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December 23, 2023
Merry Christmas
Hello there, {$name|default:'reader'}. I hope you're having a great week.
I'm assuming you celebrate Christmas, of course. If not, then I hope you have a great festive season. Or at least a few days off work.
I think we all lose some of the magic of the season as we get older, though for some it will be reawakened watching children wide-eyed with wonder. I was thinking the other day about when I was that child, and how I had a rather unusual interaction with Father Christmas.
In my memory, I'm about six years old. Certainly young enough to still believe, but old enough to notice that Santa often uses the same wrapping paper as my grandparents. We were at a large department store, decked in glitter, tinsel, paper snowflakes and probably an ocean destroying plastic tree. To my eyes, it was utterly magical. And at the very centre was Santa's Grotto.
Now without aging myself too badly, this was a time before routing criminal background checks and careful vetting. So there was a certain amount of trust placed in the fat guy in the suit, by the store managers and my parents.
Don't worry, this isn't the opening of some horror movie, nothing bad happens.
I'm excited, I'm meeting Santa and getting to pass on my wish list in person (Action Man, probably, which dates me still further).
And I have the hiccups.
It might be excitement, it might be the rare fizzy drink I was allowed with lunch, but when I sit on Santa's lap, I'm sporadically bouncing up an inch or two with an involuntary 'hic' sound.
That's when it happens.
"Do you know the best cure for hiccups?" Santa booms. This is amazing, not only am I meeting the man himself (or one of his helpers, perhaps, he's a busy man and I'm sure he outsources), but he's going to give me some words of wisdom. The cure for hiccups from Father Christmas.
"Put your head into a bucket of water three times, and only bring it out twice," he cheerily intones.
My parents are smothering their giggles, but it's not until later that I realise what he meant.
So that's the story of how Santa tried to drown me.
Space News
The longest distance cat video.
If the internet is good for anything, it's cat videos. And buying books, of course, but there are definitely more cat videos. NASA knows this too, and so when they wanted to test a method of deep space data transmission (the DSOC, Deep Space Optical Communications system) they turned to an orange tabby called 'Taters'.
The test was to show that laser-beam communication is possible at a range that would allow interplanetary video, and in this case it worked perfectly from over 80 times the distance of the moon.
Don't worry - Taters wasn't sent 19 million miles into deep space, he stayed at home. Video of him was sent up and beamed back instead. Curiously, the link from space was faster than the one used to relay the signal on Earth back to JPL!
You can watch the video itself here, which fittingly shows Taters chasing a laser beam.
Source: BBC News
Other Books To Check Out
I've gathered a few great books from independent authors like me, I hope you'll check them out.
And let me know if you have any books to recommend! I'm particularly interested in indie authors, but anything you've read and loved would be awesome.
Free!
When alien meteorites crash across Earth, the global balance of power will change inexorably.
Uncertain survival has become the ethos of many citizens in Venezuela under the rule of a vicious regime, while foreign corporations are stripping out the country of a prized, strategic resource for an intergovernmental military alliance.
Suddenly, enigmatic alien meteorites crash all over Earth, those who manage to take a closer look to one of them are bestowed with beyond human capabilities. Alejandro, one of many commoners enduring the perils of a hostile environment, becomes one of the lucky winners, although he and like-minded people choose to employ his newfound abilities for the common good, others act out by rapacity and domination.
As time passes, Alejandro contemplates how the clandestine schemes of the government are causing a rampant increase in crime, poverty and distrust, harming his family, friends and community, exasperated by the situation, he decides to act against his oppressors rather than remain passive, even if that means being marked for death.
He slowly becomes enmeshed in a web of corruption and strife, and as he goes deeper into the rabbit hole, he soon discovers this local predicament is only a symptom of a complex, broad conflict encompassing the world... one defined by a new breed of supersoldiers and cutting-edge technology.
Buy now!
John Price and Company travel back in time to 1969. Only to find Malacients, sadistic predatorial aliens, have already begun infiltrating society and have set up a base on the dark side of the moon.
The situation gets worse... something separates John and his lovely ladies are lost in time...
John will need all his wits, cybernetic enhancements, and luck to survive.
Will he be able to reconnect with his lost loves, or are they lost forever? How can he once and for all stop the Malacients?
Read on to find out.
Strange News
The Unusual Victorian Charms and Rituals to find Love
Did you know that, in Victorian times, whenever you kissed under the mistletoe, you were required to remove one of the berries? Once the berries were gone, no more kissing allowed!
I certainly didn't. Nor did I know that the love-lorn young woman might swallow the berry, prick the initials of her would-be lover into a leaf and tuck it into her corset to win his heart.
While witchcraft was frowned upon, as much as it was even believed in to begin with, such divination and rituals were thought of as harmless amusement, and indulged in frequently. They offered what was probably the only way for a woman to be anything other than a passive participant in the courtship rituals, and this article is full of a myriad of them.
Women using chestnuts to predict their future husbands' names.
Source: historytoday.com
Other Books To Check Out
Historical Fiction Free Books Download
Exciting Historical Fiction Giveaway
No matter your tastes, from medieval swordplay to First World War fighter aces, or from Western Cowboy sagas to Regency political drama, there's something for you here.
Get these books before December 24th!
Miscellany
An innocent selfie on social media leads to a massive restaurant bill.
Source: foodandwine.com
A monument to listening - a girl with a giant ear in her hands.
Source: Atlas Obscura
Analogue techno music.
Source: youtube.com
And Finally
I got my film back! This is one of a sculpture I saw in Hereford recently:
I've definitely reignited the fire for film photography (say that three times quickly) and I think I'll be doing it a lot more in future. I have a collection of cameras of varying vintages, almost all gifted or dirt-cheap from flea markets, some of which even work. If anyone knows of a good place to get them restored or repaired, or some useful resources for doing it myself, then please do let me know.
I'll let you get on, that turkey won't defrost itself, after all. But do me a favour, and don't put the sprouts on just yet.
Better yet, use Nigella's recipe, and rescue that misunderstood vegetable from hours of boiling...
Source: nigella.com