"The Primary Gifting Period is coming..."

OK so it's not as bleak a thought as "Winter is coming" perhaps, but it does herald a new round of struggle and frustration and a battle against pale and dead eyed hordes- I speak of course of my fellow Christmas shoppers.

Most years I can barely summon up the kindness to pity them as they bob and weave, getting in the way and generally clogging up the place, acting as if collecting vital sacrifices of paper and faff for an unreasonable festive god.

This year is a bit different, however. I'm feeling a certain sort of sympathy for them as they worry their way from one toyshop to the next, hoping that the item they set their hearts on will be in stock, that they won't have to compromise and get something slightly sad and rubbish... A last-moment gift that screams "lack of forward planning" and whispers "You care about this person slightly less than you make out, don't you, you bastard". All of that is now my own little festive nightmare.

I've reached this point though the simple fact that I'm an uncle. I have a wonderful niece and nephew who I don't see nearly enough of and that puts me squarely in the middle of the "must not fail" present buying camp. Every uncle worth his eccentricities feels the same way around Christmas and birthdays I reckon (Aunties seem to have the festive gifts sewn up in August- how I envy them) ; He feels he must buy gifts that strike a balance between being fun and being formative and this creates a bit of a mountain to climb; how do we get that balance spot on to avoid that split second of Christmas day disappointment in the eyes of a small child?

I've decided to jettison a little of my pride and go for the figurative jugular. I have deployed a secret weapon- my mum. My mum, being the one who knows is a reliable source of inside information for those of us who are stuck where we are for most of the year. Hopefully by combining her insider knowledge and my maverick gift sourcing skills we'll make this a PGP to remember, at least until the kids lose the tags from their gifts and forget who bought them.

The opposite of Waaaaggggghhhhhhh!!!

Today the sudden fad for actual democracy has pushed Qaddafi into calling in mercs to quell his own people; still they gather in defiance of him.

It's also led to roly-poly slayer of his people Bobbie Mugabe to jail almost fifty people who were watching the footage of the unrest in Egypt as part of a discussion group. He says they were using it as a blueprint to plan a similar uprising against his rule. Their ultimate fate looks bleak, but may serve as a catalyst for the very unrest Big Bob seeks to crush.

Closer to home Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is learning a similar lesson in miniature-push the people too far, exploit and insult them too many times from behind your carefully rehearsed rationalisations and they'll come and camp on your lawn. Genuine democracy is back on the menu all over the place despite the usual methods of repressing it. Ignore it at your peril.

Half-term halfwits and other rage enhancers.

Half-term giveth and half-term taketh away. While it allows me to travel around on a bus that  isn't crammed to the ceiling with miniature idiots having an all-comers "look at me" contest it conversely guarantees I'll meet those self same teeny-bop cretins while about my lawful business, filling the local supermarkets and game stores, like noise addicted, unreasonable lawn ornaments.

They need a mall to sucker them all in and contain them until they get old enough to switch places with the guy working the till at the fast food dungeon they feed at. That way they wont add to the usual collection of drunks, dishabille ramblers, ambush conversationalists and teak-faced pram jockeys I'm forced to negotiate just to pick up a block of cheese on any given day. A word on that last; I realise that many of these women aren't mothers by direct choice but really, why do they look like they traded their sense of humour in against the trendy buggy that carries their tiny little white noise generator about?

This has been Jimmy reporting on how half-term sucks when you have to work- and this is why this blog is known as The Little Book of Grudges.

Primary Gifting Period 2010 hailed as success!

A resounding success in fact, as I'm updating from... a phone. My ever-attentive folks got me a smartphone doohickey; now I can idly hurl my thunderbolts of insight into your living brains from anywhere. Stroking my chin while perched atop a cathedral for instance. Perhaps even from inside the toilet on a train! Rapture.

Snowbound!

Like most of the rest of the country I am currently having some difficulty with the snow. Incoming Christmas presents have been frozen in their tracks and I, by dint of living in a remote area, am likewise stuck where I am. It's mildly stressful to say the least. People are expecting their Christmas tat. I'm expecting my Christmas tat- and dinner!

I remember snow being my friend- back when I was little snow was a sometimes treat, bits of the floor you could safely prise loose and throw at people with no worse consequences than having your face rammed into a snowbank for seventy seconds. Later on it became the last cast-iron, unassailable excuse to get out of school or college and pursue your own interests for a day or so. Mystery illnesses and family emergencies came and went but snow was solid, a skiving wing man no one could gainsay.

Now, in adult life, snow appears to have become the enemy; it's turned its back on Jim the adult and exists solely to thwart him. Like a bitter and deluded ex-girlfriend it sits and waits before unfolding a masterstroke of spite and malice, for which it can't even be blamed- force majore! Worse still you can sometimes feel the ghosts of the old pleasure at watching the flakes mount up even as you know it's going to cause you untold hassles- echoes from childhood when you and the snow were in it together.

I hate the bloody snow- but I suppose that's just the child in me wondering what the hell happened to my elemental buddy. Somewhere along the way one of us went off the rails.

Until tomorrow, the dole queue is my home.

Well, it turns out that my job and the job of several dozen others where I work is likely to be relocated early next year. No shock in this economic climate you might think- and you'd be almost right. The proposed move makes no economic sense, and is an insult to the people who've worked hard to pull the company out of the gutter by its eyelids, but that isn't the surprising part.

The surprise comes from the sheer number of people who have risen up from the shop floor to push back against this decision. They aren't going quietly; they've dug out obscure contract clauses, challenged the financial wisdom of relocating and pointed out some potentially embarrassing legal obstacles. Some wonderful, shadowy bugger even manged to tip off the local media.I don't think they've finished yet either.

I salute their efforts to keep this job alive; a job that has repeatedly handed them dog turds and demanded they be made into gold nuggets, time after time after time.