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During the festive season, the Winter Wonderland is set up in Hyde Park (London).  Tuesday night we went in for some goodies.  The theme is based around a German Christmas Fair.  There are rides (including an outdoor skating rink), food and drink stalls and craft/Christmas trinket vendors.  We had some bratwurst, wheat beer and roasted chestnuts.  It’s an amazing place as it’s completely fabricated for the event, none of these buildings are permanent.  It is incredible that they construct this place for about 4-5 weeks!  Some of these buildings are 2-3 storeys too!

Here’s one a video of me marvelling at the buildings, and here’s another

Here’s Kate eating roasted chestnuts for the first time, with commentary…!

and nothing was stirring, not even our GOOSE!  Tomorrow’s dinner will be roast goose.  We ordered it from our favourite “we hang meat outside” butcher.  This morning was an early start to pick mr. goose up, we wanted to beat the rush or people picking up turkey’s and other Christmas meat treats, so we got our local commonwheels car and headed into Oxford at 6.45am.  Not a lot of traffic at that hour… funny eh?

Photos of mr. goose to come!

Darth Vader helps ring the opening bell at NYSE

One commentor on the New York Times gets it perfectly right.

“I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it any further”

Rode part of the way to work today on Rudolph the Coast Mountain Bus. Nice way to start the day, very Xmas-y.

Today’s Christmas Plans xkcd was also very much for science geeks. I approved.

Snopes says the Christmas decoration story is real.

Google Street view seems to show the house in question, I assume that was part of their research.

If you have ignored the Christmas stuff in supermarkets, I found the true sign of Christmas.

Meat hanging in the covered market!

This is a time of year I love. Things get lovely and festive, nice and cold and generally cheerful.
This year, we’ve decided on goose for Christmas lunch. We have to go pick it up on the morning of the 24th. Sometime after 6am. I’m told you have to get there early to avoid the rush. The butcher who we use is a lovely old fashioned butcher, and they are really popular. So we’ll put on our warmest clothes on Thursday morning to head to the butcher nice and early. Probably with a thermos!

I also wondered around Oxford looking for neat things to photograph, so here's the whole album

[Edit : it seems slanty doesn't like my gallery...]

(In case you can’t see the full strip, see natural parenting here.)

Maybe you’ve seen the email about “The Greatest Christmas Decoration Ever“. It starts like this:

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down:

Anyway, the discussion that ensued was worth saving for the ages. Continue Reading »