Singing, ringing, twice in a night
(Home made German Christmas cookies: Glasgow, Scotland)
As you can see, the approach to Christmas is upon us. Last week my flatmate conducted a mass baing afternoon during which five different types of cookie were baked. It was a marathon and over a week on, we are still working our way through the tubs of biscuits. December has brought with it much festive socialising – basically a slightly above average social calendar but with a delectable Christmas flavour. For instance, last night I accompanied four other friends to a late night screening of cult puppet classic ‘The Labyrinth’. If you haven’t seen it, it features a cast of Jim Henson puppets in a mildly perilous tale of kidnapping, magic, puzzle solving and eighties croony balladry by a yellow toothed, eyeshadow sporting, flouncy shirt wearing, lycra clad David Bowie. It’s a perfect winter guilty pleasure film – testament to that is that the four hundred plus seats of GFT’s Cinema One were entirely sold out.
Prior to that film screening last night, I crushed another one in beforehand with little time to spare. I accompanied my friend John to a screening of Das Singende, Klingende Bäumchen which translates from German as The Singing Ringing Tree. I noted as soon as I arrived that a group of elderly German ladies mainly populated this early evening screening of an East German made Grimm’s fairytale. I suppose they had an affection for delightfully dated moral tales of princesses, bears, fairies and bizarrely decorated dual antlered horses. To accompany the film itself, there was much gluwein (hot spiced wine), more of those German biscuits and a spot of carol singing. Carols are a specific kind of Christmas song, traditionally sung in church in groups. I have never sung them in German, but these renditions, along with the warming properties of the wine and the scents of cinnamon, cloves and oranges on the air served to evoke in me a decidedly premature festive feeling. It was delicious. I couldn’t sing and video at the same time, so you have been spared my caterwauling and flagrant German mispronunciation.
Tonight I attended a gathering where we played the Present Game. It involves each person buying gifts to the value of £5, wrapping them and collectively placing all of them in a pile. I supplied a small leather bound notebook, two DVD games (from a charity shop) and a bag of chocolate coins. So, there are three rounds; round one commences with dice being rolled in turn – each time a six is rolled, that person choose a gift and stashes it in a personal pile. I managed to roll several sixes in a row and had an enviable stockpile of gifts – but then a long string of bad luck lost me my incredible lead and at level pegging with several other players. However, once all the gifts have been collected, they are unwrapped and their value is revealed. I thinkat this point I had a frog finger puppet, a paper aeroplane kit, some German confectionary, a calculator watch and a ‘grow your own Christmas tree from a reindeer poo’ kit. Quite good, but other players had managed to choose considerably better items. Then begins round two; a timed round. With ten minutes on the stopclock, rolling a one on the dice means one of your gifts is forfeited to a person of your choosing, a six allows you to thieve a gift of your choice from any other player. What ensues is a frantic swapping of gifts, some wanted, some not by both giver and recipient. I think by the end of this round I had lost some of my gifts, but gained a miniature clockwork train set, a joke brick, a tube of jelly sweets, a DVD game and a wooly hat. Round three saw many of my gifts disappear in an animated round of manic dice throwing. Back to simply throwing sixes, presents can be stolen from anyone each time a six is rolled. This is where it became clear which gifts were popular with which people. I was in a war with another player for the joke brick – by far my favourite item. In the end, I took home a reasonably large tub of Haribo Starmix and (with great pride) the joke brick made of painted polystyrene – and from which many a prank may abound. A pretty good haul, I’d say.
By the way, if you have failed to hear tell of the now infamous Hurricane Bawbag that Scotland endured the other day, then allow me to elaborate. This moniker was dreamt up on Thursday (by Twitter users, then in wide use by the mainstream media) as high winds caused general chaos and the country was put on a weather ‘red alert’, something I’ve never experienced. The meaning of the word baw is explained in sufficient detail elsewhere on world meets rosie and as for the hurricane element, we were battered by force ten gales and wind speeds reached well over 100mph. As I was walking on Thursday (that fateful day when Bawbag struck) the sensation was difficult to describe but I would liken it to being in a swimming pool wave machine; your body is subject to involuntary movement, but not enough to tip a person over. I found that with every step, I could feel my leg being buffeted in mid air and carried with the wind. If I was in charge of a small child, I would have lashed them to my shopping bags or tied them on a string to my wrist like a helium balloon. Aside from fallout from a wind turbine bursting into flames and plastic bags blowing onto people’s faces live on television, reaction to Bawbag appears to have subsided. Hopefully it will be a long time before such a visitor reappears.
– Today Rosie is having a jaunt to Edinburgh, Scotland –
