Merry Christmas and other frivolity

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone’s having a day of pleasant overindulgence and laziness – we certainly are here in the FutureCat household.

We had a little bookcrossing party here on Friday night – lytteltonwitch, awhina, meerkitten, non-fiction, and gwilk and his wife came round for dinner and silly games (supplied by gwilk – it’s amazing how much energy a bunch of adults can put into a children’s card game involving foxes chasing chickens!), and then once it got dark we went over to Jelly Park and created a Christmas Book Tree. We put books in plastic bags and tied them up with Christmassy ribbon, and then picked a tree in the park and hung the books from it. The tree looked amazing when we’d finished, with books hanging all over it, spinning gently in the breeze.

Here’s lytteltonwitch (in Santa outfit) and the kitten standing in front of the finished tree:
[album 128913 231205lesley.jpg]

The books I released on the tree were:
Saints and Sinners by Marcelle Bernstein
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald/a>
The Art of Mingling by Jeanne Martinet
The Fire People by Cordell Alexander
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Season of Miracles by Emilie Richards

After we got back from the park, we had some dessert, played some more games, and then tuned in to BBC Radio Shropshire for the main event of the evening: the weekly Bookcrossing Update. But we had plans to do more than listen and chat on the forum this time. Just after midnight, when the Bookcrossing Update segment started, we rang the radio station (the Bookcrossing Update is part of their morning talk-back show, so they’re always giving out the number to ring) and said we were calling from New Zealand to say Merry Christmas to Jim (the DJ). The receptionist who answered the phone was very excited that we were calling from the other side of the world, and even offered to ring us back rather than put us on hold, so that we wouldn’t have a huge phone bill. And then when we finally got to talk to Jim (I did most of the talking, but everyone else got the chance to say Merry Christmas), he asked me all about our Book Tree, and Lesley’s Santa outfit (I’d posted the above photo on the forums, which he’d seen), and we talked about the fact that it was after midnight here, so it was already Christmas Eve (and Elaine, his co-presenter, asked if I was really Dr Who, seeing as we were obviously time travellers 🙂 ) – it was a really nice little chat (it was funny, before I rang I was really nervous about talking on the radio, but because I’ve chatted to Jim on-line, it was just like talking to a friend, so it wasn’t scarey at all), and all the bookcrossers listening on line said it was really fun to listen to. We’d (the Christchurch Bookcrossers) been planning to make the call for ages, but kept it secret so it would be a Christmas surprise for Jim and for the Bookcrossers listening in other countries, and I think the surprise worked 🙂 I even got a nice email from Jim after the show was finished, thanking me for ringing! The Listen Again clip of the show isn’t up yet, but when it is (hopefully in a day or two), it’ll be here (look on the sidebar for “BC update part fifteen”).

Currently reading: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh