I’ve had a rather wonderful Christmas Eve. Firstly I recieved the Kreativ Blogger Award from Katie McCullough (I’ll follow up with a post on it after Christmas). Secondly I was made up to hear my friend proposed to my other friend! They met at my Birthday party two and a half years ago and though we knew that he’d pop the question sooner or later it’s no less exciting!!! I am so happy for them, and looking forward to the wedding planning ahead! They live over in Sydney at the moment so it’ll be a while until I get to give them hugs in person, and admire her Tiffany engagement ring!

Today’s ‘Five…‘ has a rather predictable Christmas theme to share with you the wonders of my Christmas Day!

1. Christmas Eve
We have a Christmas Eve tradition that has evolved over the years but always involves dinner at one of mum & dad’s best friends. The great thing is that it means I’m guaranteed to get to see my friend, their daughter, Lucy every Christmas Eve and my friend Dave too (they got married this year – another couple who met through me, I have a better success rate than match.com!!!) There’s always lovely food, conversation and a silly game or two, usually including an epic quiz of the year. This year I invested in Trivial Pursuit, which provided the necessary levels of discussion, giggling and completely wrong answers! It was ‘juveniles’ vs ‘oldies’ and we won! This is followed by my yearly topping up of Catholic guilt at midnight mass, the carols from 11.30pm are lovely though.

Also in the past few years from lunchtime onwards I keep my nearest and dearest updated on Santa’s progress by following the NORAD Santa Tracker

2. Christmas Morning
There has always been a rule in our house that you have to eat breakfast before presents are opened, though my first present was always a box of Coco Pops (I had to have sensible cereals throughout the rest of the year!). Now we’re older it has got later as we wait until my sister and niece arrive. Nothing in the way of present opening commences prior to 11am, which makes it perfect timing for Bucks Fizz & Mince Pies too! This is the Thornber household so of course there is order in the chaos!

3. Top of the Pops
I’m so glad TOTP still exists in Christmas form. TV is pretty much ignore until 2pm as I blast Christmas music through the house, but TOTP is a good transistion from music to TV… and these days lets me know exactly how out of touch I am with the charts. I just hope I don’t say “Who?” too often!

4. Christmas Dinner
There’s only five of us so of course we cook enough to feed ten. I say ‘we’ I actually mean Mum & Dad. The weekly Sunday Roast is always Dad’s domain so of course with both parents in the kitchen there is usually at least one argument that is hilarious for the onlooker. Sis and I pitch in by setting the table and selecting the wine, and of course by demolishing the fantastic food and saying a big “Thank you!” This year Mum has decided we won’t pretend it will be on the table for lunchtime and deliberately plan for it to be in the region of 3-4pm… I think this is a dangerous move and hope to be proved wrong and eating before 7pm! As long as there are pigs in blankets and cranberry sauce all will be okay!

5. Christmas Cocktails
As the day draws to a close somewhere around ‘The Royle Family’ and ‘Gavin & Stacey’ I will raid the alcohol cupboard (my fantastic father managed to procure some half price Absolut Vodka!) and make a wonderful cocktail for my sister and I as we hurtle towards Boxing Day. This year I’m thinking Cosmopolitans to start followed by something involving Baileys and Amaretto… and hopefully minus a hangover in the morning!

Before you go I have one final treat for you… most people will have had the chance to see their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in the nativity over the past few weeks. Unfortunately I missed seeing my Dad in his, but I do have a photograph of the event (thanks to southport.gb.com) – he’s the shepherd on the right and I have to say I am very proud!

Top 5 Books of 2009
My literary highlight of the year was meeting David Nicholls and Nick Hornby during the Durham Book Festival and telling David that he’d made me cry!
1. One Day by David Nicholls
2. Goodnight Beautiful by Dorothy Koomson
3. Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson
4. The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert

Top 5 Films of 2009
I’m counting this as films I saw for the first time this year even if they were released earlier. I’ve missed out on lots of cinema releases as Gala Durham is so small it has a blink and you’ll miss it approach to showing films!
1. UP
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Avatar
4. Night At The Museum 2: Battle Of The Smithsonian
5. Hellboy/Hellboy 2 – The Golden Army

Top 5 TV Programmes of 2009
Another fantastic year for the Beeb. As the number of channels grow I’m starting to think the BBC are the only place committed to real quality and begrudging my licence fee less and less each year. I could have easily listed ten things on the BBC I’ve enjoyed this year, but I’ll limit it to four…
1. Strictly Come Dancing
2. Torchwood (Children of Earth)
3. Doctor Who
4. Have I Got News For You
5. Scrubs

Top 5 Songs of 2009
It’s at this point I note that Kylie has been so busy touring in the states etc this year she hasn’t actually released a single – though she did release ‘Live in New York‘ earlier this month.
1. I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas
2. Number 1 – Tinchy Strider feat. N-Dubz
3. Funhouse – P!nk
4. The Fear – Lily Allen
5. Up All Night – Take That

As I had to come up with a fifth category I decided to finish with Top 5 Celebrities of 2009…

1. David Tennant for being the most entertaining man in 2009 for Doctor Who, Hamlet and everything else
2. Rihanna for getting out of a situation of domestic violence and having the guts to talk about it in the news
3. Eddie Izzard for running 43 marathons in 51 days for Sports Relief (and also for making me laugh lots when I went to see ‘Stripped‘)
4. Chris Hollins for proving in Strictly that if you put your heart & soul into something, and keep at it, you can improve and succeed
5. Gary Barlow for deciding it was a good idea to get a bunch of celebrities to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and as a result raising £3.4million for Comic Relief

It was always going to be a fantastic night as it’s the Strictly Come Dancing final. I’m just a bit obsessed with Strictly! In week one I wanted Chris to be out as early as possible, I wouldn’t have believed it if you would have told me I’d be voting for him multiple times in the final. Chris went from novice to being an amazing dancer. This past month Team Cola (as Chris & Ola are known) have given me goosebumps every week without fail, and their Charleston is easily my favourite dance of the series.

Once Strictly had finished I could transfer my attention to the snow. We had a flurry/blizzard earlier and now have well over a foot of snow. It’s soft fluffy snow and so pretty. Unfortunately not great for making snowmen as it just falls apart. As it was after 10pm I had no one to call on for a snow ball fight so I decided to go on a wander by myself. I was so overwhelmed by the snow that I didn’t realise I was cold at all until I returned to my warm flat 20 minutes later! Of course whilst on my wander I took a few photos and listened to Christmas music on my iPhone.

It has been a rather exciting, amazing and beautiful evening! And it’s less than a week until Christmas…

My blog moved to helenthornber.com on 15th March 2009. Since then I’ve had over 10,500 pageviews from over 5000 visitors, which may be nothing compared to Google, but is a big achievement for me (I feel like I should be making pretty graphics with all the stats like the ones I shared with you yesterday!)

1. The Real Me
My most popular blog post this year has been ‘The Real Me‘ (and not far behind is it’s follow up ‘The Real Me – Part 2‘). It was a blog I’d been unsure about writing so I’m glad my honesty about mental health has had such a positive response.

2. Geek Chic
Another popular blog. A surprise hit that sums up my own combination of girlie and geeky!

3. Waterstone’s Woes
I’m not known for keeping my opinion to myself so every so often I have a bit of a rant. Of all of them this has been the most popular. I still think that Waterstone’s should hire me as head honcho and then all their problems would be solved!

4. Adventures of a novice foodie
Back in August I decided to make the most of my summer holiday by cooking up a storm. Once of my proudest moments this year had to be successfully making sushi that looked like the real deal and tasted yummy. (The giraffe fried egg was pretty impressive too!)

5. Blog 101
Reaching my 100th blog was a big milestone that proved I could stick at it. But it was Blog 101 that I really enjoyed writing. Instead of waiting for the day I’m famous enough for the BBC to invite me in I decided to do it myself! Watch this space in 2010 for ‘Strictly Blog Dancing’, ‘Have I got Blog For You’ and ‘Top Blog’!

I’ll start with ‘Five… things I learned from the internet’. Back in August I finally discovered Google Reader as a way to keep up with all the blogs and websites in the past I’ve wanted to follow but always forgot to check. Most of these links have come via ‘What’s Hot in Google Reader‘ and ‘This Isn’t Happiness‘* which between them keep me up to date with things that make me smile, laugh and go “wow!” I’ve picked five things that I liked so much they got passed on to other people, and that I keep going back to myself.

1. Visual Aids
Do you remember those wall charts for facts you had at school. Well Visual Aids are like those but 100 times cooler! Buy their books from Amazon or posters of the charts from their own online shop.

2. The Deadliest Place on Earth?
This possibly got one of the biggest “WOW“s of the year! I’ll be tuning into ‘How earth made us‘ on BBC2 in the new year to find out more.

“It’s 50 oC and has a humidity of 100%, less than a hundred people have been inside and it’s so deadly that even with respirators and suits of ice you can only survive for 20 minutes before your body starts to fail. It’s the nearest thing to visiting another planet – it’s going deep inside our own.”

3. Did you know? 3.0
I saw this a few months ago, but it was also shown at a conference I attended in November. It’s enough to make your head explode. There is no a Did you know? 4.0 but I prefer the 2008 version.

4. Internet Speeds & Costs around the World
Maybe it’s just because this year I have the worst broadband I’ve ever had that this caught my eye. I do find this fascinating to see how the UK compares to the world in different ways, and this is a very pretty visual comparison. (On the Gizmodo site click the image to see a bigger version)

5. Who is getting rich off the iPhone?
I’m a mac geek and an iPhone fan. And unlike recent suggestions in the media I’m pretty sure I’m not suffering from iPhone Syndrome. Using pretty graphics to explain something fairly complex to me is always going to be a winner!

*Warning: This Isn’t Happiness is NSFW & some posts may contain images which are offensive to some people.

Parsnips

There are a few food items I can’t abide, including Marmite, but nothing offends me more than the parsnip. I swear I can smell them a mile off. I don’t care whether they’ve had a liaison with some honey and an oven, they are still awful. Horrible. In my family I have started a “we hate parsnips” movement. My niece and I have discussed getting badges made for next Christmas. I am disappointed that so many people seem to enjoy the parsnip, thankfully there are some of us that cannot be penetrated by it’s evil ways.

Crap Showers

I am a shower person. I’ve never been fussed by baths, I get bored after five minutes. The beauty of the shower is that you can hop in and out in a few minutes, or you can stay enjoying the warm wonderful water for quite sometime. Great showers rock. Unfortunately there are some rubbish showers out there that barely let out a trickle of water, there is no pressure and washing your hair takes half a day. I grew up with a crap shower (sorry mum & dad, but it is true!) so maybe it’s why I believe that they should be confined to a dump somewhere. There is no reason for a bad shower. Even if you don’t invest in a full on power shower the normal electric ones have improved vastly. Even my parents have a shower these days that I can be almost proud of!

Gardening

I don’t have green fingers. I can see all the benefits of gardening. I really do enjoy a nice garden. But I struggle to keep a pot plant alive in my kitchen. I have inherited a garden in my new flat and I hate being responsible for it. I’ve managed to mow one half of it once this summer. I did start on the second half, but the strimmer (I really begrudged buying a strimmer) went wrong… I tried to read the instructions, but it is all alien to me. I am not confining gardens to 101, or anyone elses ability to garden. I just wish the need for me to garden would go away!

Bad Customer Service

If you are a grumpy cynical person then you are probably great at comedy. If you have anger issues then campaigning may be right down your street. If you begrudge stopping your social life to deal with someone else then I’m sure there is room for another ‘IT’ girl in the pages of Closer. If you have any of the above traits do not, I repeat DO NOT, work in customer service. There is no excuse for bad customer service. The rules are simple, employ someone who likes people and put them on a desk or at the end of the phone. Yes there are some really horrible customers out there, but isn’t it more satisfying to deal with them with a smile whilst doing something underhand to get your revenge? I’ve worked in customer services many times and a majority of customers are lovely people who if you treat them nicely they will be nice back.

Brendan Cole

Strictly Come Dancing is back and so is Brendan Cole unfortunately. I don’t think he’s gorgeous. I won’t deny he has a lot of talent, but he isn’t the greatest dancer. He’s selfish and arrogant. The temper tantrums and high maintenance dramatics are unattractive, and getting boring to watch. The last straw was the freestyle dance last year. He devised a routine that didn’t suit his partner at all. It was all about him. And he’s not even a proper ‘bad boy’ he’s just an overgrown toddler who needs to have a good long sit on the naughty step and think about exactly how annoying he is. And that’s why I’m sending him to 101… because there he can’t bother anyone else!

But nowadays my viewing is much more limited. My guilty pleasures are Neighbours and Home & Away. They were the first soaps I ever watched, when Kylie was a mechanic and Sally was a little girl. In my opinion they are still slightly less scandalous and depressing that our British soaps.

They both get recorded on my PVR (that’s a digital TV tuner with a hard drive to save stuff on) alongside my seasonal favourites of Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and Have I Got News for You. But these days that’s about it.

I always imagined that being able to watch and record whatever TV I wanted would mean I would end up with hours of television to get through. But it’s quite the opposite. More often than not I reach for a DVD when I fancy some visual stimulation. Though the idea of TV on demand is a nice one in theory, in practice it ends up being another thing that I feel I have to do. If there is hours of TV waiting to be watched then it becomes a chore to watch it. I find Friday Night with Jonathan Ross far more enjoyable if I happen to catch it when it’s being broadcast, than if I have to catch up afterwards. I don’t find this world of on demand entertainment convenient, I find it exhausting.

Growing up in the days of the VCR you were able to record things, but if you went away for two weeks you could only manage a maximum of four hours (oh the joys of getting a few 240 minute videos for Christmas!) though I can’t actually remember leaving anything to record when we went away. I mainly used my videos to record movies, which is something I also tend to use my PVR for these days. Most of the time I just watched what was on TV when it was on, though in my later years I recorded Buffy (which coincided with dinner time) and watched it as soon as the episode had finished recording!

My younger self who was desperate to get Sky would be appalled at what I am about to say.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I find myself agreeing with people that compare a majority of our programming to junk food. It isn’t healthy or nutritional for our brains. For me having more channels and more choice means that I miss out on the really good stuff. Whenever I look through the TV guide I can’t find one thing I want to watch on all the channels that I have. I no longer watch adverts so I don’t see what’s coming up that might actually interest me. I’m sure that I’ve let quite a few fascinating documentaries pass me by because I just can’t be bothered to search for them amongst the repeats and complete rubbish on offer. When there were four channels (it took me a long time to accept Five as a legitimate channel) I’m sure there was much more quality. Maybe it’s just rose tinted glasses?

So if anyone has any ideas how I can avoid the chaff, and locate the wheat, that would be great. I don’t want to hate television. I think it is a fantastic invention to learn from and to unwind to, but I’ve lost the excitement about watching stuff on the box and I’d like to get it back!

So it surprised me this evening when I found myself, in my tuned out state, tuning back in. I have been listening with interest to ‘Inside the Ethics Committee’. It’s actually quite understandable that this got my attention. I went to a Catholic high school and for me the redeeming feature of Religious Education lessons were discussions and debates about ethics and morality. I enjoy this kind of thing.

The discussion this evening was about Ayesha, who has a genetic condition that means she requires support to carry out day-to-day tasks, but wishes to have fertility treatment (read more at the Radio 4 website). In my opinion I don’t see a problem, her husband is capable of caring for the child, and a 50% chance of inheriting a disability is not a good reason to refuse the treatment.

I put myself in her shoes. I would be livid if I needed fertility treatment and I was refused it on the grounds of my “disability”. I really don’t like calling it that. I think everyone has a potential disability. Don’t we all have strengths and weaknesses, both physical and mental? It’s just that society has come to use this word to define a weakness that requires ongoing support and/or care.

Let’s face it, anyone, at any time, could find themselves in a position where they were unable to physically care for an offspring. Ayesha has a husband who is physically able to look after the child, and both of them are fully capable of loving a child. That is more than some children ever have.

The other issue is about the chance of that child inheriting a disability. I think it is fair that with certain disabilities the parents get to screen and make a decision (though what those disabilities should be is a whole other blog or PhD). However I believe that that decision is always based on the parents feeling and judgement about their ability to cope with caring for that disability, not on the quality of life that child will have. Having worked with children with severe and multiple disabilities I have found them to be some of the happiest children I have known. I don’t see their disability as a “burden”. Rather they may not experience the “burdens” that other children do because they are simply unaware of certain pressures and stresses of society. I believe ‘quality of life’ is a very personal and subjective notion and no human can assess the quality of another human’s life. How each human being reacts and rises to the challenges they face is based on nature and nurture, it’s what makes us individual.

I decided to blog about this because of the personal battle I have had with deciding whether I might want children one day. I initially didn’t want children, and not just because in my early twenties the broodiness hadn’t kicked in. I wasn’t sure what right I had to make the decision to have a child that would almost certainly experience depression (from looking my at family history). But over the years that opinion has changed. Just because of what I experience doesn’t mean I wish I had never been born (even if I have wailed that sentiment in the depths of depression). And I don’t have the right to make that decision about any potential future off springs of mine. Who knows, they might even buck the trend and never experience anything more than bad PMT (our family also seems to only give birth to women, we then marry the men in, and start all over again!)

I was really pleased that the Ethics Committee allowed Ayesha to go ahead with fertility treatment. It is another positive step forward in recognising and treating people as individuals, not labelling them and sticking them in a box with everyone else.

I know that this is a deeper subject than cannot possibly be fully expressed or properly debated in under 1000 words, but it is a taster on my thoughts around the subject. I do appreciate that others will have different opinions to me, and very personal experiences that have shaped their views. As with anything I write, I hope it is taken in the context it is intended, and it is understood that whilst I might not always agree with the views of other people, I do sincerely respect them.

The photo is of ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ by Marc Quinn on a plinth in Trafalgar Square (taken by me in 2007).

footnote: Interestingly this is the first blog I have ever tagged with the word ‘disability’.

Writing.

If you were given £10 million tomorrow would you still want to do it?

Yes.

I started writing because it was a release. I have kept diaries on and off throughout the years. Until fairly recently, when I started seriously thinking of moving into a career in writing, the writing came easiest when I was anxious or depressed.

I think too much. I am well known for over thinking and anyone who’s made the mistake of asking me ‘why’ I did something knows that they will get an answer will a full and detailed thought process attached (kind of like the Eggheads on BBC2). My best friend was more than pleased to present me with a Gemini Agate keyring which showed that the Gemini keyword is “I think” (at least I can now blame it on the planets!)

I have also run my twitter feed through Tweetstats.com which told me that “think” was my most used word on Twitter.

As someone whose brain doesn’t understand slowing down, let alone stopping, there has to be some way to get all that stuff out of my head and make things a bit quieter for a while. Writing is my way to do that. When I write I get to empty all those thoughts on to paper. I can edit them and make some sense of them, or alternatively just stick them in a diary and forget about them.

As time has gone on my enjoyment of writing has increased. It has become more than just a way of dealing with negative thoughts and feelings. Writing also is a way of getting my more crazy, interesting, exciting and positive thoughts on paper. It lets me drag my vivid and quirky imagination out of my head and onto the page.

Now I just want to write all the time (I wrote four blogs in one weekend!) Ideally I’d have a column in a newspaper, be churning out magazine features and continuing to blog whilst working on my latest novel. I would do it all for nothing if I didn’t need somewhere to live and funds to buy food. It’s not just the lure of writing itself but also the flexibility, something that is very important to me. Give me a deadline and I will meet it. Tell me how and when to work to meet that deadline and I will get very frustrated (I really should be self-employed!)

I realised I haven’t updated you on novel news recently. I promised I will do so in my next blog, which should be written within the next 48 hours.

In the meantime if you dear readers do know of any column/opinion or feature writing opportunities that I might have a chance at then please do let me know!

p.s. BANANA UPDATE: There was further banana discussion today. This time regarding the smell and health benefits. What have I started?!