marramgrass

The Lord has come.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Brodie hit me with one of the memes currently working its way round.

5 things that you may or may not know about me:

1. I have a weakness for bound paper of two forms in particular. I cannot walk by a shelf of notebooks in a shop without having a good hard look and probably buying something. I’m incredibly picky about them, though. (A question: you prefer a certain kind of notebook, one that is quite hard to find in shops in the UK. You discover a high street stationer in Belfast selling them for around half the cost of your usual source. Do you A. buy one, B. buy two, or C. buy two, then go back a few days later and buy the dozen on the shelf and plan a return trip soon to see if they’ve put more out? They’ll all get used, don’t worry…) Otherwise, I’m a sucker for Bibles of all shapes and sizes.
2. Even though I prefer to have my hair quite short (a number three all over), I generally only have it cut every three-and-a-half to four months. The only reason I make it that often is that my wife does it for me. (Cue funny story about the clippers dying half-way across my head when we were about to go out somewhere.) Part of the reason is that I find getting my hair cut to be an exceedingly uncomfortable experience, sitting there while someone works so closely around my head for so long.
3. Our video and DVD collection contains a disproportionate number of what might be called ‘chick flicks’. People tend to assume they are my wife’s, but in most cases they are wrong. I find both Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock to be quite watchable, even in the same film. How’s that for an admission of guilt?
4. I sort-of fulfilled an ambition recently when a national Christian youth organisation contracted me as one of their writers of curriculum material. In a slightly-different-than-intended way, I guess I’m a published writer. Like I said, sort of!
5. When I was 10, I borrowed a collection of horror short stories from the class library. I only read the first one because it freaked me out so badly. For weeks I wouldn’t go out into the back garden to feed the rabbits unless a parent stood at the back door and talked to me. I recently stopped reading a novel after 50-odd pages because I know it would also freak me out. Those are two of perhaps five books in my life I have started reading and not finished for various reasons. Totally unconnected, I now contend that the short story is a wonderful form that really should be published more often and more visibly, and so read by many more people. Ask me and I’ll point you towards an exemplary collection or two in the genre of your choice.

Where to now? Let’s shunt this along to Stephen, Michaela, Debs, Charlie and Colin and see which of them succumbs…

It’s funny how my mind works. My wife will leave an envelope sitting on top of my keys for me to post for her when I’m up in the village, and I’ll forget to lift it. Then later that day I’ll put on a CD I haven’t listened to in at least ten years, and my brain will know what’s coming in each song before it does and hear each solo begin a beat or two before it happens.

To preserve the cool and credible image that I know everyone out there has of me, I won’t tell you what the CD is. But I might give you a clue: I dug it out when my wife’s step-brother was looking for people to attend a gig at the Odyssey in May. Can you work it out?

It’s an interesting idea that might be bad, might be good, and will probably cost me money.

… but my head is frazzled and I can’t think.

Monday evening was my wife’s work night out for Christmas. Realise that ordinarily I wouldn’t seriously consider attending one of these, as an evening out with a bunch of medics is quite a special experience. But when the night out takes the form of hiring a cinema screen to watch the new Bond, well then I can make an exception.

It’s a new kind of Bond film, and all the better for it. If you can describe a film based on such a fantastic idea (I hope) as more realistic, then this one is.

Bond films gloss over the violence inherent in the idea of a man with a licence to kill, but this one doesn’t. It’s quite raw, and a little brutal in places. Definitely gone is Brosnan’s comic-book spy - Daniel Craig plays James Bond as dark man with a chilling detachment from the violence. He’s accused of being nothing more than a thug, and you know that in the back of his mind he realises that this is true.

It takes a little bit of brain-twisting, timeline-folding gymnastics to end up with a James Bond in the early days of his career taking on is first mission as a double-O in the summer of 2006, but it’s worth it. This is a whole new Bond, think Bruce Wayne’s reinvention in Batman Begins. It’s probably controversial to say this, but it’s a better Bond, too. The bright colours of early Connery don’t work anymore, and Brosnan escapism got tired (fun though it was). Casino Royale gives us the dark, fragile Bond who pulls the trigger without thinking but shows the scars for it.

The stunts and cars are all happily present - an early free running chase, and the obligatory Aston Martin are great fun to look at - but they aren’t the heart of this film. Daniel Craig is James Bond, there’s no doubt, and if his first time out is anything to go by, he will be the best yet.

The RAC man who came out to me this afternoon was awfully pleasant and helpful.

I’m glad it’s less windy here today than it has been the last couple of days.

Our new house is cool.

The colour we’ve painted our dining room isn’t a million miles away from the the colour in a new bottle of ink I got a few days ago. Go and Google for DC Supershow Blue for a rough idea.

Daniel Craig may be the best Bond. I’ll come back to this one in the next few days.

Christmas is really close, and there’s all kinds of things need doing before then. You can’t put up a tree if every possible square inch of space has a box in it.

It’s certainly much cheaper to borrow a van and do it yourself - with the substantial assistance of some very generous friends and family - but it’s rough on the arms. Being unaccustomed to such labour, I ache.

It’s great, though. We’re finally here. Sweet.

And now the epic saga of the unpacking, the searching for towels, the squirreling-away of books and the organisation and reorganisation of kitchenware… Now it begins.