well, a funny exchange with a passer-by did so, I'm going to say, for sure I could have been on TV.

"They seem nice..."

In other Christmas activity news, we finished our jigsaw. Like I might have mentioned before we're a jigsawing kind of family. Or as I've typed each time (and then corrected) jogsaw. Our jogsaw (I'm just going to leave it) of choice this Christmas was this olde worlde shopping from the 1950s.

It doesn't look too bad, there's lots of distinctive pieces, but that's exactly the problem - they're all distinctive pieces.

When the box arrived we put it under the tree, alongside the tin of Roses (a tree just looks better with a tin of Roses underneath. You can keep your Quality Street.) Anyway, it was all looking lovely. And then Christmas Eve came when I wrapped my presents and put them under the tree.

"But oh no, what this? Oh the jogsaw box. I'll move it to make room....presents, presents, presents...I'll carry them across..."

Crunch!

I stood on the box. Not only was there a massive Tina sized foot dent, the box even ripped in the impact. Oopsy. Thankfully no pieces were harmed in this act of clumsiness.

All good jogsawers know you start with the frame.

Getting there...

And we're done! Let me just say that basket down at the  bottom was ridiculously hard.

I got to spend some time round at the home of the Duke and Duchess of Finaghy. As any good host knows, after-dinner entertainment must be planned. Thankfully Nicky knew this and laid on a great game of Mullet Power Top Trumps. Makes me want to see the Royal Wedding version ever more now.

You couldn't make it up.

We also played a good old fashioned game of Boggle. Word games like this aren't my favourite, I'm just not very good at them. My words in this game were mostly made up of three letter words, like pea, lad, gin... I got a handful of four letter word (no, not that sort) and the whole game I only got one five letter word, sings. I thank you. I wasn't allowed coo, which I thought was a travesity. People coo at babies all the time. But they very generously allowed me peed, you know, I peed, you peed, he peed.

That's why it's best to just leave me to the jogsaws.

Saying happy Christmas!

I didn't send cards this year. Thanks very much for yours (if you sent me one). Sorry if you are thinking I'm extremely rude and struck you off my list. That's not true, I didn't even have a list. So please take this instead as my card.

Nothing says "Celebrate hope, joy and love!" like posing with a giant snowman. [Photo taken by Megan.]

While my card writing efforts were poor, I did make the effort for my present gift tags. Not just a present to show I cared, oh no! They got a hand-made, original, one of a kind Tina-made gift-tag. The lucky recipients got these bad boys.

Too bad my handwriting has deteriorated so badly that the inside of the tag wasn't as pretty as the outside. That said, if there was a world record for gift tag making and speed writing, I'd really pick up points in the speed writing element.

When I was making them I realised that gift tags such as these wouldn't really be the things for Johnny and Kiera. Kiera would probably try to eat the angel, which couldn't have many benefits (although who's to know what digesting a celestial being and their glad tidings might do for you?) Johnny, on the other hand, wouldn't care two hoots for an angel on a bit of sparkly card and nice ribbon. Furthermore, they can't read, so labelling any present with their names was pointless.

So I came up with a clever plan to show who the present was for and who it was from.

Kiera is even cuter as a little elf. I'm Sant-ina!

For Johnny's one, I tried to make one of us into a snowman, but the results were disappointing, and not in the least bit snowmany.  And besides, what goes with a snowman? Santa would have to be repeated and there didn't appear to be many more options than what I ended up with, but that meant I would have to be, well, a reindeer.

Although I'd prefer it if you called me Rutolphina.

I still printed the tags on sparkly paper.

Oh come on, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't abandon all my pretty crafting principles, could I?!

A fair exchange

Karen Photographer and I went for lunch together today.

She gave me a gingerbread man that wasn't decorated.

And he had a broken leg.

I gave her a card with a typo.

I should also mention it was a birthday card. From last month. I forgot to bring it with me when it was her birthday, alright.

I fixed the card.

And the gingerbread man? 

Well like Doc Brown would say, 'Legs? Where's he's going, he won't need legs!'

The Christmas switch

I'm not quite ready for Christmas yet. I should be. Earlier this week, rather smugly, I thought I had all my presents when I got my last delivery this week. I didn't even open the package til the afternoon, because I knew what it was. Ha! What a fool I was! In short, the bozos messed up my order, sent me the wrong thing and now I'm a present down because of the hoops I have to jump through in order to return it and get the right thing back. Bozos.

Other things I have to do include, but are not limited to:
-Tidying my room (I think it's always nice to have a tidy room and clean bed clothes on Christmas Eve.)
-Making rocky road traybakes (Just call me Nigella.)
-Ironing (All my ironing is in the utility room, sorry, I mean dining room. That'll never do.)
-Wrap presents (Although I traditionally don't do this until Christmas Eve. See below.)

Things I've done to get ready for Christmas include, but are not limited to:
-Decorate the tree (With Christmas Day being on a Sunday ours is up for the maximum time. Eh...see below again)
-Shopping (annual shopping trip to Belfast with Father and ordering some stuff online? Done.)
-The Christmas food big shop and annual trip to M&S (it's the only time we get food from M&S, best summed up in these four words 'Wensleydale and blueberry cheese'.)

I don't know about you, but what makes it Christmas to me is a hundred million tiny things, mostly based around our own family's Christmas traditions. Everyone has these. Dave Gorman on his radio show this week got people to tweet the things listeners' families did that no one else does. They included the men of the family all sitting down to watch a spaghetti western on Christmas Eve, someone's parents putting wrapping paper across their bedroom door frame so they have to burst out on Christmas morning (genius idea!) and someone having to tidy up all the discarded wrapping paper and when they go out to the kitchen to throw it out their final big present is out there. Ah family Christmas traditions!

My family's aren't that spectacular. Like most families we get special-don't-buy-them-any-other-time-of-year foods, like the aforementioned Wensleydale and blueberry cheese, but also Primula cheese (you may know it by it's more common name of 'toothpaste cheese') and duck spring rolls (and other party food) from M&S. You might be more extravagant than ours and get those foods during the year. Like Cheryl was at CHW when she brought Wensleydale and blueberry cheese camping! I've never been more shocked. Not us though.

We don't put our tree up until two Sundays before Christmas. Mostly because we get a real tree, but also because decorating the tree has always been a Sunday afternoon activity. We could never put our tree up on any other day. Another one is that I always go Christmas shopping with my dad. This originates from when David and I were small and dad would take us shopping, in turn, to buy each other's present. Equally, I don't wrap my presents until Christmas Eve, because my dad would take us in turn to wrap them on Christmas Eve while Mum was busy cooking stuff. It genuinely doesn't feel right to me to wrap Christmas presents before Christmas Eve, you know if there's someone you need to give their present to earlier than Christmas Day.

I think for these reasons my Christmas switch take a few weeks to come on. It's more your dimmer switch. It's not just seeing the Coca-Cola holidays a-coming advert or having Elf on TV. My Christmas switch does not get flicked on on 1st December or by me playing a Christmas song on my iPod. I can't make myself feel Christmassy in November. I'm immune to Christmas adverts before December; you're wasting your money on me advertisers. Same with Christmas music. To me, it's just wrong in November (and October - Scott Mills I'm looking at you). To me, it's a feeling that builds over a couple of weeks in December. I can't help it, it's just how I was raised.

That said, I'm there now. I unleashed my Christmas jumper this week. Oh yes.

Court of arbitration for Scattergories

Here's a idea world, can we have a Court of Arbitration for Scattergories? (Actually, for the sake of its acronym and to avoid confusion with the actual CAS it should be a Scattergories Court of Arbitration (SCA).) You know Scattergories, that game where you have certain categories and have to things in that category that begin with a particular letter, but can't be the same as anyone else suggested? (You may have played its unofficial home-made version of Bus Stop or Fish and Chips.)

I've never played a game where there weren't arguments about the validity of some answers. Actually, by the end of the game it's most of the answers. A few weeks ago we had a get-together with a few CHW buddies and out came Scattergories. It was all good fun and enjoyable craic, but there were some still some arguments going on.

Take for example the category 'Something cold'. It was suggested by one team that doorstep was something cold. Hmmm...I wouldn't say that's always true. Nor would I say it's the first (or even second) adjective you'd use to describe it. It got voted down. When that happened the team tried to back reference to the previous round when arctic wind was awarded a point. Not always cold they said. Well, while that might be true (I'm no geographer), the round after is not the time to launch your complaint.

The currencies category proved particularly difficult with the letters we had. C? I was quite pleased with my suggestion of cigarettes (in prison) as an answer. I thought it was clever and, more importantly true (if TV shows and movies are to be believed - I've never been) so the other teams might be so impressed with its brilliance that they'd allow it. Not so. It was voted down. Huh.

The next letter was B. Again difficult. But a discussion was had at the start of the round about whether you could have old currencies, like before the Euro. It was decided you could, so we offered the Belgian franc. It was a currency, it begins with B. But noooooo we were told, it begins with F they said. This is a tricky one and one of the reasons why I suggest the SCA. Because, if you go down the route of only allowing what the unit of currency is called (pound, won, dollar) then you rule out a lot of currencies in countries where the unit of currency was unimaginatively named the same as another. Dollar, well do you mean the US, Canadian, Singapore, Australian, Hong Kong and indeed most of the Caribbean? The Great British pound, or the Egyptian pound or the Guernsey pound?  North Korean or South Korean won?  However, I do see the counter-argument. If you take the country's name into account, well then it's just about writing the country (albeit with the correct currency unit). Tricky. But I stand by my earlier argument, the name of the currency needs the country as the descriptor. Other descriptors were allowed on the night, for example we were successful with old sock for something that smells beginning with O. Equally, I would argue that we would have been successful with sock in that same category but with S. Of course, maybe there would have been no arguments if they'd been easy letters. Standing by the unit arguments, you'd have to be as obscure as the Birr (Ethiopian) and the Colon (Costa Rican) to get any points in those rounds. Unless I'm missing something more obvious on XE.com.

Another one I'd like a ruling on from the SCA is on 'vegetables'. That term, I would argue, is somewhat ambiguous. Do you mean a plant grown for food or a more culinary/cultural definition, ie what it's eaten with/when it's eaten? Because you see, to me, in order for the game to be accessible for all, surely the aim of all board games, it should be the later. And as a consequence, we would have been allowed olive. Nobody puts olives in a fruit salad, or decorates a cheesecake with them. Equally, cream of rhubarb soup it's not a thing anyone eats on a cold winter day. And poor mushrooms, they're nothing in all of this.

Colours is definitely a category that needs a ruling on. Light and dark is tricky. I'd say lazy descriptors like that shouldn't be rewarded, but yet other descriptors (again, like old sock) are allowed, so reluctantly they have to be allowed on consistency grounds. You need the descriptors in colours otherwise you'd only get about 10 letters covered. Oh and I'd say the SCA needs a definitive ruling on black and the nay-sayers who say it's not a colour. So clearly a colour. Crayola have a crayon with it written on and everything.

On the YF weekend, we played the home-made version and colour was a category. For D my group offered denim. I think that's perfectly acceptable, you know immediately what colour it is. But we got shouted down. The group beside us even offered us the history of denim and how it was named after Nimes, the French town, and therefore was unacceptable as a colour. You can understand therefore why we got the biggest laugh at their suggestion of Dijon mustard! They didn't think that through, did they?! And anyway mustard? Yes, I'd say that's an identifiable colour. Dijon mustard is clearly just a condiment. 

And this double letter, double point rule? Don't get me started! This has been abused too much over the years and the SCA needs to rule on what exactly is covered. For example, you should not be able to use part of the category to get more points. Things at a football match beginning with F cannot be football fans for two points. The fact the fans are at a football match in the first place, it's clear they're football fans and not rugby, Daniel O'Donnell or any other sort of fans. The descriptor is just an abuse of the generous double points on offer. But what if you've got three (or more) words and only two begin with the letter? Do you get double points? Like Movies/C? Catch Me If You Can. And what if it's T and there's a The in the answer. That's not a double scoring points surely, because in other parts you ignore it, and have, for example The West Wing under W. Are triple points (Clothing/S? Short sleeved shirt) not a logical extension of the double point rule?

See, it's tricky stuff this Scattergories business. In the research for this post  I came across other people who've had arguments themselves so I know it's not just the games I've played. One couple argued over menu items, and particularly the veracity of the claim that Tim the Toolman Taylor was a TV star. She took it to her blog here. He responded, in a Frankee/Eamon kind of way, on his blog (some swearing, *ed out). Best I can tell they're still together. 

That's the urgency with which we need a SCA. We're in the festive season where families gather round and play board games. How many of these will end in arguments and fights? 

Hopefully none like this though. A horrible 'incident' over whether a Philips screwdriver could be used as a weapon where three people died in an attempt to prove it. Fear not, it's just a satire site. But for how long?!

We're sticking to jigsaws this Christmas. Nice bit team work and no point scoring.