O Come All Ye Blog Readers...

Season's Greetings!

Every Christmas since 2017 I've uploaded an old skool festive photo. With it, I've shared musings - on the need to avoid attempting perfection and how Christmas is only one day. Despite my best efforts, this regular seasonal feature has not made it into the public consciousness. When folks are giddily circling their Radio Times, or watching The Muppets Christmas Carol for the umpteenth time, why aren't they getting excited about Nicky's Christmas blog? Where's the speculation on what the photo might be? Where's the anticipation about what meaning I'll share?

You know what? It's all good. This is the time of year when we try to forget the treadmill of life. You know what I mean? The sales, the responsibilities, the likes, the shares? Whatever external metric of success your job/relationships/personality puts onto your behaviour, is not the sum total of your achievements OR happiness. Christmas can be a time to forget all that. So with that in mind, here's 2025's photo.

That's not getting me any extra likes, is it? No flurry of book sales are going to rush in because of that! Behold the fuzzy quality. That's what you get when you snap a photo in an album behind a plastic film. Also, a brief heads up for any pedantic archivists among us. I'm not 100% sure whether this is December 1984 or eleven months earlier in the January. The internet informs me snow fell at both times. No matter, let's forget the technicalities and relish the festive vibes. 

It's snowy. That's the main take away. I'm either five or six, and am sporting the hair of Dave Hill, from Slade. I'm also wearing wellies. My overriding memory of wellies was having cold feet and socks that had ridden down under my soles. They made for uncomfortable walking and I was never a fan. But forget all that, look at my little smile! This is the best day of my life. I've made perhaps the most disheveled snowman that ever existed but I don't care. This is what winter's all about!

If this was, as I suspect, Christmas 1984, there was all sorts going on in the world. Band Aid had released Do They Know It's Christmas? in response to the famine in Ethiopia. Last Christmas - my favourite seasonal song and video of all time - was also whizzing up the charts. We'd had the Brighton bomb - a news story I remember vividly, and the ongoing miners' strike which I remember vaguely. Earlier in the year,Torvill and Dean competed in the Winter Olympics. By the time this photo was taken, I'd reenacted Bolero many a time in the lounge. (I was particularly good at the last few seconds where Jayne Torvill has to land in a heap on the ice. I nailed that.)

Lovely George in 1984

These huge news stories aside, there was a simplicity to my life back then. Of course there was, I was six! I didn't care about external metrics of achievement. What would they even be? There were no shared attainment levels at school. I was decidedly average at my weekly ballet lessons and cared not a jot. Aside from the occasional 'set a good example' comments from my parents because of my younger sisters, there wasn't much to worry about. I could listen to Wham, be Jayne Torvill, and build my snowman when it snowed. Happy days.

Now, everything is much more complicated. Writing deadlines, money (or lack of it) and keeping up a social media presence in a bid to sell books, can be overwhelming. Maybe I should take a leaf out of my younger self's book. Listen to my favourite tunes, enjoy the seasonal weather, and reenact the routine of some popular figure skaters of the eighties. What else do I really need?

I hope you enjoy Thursday. Whether it's alone in cosy PJs with sole control of the remote, or full of people, presents, and noise... make it a good one. And if it's all too much, this might be useful. Small, simple pleasures are the way forward, I think. Enjoy the cheese. Listen to some music. Go for a bracing walk before warming up with a cup of tea. Whatever floats your particular boat is what you need to do. Especially if you're feeling overwhelmed. Otherwise you're just following someone else's imposed metric, aren't you? You do you. It's the best way.

Have a lovely Christmas, folks.