The VT Christmas 2016 thread

[mjmooney]

3 hours ago, limpid said:

They are different beasts. I have both and I don't use the Fire.

I also have both, but have found the Amazon Firestick has taken such a lead that I've stopped using the Chromecast. 

[limpid]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I also have both, but have found the Amazon Firestick has taken such a lead that I've stopped using the Chromecast. 

I doubt we are using it for the same things then. But there's a thread for this in the Tech Room.

[omariqy]

Xmas do tonight on a boat on the thames. Should be fun! 

[Xann]

Just about completed my Christmas shopping and just discovered 'Pie Face Showdown' - Dammit!

[Davkaus]

I don't want to derail this in to a political conversation, but I was reading this article this morning and thought I'd share.

These places are in every town and city across the country now.

While people are stocking up on food for Christmas, sparing an item of food or a quid or two will help make sure someone else isn't sat at home starving on Christmas day.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/15/christmas-food-bank-not-eaten-three-days-paddington-london

Quote

 

 

Christmas at a food bank: ‘They’ve not eaten for three days’

 

There’s a Barbie sat among other dolls. A dancing monkey. Soft cuddly toys. In a food bank in Paddington, London, volunteer Jane is counting through the donated presents to hand out to children next week. Or, as she puts it to me, for “any who need one”.

For families who don’t have the money for bags of pasta or a tin of meat, Christmas means not only hunger but more costs they can’t afford. “I ask people who come in what they’re doing for Christmas and they look at me like, ‘I’m in a food bank. What can I do for Christmas?’” Jane says.

Look around the food bank’s neighbouring streets and you find yourself in the middle of two-tier Britain: in Jane’s words, a “posh” part of the capital that also runs emergency food parcels out of the local community centre. This month has seen the biggest surge in use in the food bank’s three-year history: last week about 100 people came through the doors in a couple of hours. Kensington and Chelsea – where there are streets where the average property can set a buyer back £8m – is about to shut its food bank. Its users are already coming to Paddington, Jane says.

Jane, 52, started helping at the food bank a year ago, after she was made redundant. She’s familiar with illness – she was a health journalist – but is struck by seeing people hungry. “Not a little bit peckish because they skipped breakfast or haven’t had lunch. But hungry because they haven’t eaten for around three or four days,” she says. “Literally nothing.”

As wages shrink, rents rise and benefits are cut, Jane sees the citizens who could be described as collateral damage: a stroke victim left with large lapses in memory sanctioned by the jobcentre for forgetting an appointment; a care worker earning barely a tenner a day because her travel costs come out of her pocket; a PhD student who lost his house and now lives in a Tesco car park. It’s the dark shadows under people’s eyes that stand out for Jane. Frequently they’re stick-thin; disoriented. Very often they’re on the verge of tears. “They feel they have to apologise for being here,” she says. “We had one pensioner shaking with embarrassment.”

Jane is now used to “coaxing” people in as they hover in the doorway. The first thing she does is offer a cup of tea and a biscuit. Nine times out of 10 people ask for theirs with three or four sugars, she says. For nerves. Or energy. “A phrase I hear over and over again as people pick up a food parcel is, ‘The system’s washed its hands of me.’”

Food banks are now used to plugging the gap – Paddington even has a weekly volunteer from the Citizens Advice to help with benefit delays or evictions – but as deprivation sets in, the bank acts as reassurance that someone cares. Local support services in the area have closed down. The food bank, Jane says, is one of the few places some people can go to even be listened to.

For the Christmas period, on top of the toys for young families, every food parcel given out will include something extra: a packet of mince pies, a Christmas pudding, chocolates or a box of biscuits. It’s a little bit of normality – a secondhand doll or football for your children or a Quality Street to offer a friend when they drop by – at a time when it’s especially needed. More and more people coming in for food parcels this winter have had their electricity cut off and can’t afford to get it put on again. There’s been an increase in people talking about ending their own lives. “It’s happening every week now,” she says.

What really gets her, Jane admits, is that in her affluent area, so many who need a food parcel are severely ill or disabled. “We have a blind man who comes in, and someone who’s deaf,” she says. They’ve now started to deliver to housebound people with disabilities who can’t get out to get a food parcel. Jane sees it is like this: the food bank is a microcosm of what’s wrong with the country, but just as much, what is good about people.

Three days before Christmas Day, she and other volunteers will use their spare time to put on a Christmas dinner at the food bank. The meal is made up of donated food, and is for anyone who’s used the service this year. So far, 80 people have signed up. “Most ask, ‘Can I bring my kids too?’”

 

 

[Seat68]

Christmas party last night in Birmingham, fairly restrained for me, normal friday amount of wine. 

[trekka]

We had a lunchtime buffet yesterday at work for our Department.  Everyone was encouraged to bring something in.  I was thinking it would be a plate of crisps, pickle and sausage roll kind of affair.  In the end, it turned out spectacular.

We even had a guy at the end of the buffet line slicing one of these up (right in the middle of the open plan office so cue jealously from others not in our Department):

Tomorrow night is our "proper" night out as a team.  I can't say I'm looking forward to it, especially seeing as it's at Bella Italia for our Christmas meal.  We're also being encouraged to dress smartly (tie and shirt as a minimum) which right sods me off.  

Edited December 15, 2016 by trekka

[Xela]

5 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Christmas party last night in Birmingham, fairly restrained for me, normal friday amount of wine. 

Had my first main Xmas party last night in Brum as well. 

Woke up with a fuzzy head this morning 

Where was yours? 

Edited December 15, 2016 by Xela

[Davkaus]

Your work has a dress code for a trip to Bella **** Italia? 

[trekka]

6 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Your work has a dress code for a trip to Bella **** Italia? 

That was my precise ******* reaction  It isn't the management that say it, it's the few plebs in the team who think a night out should be a shirt and tie thing.  I'll be rebelling.

[Davkaus]

Our night out was at some nice posh place in the Cotswalds (we're up in Nottingham...) which was enough to put a lot of people off.

On the bright side, we got a coach down at lunchtime, a 3 course meal accompanied with as much wine as the table could hold, an open bar all night, put up in a 4 star hotel with breakfast the next morning, then a coach back at lunchtime the next day with an unofficial "working at home" afternoon. 

My last company offered us £5 each towards a night out if we planned it ourselves.  And they wanted a copy of the bill to prove we didn't just pocket the fiver. 

Edited December 15, 2016 by Davkaus

[Seat68]

4 hours ago, Xela said:

Had my first main Xmas party last night in Brum as well. 

Woke up with a fuzzy head this morning 

Where was yours? 

Crowne Plaza. Eye watering bar prices but had a free bar. 

[Xela]

On 12/15/2016 at 22:29, Seat68 said:

Crowne Plaza. Eye watering bar prices but had a free bar. 

I was at the Birmingham Marriott. Again, high prices but company picked up the tab

Had my main work Xmas party last night, Park Regis Birmingham. Food was decent, then a few drinks in the sky bar and then like any office party, a rowdy evening on Broad Street. Had a good night in the main, but there are bits of the night missing! 

[Xann]

[Xann]

[mikeyp102]

Last day at work tomorrow until 28 

[sexbelowsound]

Finally made it, last day of work.

Santa's Birthday festivities well and truly under way once I can blag myself through this day.

Spoiler

Wahaaaaaaay!

 

[Xann]

[Mark Albrighton]

Pretty much in the Christmas spirit now, presents all sorted and nearly all food & drink as well. My first with the little one too so looking forward to that.

The only things that have dampened my festive cheer is not being able to get to the Burton game and, in particular, recently overhearing that version of band aid with the line "well tonight we're reaching out and touching you" which I had completely forgotten about but now have stuck in my head.

[Dodgyknees]

16 hours ago, mikeyp102 said:

Last day at work tomorrow until 28 

Same here, but till 3rd of Jan

I'm hoping I can go in dressed in my favourite clothes and maybe take some games in to play.