I woke up at some unknown time this morning to a banging and crashing noise followed by the pained screams of my girlfriend all rounded off with Jack jumping off the bed in a barking frenzy. My first thought was of course that there had been a break in, and not having a weapon to hand I grabbed a can of deodorant (to spray in the eyes of a potential burglar to blind him) from the dressing room table before going to investigate. Luckily there wasn’t a break in; unluckily Mandi had fallen down a flight of stairs while bringing some Christmas decorations down from my office. The good news is that apart from a few aches and pains she is fine, the bad news is that this setback didn’t stop her from decorating. I kept out of the way by pulling on some clothes and taking Jack to the park for an hour before breakfast. It had been my rather ambitious plan to record The Sunday Alternative today and get caught up with emails, but I couldn’t really concentrate with Mandi coming in and out of my office to grab boxes of decorations. I’ll have to record it tomorrow which shouldn’t take too long as I did at least listen to and sort out the music today.

While she decorated, Mandi played what is in my opinion the best Christmas album of all time, A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector. Even with my lack of enthusiasm for the festive season I have to concur that this album gives me a warm feeling, this is what I wrote on the subject a couple of years ago. Funnily enough I recalled listening to Notts Live when they did their Christmas special (it must have been 2012) and were discussing Christmas songs by Nottingham artists. Either Bainy or Andy suggested that the Nottingham music scene was ready for a Spector-esque Christmas album, it has taken two years for this to happen but it was worth the wait as an album is on the way called Christmas In Slab Square featuring a collection of Nottingham artists from the higher end of the scale (rather than the usual bland names that would have been asked to do a Christmas album if this idea had fallen into the wrong hands). In aid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, it will be launched with a special concert next Sunday, and they are ‘leaking’ a song a day on Soundcloud. I spent today listening in my office to the album and believe that one day this will be the compilation album that becomes a way of life when it comes to Christmas music, in the same way that my family used to listen to the Phil Spector album on decorating day.

In the course of my seasonal hobby of collecting different versions of A Christmas Carol, I have become numb to the story as much as I love it. This afternoon we kicked off this year’s Dickens appreciation with the best of the lot The Muppet Christmas Carol. Despite the occasional straying (talking vegetables, songs, and the fact that Fezziwig didn’t own a rubber chicken factory) this is an adaptation that manages to stay faithful to the original book. If I get round to/can be bothered with writing about all of my viewings in a separate blog I will write about it in more detail, suffice to say that we watched it on video rather than DVD so that we didn’t lose the song ‘When Love Is Gone’.

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