Wow, a freshly painted kitchen

BLISS – and a fantastic surprise

Got home yesterday. Eventually. To find BLISS had decorated the hall and the kitchen. Not as in tinsel and fairy lights. As in paintbrush and emulsion. Brilliant (well, matt, actually). She's also lost patience (I promised to do it seven years ago, apparently – she's always been impatient) and trimmed the messy window board around the newel post and baluster. Better still. The dodgy picture has gone from the kitchen, too.

The first mince pie...

...of this Christmas yesterday. Lunch time. Networking do. I was hoping for some festive onion bhajees, spicy turkey samosas, turkey skewers with sambal, yoghurt and satay sauce. Maybe a winter veg biriani.

None of that. Mulled wine (heated up red with orange juice and stuff floating in it) and mince pies. Other cake stuff, too. Didn't fancy any of it, really. Went for the mince pie on the devil you know basis.

What would be nice for a Christmas buffet would be dim sum in brightly coloured won tun skins. There's still plenty of lotus leaves in the garage. I might make some steamed rice parcels, rich with sesame and soy and oyster sauces, with leftover Christmas lunch veg and others with leftover turkey. Tofu sheet wraps would be nice, too, with bright carrots, cabbage and baby corn giving bright yellow, red and green colours when steamed.

Anyway, it was a bought-in, mid-range, mediocre mince pie, way too sweet. Felt obliged to eat something, and that was it. The wine-mulling thing's lost on me as well. Seems a bit like sticking a flake into a pint of Guinness. Extra stuff making things worse than they were before the effort.

Mississippi Burning

Great film. AD's recommendation, Rich's endorsement. Gene Hackman seems to have forged a career in Hollywood wearing slightly-too-small suits. Strong performances but it's the (based on a true) story that's so good. Some crackerjack scenes, too. My favourite was Hackman's character leaving the dodgy deputy spinning in the barber's chair, having cut him with the razor he took over and used him to smash the premises up a bit.

The censors are at it again

Tightening up classifications. Why? Due to public concerns about the effect of some scenes on young men. What rubbish. There's ten year olds mature enough to watch anything you can throw at them and remain stable and sane, and thirty and forty year olds who might go on a rampage after ten minutes of Snow White. What a basis for a decision, too. Public concern and perception. On that basis we'll be deporting every eastern European (bye) and acting on what white van man says. If you can hear what he's saying over the noise from the kidnaped child in the back of the Transit.

Even if the actual driver for an initiative is public perception, at least have the decency to do what every other QUANGO and ministry does. Invent some statistics and pretend they underpin reasoning for you doing what you want, and what you are going to do in any case. They're just traffic wardens and clipboard men higher up the jobsworth foodchain.