Camp Sparkle

Hello, Campers!

A bit more news about next year's Camp.

Firstly—to any of you who won't be able to make it, we're sorry, and we'll miss you, but we had to go with the option that suited the most people. See you next time? (Come and visit me in Norwich instead!)

Secondly—nopseud and I have visited the house in Bath. It is a little eccentric, with lots of nooks and crannies, but it has lots of bathrooms (actually, it has no baths, but lots of rooms containing shower+basin+loo), and the kitchen, although small, contains a generous range cooker with gas hob and electric ovens, yay! No more grovelling with matches, and I for one am very happy about that.

We even ventured to get the bus into town, which worked pretty well, and we have also experimented with getting on the wrong bus (ahem) so that you don't have to. Instructions will follow nearer the time, but we're likely to recommend buying a weekly ticket, as there is loads to do in Bath (off the top of my head the Abbey, the Roman Baths and Pump Room, the Costume Museum, the Bizarre Bath tour, the many fine shops) and we anticipate that we'll just run a couple of outings further afield. On this basis we may not even need to hire a minibus, which will make things cheaper for everyone, but that will depend on who wants to come, and from where. Bath is pretty accessible via public transport, so it should be doable, but we'll see.

Thirdly, and this is the main purpose of my post today, we reckon that Christmas In June would be a fun thing to do next year. I wanted to tell you before this Christmas so that you have the chance to snap up Things Christmas Requires in the January sales.

So far our thinking is that we will designate one day as "Christmas", and amalgamate as many traditions into that day as we can. Some of you normally celebrate Christmas (or Yule) on the 24th, some on the 25th, but rather than prolong the feasting we'll fit everything in together. I suspect this probably means a gigantic festive buffet meal at some point in the late afternoon. It will, of course, be an entirely secular occasion, and if anyone has offerings of a Midwinter or Yule nature I'm sure they will be welcome.

We will have a Tree of some kind. Rather than carting fragile glass ornaments across the country, we propose to make decorations—baubles for the tree, paper chains, whatever your imagination comes up with. nopseud and I may also raid the cheap shops for oodles of red, green and gold tat, but we'll see.

As the celebration traditionally involves gifts, we really ought to do a Secret Santa. I think people should have at least a month to buy whatever it is they intend to give to their recipient, so that means you're going to have to sign up for Camp in good time! I'm toying with the idea of stockings that we can all put tiny gifts into, but I'm not sure if it's practical. Your thoughts?

So… for now, how about putting suggestions into comments? What are the Christmas traditions that you'd like to bring in to the Day? For me, that means
(a) Christmas Crackers (to pull, as we sit down to our feast); hats must be worn and ridiculous jokes must be told. It is traditional to sweep the entirely useless gifts away with the crumbs at the end of the meal
(b) roast potatoes, roast parsnips and plenty of gravy, without which a feast would be a sad and sorry thing
(c) listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Christmas Carol as I do food prep in the morning. It will baffle those of you who have not listened to Radio 4's array of panel games, but it is nonetheless essential to my Christmas.