Christmas with Liberace, Disney, Buckaroo

Lovely dinner guests round here on Saturday - a night with games of Buckaroo and Kerplunk and J. digging out the old vinyl - Christmas with Liberace and a Disney album that, it turned out, almost everyone present had a copy of as a child. The Ronco one with the poorly-drawn cover.

We're loving the snow here in Levenshulme still. It ushered in the festive season proper this weekend. We've braved the crowds in the foodhall at M+S and the Trafford Centre going bonkers on the last Sunday before Christmas.

I loved the ending of George Selden's 'The Cricket in Time Square' and, doing a little light research, was delighted to find there were a number of sequels. He writes with such warmth, compassion and atmosphere. Why don't we know of him in the UK at all? The Puffin copy I've got dates from the Sixties and I don't think he's currently in print here. He seems like a glaring omission. How come there was no big Disney movie - in the Seventies, say - some time around The Fox and the Hound?

Anyway - the Christmas reading goes on! I'm now reading George Mann again. I'm devouring the first of his Newbury and Hobbes novels, 'The Affinity Bridge' and am just ready for that cosy steampunk atmosphere - crashed zeppelins and glowing blue policemen and all...

I'm right between projects now, on the writing front! I've paused halfway through one top secret project and have delivered to my agent. Then on January the first I start another top secret project. Day one, page one, that'll be. But now's the lovely time inbetween. The way my writing works these days, commuting from one project to another is like going to stay with different sets of old friends. The small lulls between are regathering thoughts en route and biding time quite pleasantly on the train. Watching the snowy landscape, chewing toffees. Imagining the adventures to come.

Was it just me or was the Cranford TV special a bit miserable last night? Deaths in childbirth and people keeling over all over the place? I'd been looking forward to going back and revisiting that world... and it was good - it was very good - but it was taking itself very seriously, though. I mean, really, at Christmas I kind of want TV dramas to be a bit light and festive and silly.

Here's a piece from the news this morning. Here's a pantomime I'd have liked to have been at:

"Singer Amy Winehouse is facing a police investigation for allegedly lashing out at a theatre manager after subjecting panto actors to a stream of abuse.

"The troubled star is said to have disrupted a performance of Cinderella on Saturday night by heckling the cast.

"She is later alleged to have launched a physical attack on a member of staff at the theatre in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

"The Back to Black singer was said to have shocked children and parents by shouting "He's f****** behind you" during the performance and yelling out "F****** Cinders, Prince Charming, marry me".

"Refusing to sit down, she also branded the Ugly Sisters "bitches", The Sun reported."

The only other place - apart from our dinner party in Levenshulme - I'd have liked to be this Saturday night was Time Square in NYC. Have you seen those pictures of the snowball fight on the street?