How Sez Sees It

It's that time of year again when I look back at all the things I have done and compare them to things that were going on in the world at the time. Here we go then. January: I had the flu over Christmas and it only left me at the beginning of January. This means that I was still recovering for a lot of the time. Back to work for me though. I do discover a new favourite band though in SID (said: shido) who are a visual kei band from Japan. They did the theme for Black Butler among others and are amazing! 3-7 January Boko Haram kill more than 2000 in Nigeria. 7 January Islamist terrorists kill members of left-wing satirist French paper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. February: Dave and I started house hunting and got our mortgage approved in principal. We also found Scoops, a brilliant little ice-cream place in Portswood highstreet. House hunting began and this was most of our lives to be honest. We celebrated 6 years together on Valentine's Day with a trip to Bournemouth a...

...and it was great! Don't worry, I am not going to give any spoilers at all. It is commonly known that some of our old favourites from the original trilogy are back (Han Solo, Leia and Luke Skywalker). There are plenty of new characters that you will grow to love over the course of the two hours as well. The studios moved to Disney a couple of years ago and that is when it was announced that Episode VII: The Force Awakens would be made. People were skeptical at first as Episode I, II and III were not the greatest films in the world. In fact, there were complaints at the time (and since then) that they totally destroyed the feel of the originals. What I liked most about The Force Awakens is that director J.J Abrams has gone back to a more traditional way of filming with as many of the props being real as possible. Eps 1-3 relied heavily on CGI whereas the original trilogy didn't have that technology so relied on as many realistic props as possible. An example in this new ...

I remember that I started with the best of intentions to do a Christmas blog each day in the lead up to Christmas...but it didn't happen. I was going to write about the history of Christmas, how it is celebrated around the world, popular Christmas items like crackers and trees. I didn't and for that I can only apologise. The truth is that I have been really ill lately. For the last couple of months I have been really struggling with my anxiety which was brought on by my extended illness. In October I had a nasty virus that struck my digestive system and also brought on flu like symptoms. This in turn has left me with a post-viral fatigue. It took such a long time for me to have the tests to prove this...which is something I already knew I had. Now I am finally being taken seriously. The trouble is that in the lead up to Christmas I have been left totally exhausted and that is not fun. By the time I have been at work all day, gone home and done the bits of house work I nee...

Initially this show was an uncertainty. ONE OK ROCK (yes it is spelled out in capitals) were being supported by We Came As Romans and DEAD! (yes, that is how they do their name too) at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on Thursday 10 December. Unfortunately, the week before, the venue decided it was the best time to start collapsing. Fear not though, the gig was saved! Luckily the Academy group owns a lot of venues and the O2 Forum Kentish Town stepped up. The gig had to be pushed forward by 24 hours because of clashes otherwise, but still the gig did go ahead! All tickets previously sold were honoured and a good time was to be had by all. DEAD! I have seen this band countless times. The first time I did was at The Joiners in Southampton and they were opening for William Control. This was about three and a half years ago now and I think they had only been together around three or four months. I think almost every member of the band had an injury at the time and there seemed to be iss...

Some of this has surprised me and some of it not at all. There are some things that it turns out I am good and and like doing that I have discovered since I moved out. There turns out to be something that I genuinely seem to have a talent for as well. Baking: Somehow it turns out I can bake cakes really well. I am not sure when this happened or how I discovered it but, since moving in to my house, I have a real talent for baking. I would like to think that I have inherited this talent from my Nan who is an excellent baker. Housework: Turns out I am really good at house work. I always thought I would have an aversion to it, but actually I am really good. Driving: The one thing I really miss about living in my house is that I don't get to drive my car every day. I always used to but now I only get to do it a couple of times a week and that makes me sad. I used to love doing it as I am a very good driver and I used to love shouting at all the crap drivers on the road. Si...

I am in an awkward position in that I didn't vote for my MP (not living in the constituency at the time of the election) and I didn't vote for my previous constituency MP either. They both voted for bombing in Syria. I did vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour Party though and I totally agree with his stance and everything he has said about airstrikes there. Corbyn is totally against the airstrikes and would like a diplomatic end to the troubles with Daesh. Daesh (formerly known as ISIS, but we aren't calling them that any more) is a mentality rather than a geographical area. People will be radicalised wherever they are and bombing this one small part of the Middle East is not going to solve that problem. The fact is that innocent people will be put in harm's way. The most obvious is the people of Syria who will be caught up in this. How can we know we are not bombing civilians? Then there is Britain. Paris became a target after France joined in the ai...

Stockings: There is no record of where the stockings thing came from originally. The most popular story is that of the poor man with three daughters. To prevent them from having to fall into sin St Nicholas snuck into the man's house and left money in the girls' stockings. There are similar stories from Norse mythology such as Odin sneaking into homes to leave gifts for children. The largest stocking on record was 168' 5.65" in length and 70' 11.57" from heel to toe. Crackers: Have been popular in the Commonwealth since the 1840s. Tradition states that Tom Smith invented the modern popping cracker with gifts inside in 1847 and there is a memorial to him in Finsbury Park in London. For those not in the know, a Christmas cracker is a paper tube filled with a joke, paper hat and a toy that pops when pulled apart due to a small amount of explosive. The tackier the toy and joke inside the better in my view.

Ok, I have got very angry all of a sudden. These are a list of things that have pissed me off over the last week: 1. Bombing Syria It is looking likely that we will be going to war with Syria. It feels like a knee jerk reaction to the terrible attacks in Paris a week and a half ago. As horrible as that was, even British people who were there are saying that bombing Syria is not the right way to go. Leader of the Labour Party, the Right Honorable Jeremy Corbyn MP, has said he is against bombing and that talks are the only way forward. I agree. The problem is that Daesh (not ISIS or ISIL as they have nothing to do with true Islam or the Ancient Egyptian goddess) is a mentality and not a geographical area. You can't just bomb them in Syria and hope the problem goes away. It won't work like that at all. 2. People who smash up local shops This morning I was trying to go to my local shop and people from the nearby estate had smashed it up over night. The poor staff were havin...

To what extent do we owe a lot of our Christmas celebrations to Charles Dickens? There could be an argument for a fair amount. Dickens wrote a series of Christmas stories in his career, with the most famous being A Christmas Carol (1843). There were others though, The Chimes (1844); The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846). They cover themes we would expect of Dickens as a social commentator. A Christmas Carol and The Chimes' have moral messages to not look back to the past and to not be greedy at Christmas or any other time of year. They are tales of repentance and of making things right at Christmas and the whole year through. 'The Cricket on the Hearth' is a tale of love and one of the characters finds the joy of festive cheer at the end of the story in the style of Scrooge. There are elements of love and family and anti-greed morals throughout all the stories. There are some things in the stories that we have as part of our modern Christmas. T...