Perhaps the most moving "Farewell To All This" statement that I have yet seen. I wish him well.

Yes, it's Happy Yuletide Fever here at Troubled Diva today! So I've stuck a bit of tinsel round my curious old box, and bunged a few seasonally appropriate choons in it.



Item 79. Anonymous 4 - Novum Decus Oritur (A New Splendour Arises)

Medieval Hungarian plainsong, anyone?
The Latin text can be found here, with an English translation further down the same page.



Item 80. Cocteau Twins - Frosty The Snowman (1993)
(from the Snow single)

It wasn't all glacially aloof tone poetry and mystically ethereal impressionism round at Liz, Robin and Simon's gaff, you know. They could put on their Santa hats and jingle their sleigh bells in the snow with the best of them - as this track amply displays. Lyrics are here, should you feel compelled to join in. Although I shouldn't really be encouraging you in this.


Item 81.Cristina - Things Fall Apart (1981)
(from the Ze Christmas Album)

"My mother said: I'm a survivor. I pull together Christmas every year. Something has to last, she said. Once a year, let's have the past..."

A old friend of the Old Curiosity Box, the Is That All There Is? and Disco Clone girl returns once again, with this splendidly world-weary take on the Christmas season.



Item 82. The D4 - Don't Believe In Christmas (2002)
(official band site)

Straight-up, high-octane, punky rock and roll of the old school - and an admirable sentiment to boot.

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

I think that Little Baby Jesus, sensing my profound discomfort with the rigours of the season, has now started to send me Signs From On High, in a last ditch attempt to fill me with The True Spirit Of Christmastide.

Bless him. He means well, but he's been making rather a ham-fisted job of it so far. And I'm getting a bit sick of it now.

Let me talk you through, item by item.

Lost in a crowded WH Smiths, I collar a stray assistant and ask her where I can find some batteries. Flashing me her warmest, most maternal smile, she immediately takes full ownership of my problem. Not only does she walk the entire length of the store with me ("This will do me good! It's time I had a little wander down to the far end!"), proudly leading me all the way to the Battery Display Unit itself - she then concludes my Expectation-Surpassing Customer Service Experience by pressing a free CD of "classic Christmas tracks" into my hand. Much as I can live without Dean Martin singing Silent Night and Bing Crosby singing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (we get quite enough of that sort of stuff in the shops without taking it home with us as well, thank you), I haven't the heart to resist, and so stuff the CD into my bag with what I hope is a suitably impressive display of gratitude.

After careful inspection, I find that that the Battery Display Unit doesn't have the type of batteries that I need. Thank goodness my nice lady is nowhere to be seen. It might have broken her heart. I proceed to the nearest till with my two jumbo rolls of gift-wrap, and join the queue.

The sales assistant throws me a concerned look. Did I realise that jumbo rolls of gift-wrap are three-for-the-price-of-two? No, I hadn't realised. Well, wouldn't I like my third free roll? No, I wouldn't. Eight whole metres of shiny paper are more than enough already. In fact, I only picked up the second roll as a result of the usual "but what if we run out of something?" irrational pre-Christmas panic which seems to have all shoppers in its grasp. If I pick up a third roll, then it will only sit there in the walk-in wardrobe until next year - and of course, I could never use it next year, as then it will be a year old, and someone might notice, and then they'll think I don't love them enough. So, of course I decline my free roll of gift wrap. Totally rational, you see.

In Boots The Chemist, down by the photography section, I finally find the "C" batteries that I need for young master Callcub's present. They come in packs of two, and I need four batteries - so I pick two packs, and join the queue.

This sales assistant also throws me a concerned look. Did I realise that packs of batteries are three-for-the-price-of-two? No, I hadn't realised. Well, wouldn't I like my third free pack? No, I wouldn't. I only need four batteries.

She looks at me quite aghast. And then, kindly but quite firmly, tells me that I must have my third pack. In fact, she'll go and get it for me. Before I can stop her, she's halfway down the aisle.

Of course, the sensible thing to do would have been to buy yet another pack, making it four-for-the-price-of-three, and giving Callcub a full extra set. But I didn't think this through quickly enough, and now she's back, beaming at me in that warm Christmassy way that all the other sales assistants have been doing this lunchtime, and I can't make this transaction any more drawn-out and complicated than it already is, and besides which there's quite a big queue behind me now, and so I meekly accept the extra batteries, which I'll never use because I don't even own anything which takes "C" batteries, and I flash her my best attempt at a warm smile of gratitude, and I leave the store.

I can't eat my soup and sandwich at Atlas without something to read, and so I stop off to buy the Nottingham Evening Post from a street seller. Who proceeds, quite bafflingly, to give me a free 250g bag of sugar with my newspaper. It's decent sugar as well, with respectable middle class aspirations: natural, unrefined, golden granulated. From Mauritius!

Nice try, Little Baby Jesus. But cheesy-listening Christmas CDs, free giftwrap, free batteries and a bag of sodding sugar still ain't gonna cut it with me. I'm trying my best to hang onto my Bah Humbug Grouchiness - and I'm not letting go without a struggle, do you hear? Now off you go, and...I dunno, create World Peace or something. Just leave me alone, and keep your low-rent, cut-price gifts to yourself in future. Got that?

I'm going to Hell now, aren't I?

I'm finally getting sucked into that busy-busy-busy pre-Christmas vortex: ever-expanding To Do lists, frantic barging round the shops at lunchtime, greetings cards guilt trips, ugly wrapping paper angst, Amazon Anxiety Syndrome ("have they shipped? will they ship?"), and "how am I going to see everyone before we go away and get the ironing done?" panic attacks. Tis the season to be...wound-up, basically.

In any case: what's with this collective need to touch base with everyone you know before Christmas, when we're all rushed off our feet anyway? What's wrong with January? Ah, the cooling spiritual balm of January - just round the corner, with all its delicious bleakness. That's what keeps us going at times like these.

K gets it far worse than I do, though. There's something about the "festive" season which he just cannot deal with, on a quite fundamental level. I put this down to a combination of factors: the externally imposed jollity, the sense of obligation, the lack of spontaneity, the vast amount of tasks that have to be completed (while still having to run a company) - and most of all, the mounting sense of collective public hysteria, which (in his perception) threatens to engulf him like a tidal wave. I'll just be glad when we get to the cottage and lock the doors behind us.

Sipping my latte this lunchtime as usual, I was therefore particularly gratified when the estimable Atlas Delicatessen abandoned its usual musical policy (light jazz and easy listening, at a subliminal volume), and blasted out Radiohead's Kid A album instead. There wasn't a sleighbell to be heard. Its awkward miserablism was a tonic for the soul.

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If other people's search referrals are anything to go by, then it would seem that a fair number of you are currently trying your hands at my Blogaholic quiz. This is cheering news indeed. At the time of writing, no-one has yet sent me a full set of correct answers, so there is still everything to play for.

I should set the record straight on something, though. After devising this quiz, I did start having nagging memories of something similar taking place on East/West at the beginning of the year (though try as I might, I can't find it now). So I guess this isn't quite the original idea that I had hoped it would be. But - lest you should think otherwise - it wasn't deliberate theft of the idea, either. Unless it was theft on some murky subconscious level. (Is that a legitimate defence in law, I wonder? Did Winona's team try that one out?)

Competitions aside, this is the Big Week for starting to assemble those all-important "best of the year" lists, and for making the first drafts of the traditional "best of the year" mix CDs. This year's looks like being the first ever triple CD set - which is faintly ridiculous, but then I do think that 2002 has been something of a vintage year for music of all sorts of genres. But more of all that in due course.

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Finally, some quick links:

1. The Mayfly Project is back once again, in which you are invited to summarise your year in no more than 20 words. I haven't submitted my entry yet, for two reasons. Firstly (as you will have observed by now), precis doesn't exactly come naturally to me. Secondly, 2002 isn't over for a couple more weeks - in which time, anything could happen. Although it probably won't. But you never know.

2. Now that Popjustice has re-launched as a blog, it has graduated from an occasional, to a regular, to a downright essential read. Any site which can come up with no less than one hundred reasons to buy the Girls Aloud single this week is talking my kind of language. Furthermore, their Best Singles Of 2002 list is the most radical of any I have seen this far, gleefully going against every established notion of critical consensus.

3. And whaddya know? I have yet another new favourite blog: The Pennylane Journals. Where will it all end? Someone help me, help me, help me, help me please!

Yes, I know that the questions look tough, and that you don't read most/any of the blogs on my sidebar regularly enough to know the answers off the top of your head - but there are ways, and there are means. So let me offer some assistance.

1. Firstly, there's Google. However, an entire quiz that could be answered by simple Googling would be a dull exercise indeed. Therefore, I have taken care over the wording of the questions, so that Google will only get you so far, and no further.

2. A lot of the answers can be found simply by reading the current front pages of the blogs concerned. You don't always need to have perfect recall of the archives.

3. Although sometimes, that's the only way. But not too often.

4. Pay particular attention to sidebars, straplines, and "About" pages.

5. Although all the questions relate to material which appeared some time during 2002, most of them relate to fairly recent material. Because my memory is as hopeless as everybody else's.

6. You could all get together behind my back and cheat. But not in my comments boxes, because I'll delete you. Just see if I won't!

7. My suggestion: copy my blogroll to a separate file, then print it off. Tell you what - here's my blogroll in MS Word format, with hyperlinks still intact.

8. This has got to be more fun than that hideously impossible King William's College Quiz thing that appears in The Guardian every year.

9. And the prize is a whole lot better. Five whole hours of impossibly rare and deeply wonderful music, from the 1960s through to the present day!

10. At the time of writing, I'm not yet aware of anyone who has managed to get any more than five 14 answers. So the field is wide open, shall we say.

You have until lunchtime (UK time) on Christmas Eve, at which point I will reveal the answers, with accompanying explanations. Unless somebody gets full marks before then, of course. Which is so not going to happen.

Have fun!

I have to say that the personal ads in the London Review Of Books totally rock. I would date any of them. Even the old ladies. Especially the old ladies. (via Rise)

I seem to have developed an addiction to giving stuff away. Either that, or I am a frustrated quiz show host. Because, even as the dust settles on the dying embers of the Shirt Off My Back Project, I'm at it again with yet another competition.

A quick bit of background. Over the past few months of enforced indolence in the office - where idly tapping away at a computer is perfectly acceptable, but reading newspapers and magazines might be seen as a tad insensitive to those who are still working their butts off - I have looked to the world of weblogs to keep me sane. Essentially, weblogs have helped me to get through the "working" day without becoming overwhelmed by the essential futility of my existence. And for that, I thank them.

As a result, I do seem to have ended up knowing an awful lot of detail about an awful lot of blogs. So why not put this knowledge to use, with this fun-packed quiz for the festive season?

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So you think you're a Blogaholic?

Here are 56 questions, designed to test your knowledge of the weblogs which I read the most. In each case, the required answer is the name of one (or more) of the weblogs on my sidebar. No weblog appears more than once as an answer. All the weblogs on my sidebar appear as answers. All the answers relate to material which has appeared somewhere on that site at some time during 2002 - and just about all of the answers should be obtainable with a little bit of creative research.

The winner will be EITHER the first person who e-mails me (at mikea at btinternet dot com) with a full set of correct answers, OR the person with the most correct answers on the closing date of Christmas Eve, whichever comes first.

(Note - I will actually be quite surprised if anyone manages to get full marks. So do please submit an entry, even if you haven't managed to work out all the answers. As all the answers are right there on the sidebar, some measure of inspired guesswork might also come in handy.)

The prize? A one-off, four CD set of the tunes from my Old Curiosity Box series, in their original order of appearance. There will only be one set of these CDs produced.

Are you up for the challenge? OK - here come the questions. Good luck!Update: For some useful tips, take a look at this.

I am slowly learning to overcome my fear of posting ancient links which all the cool people saw, like, years ago. So here are a couple more. Don't worry: despite their subject matter, both are completely safe for work.

1. Pr0nography, with the figures removed. Harrowingly bleak. Borders on conceptual art. Makes Richard Billingham look like Mario Testino, in fact.

2. Obscene Interiors (Parts 1 to 3):

And on the sixty-ninth day of the project...Mike finally ran out of shirts.

Which means that we have a winner. Asta, will you please step forward.

Asta. Dear, sweet, patient Asta. YOU ARE A WINNER!

Just as soon as it has been washed and ironed, a beautifully crafted (and moderately expensive) Hugo Boss pink checked button-down shirt will be winging its way to you in the post. Maybe even in time for Christmas. So please send me your postal address without delay.

My thanks to all who participated:And thanks especially to Marcus for the initial inspiration.

So, what have we learnt from this project? What can we take from it and use to our benefit?

Why, I think I feel an epilogue coming on.

I see it like this, you see. Some weblogs, with their lacerating, brutal honesty, transport you to the extremities of human experience. Other weblogs, patrolling the very boundaries of comedy, leave you with a heightened, transcendent sense of the absurdities of contemporary existence, even as they leave you helplessly wiping tears of mirth from your eyes. Meanwhile, the Shirt Off My Back Project has, I feel, pushed back the outer limits of meaningless banality, excoriating tedium, and mind-numbing repetition.

But is this not also part of the fabric - the very warp and weft - of life as it is truly lived?
I say that it is.

And from the overweening morass of the humdrum, have we not collectively mined glistening, iridescent, illuminating shards of insight and wisdom?
I say that we have.

And so, in that newly attained spirit of enlightenment, I invite you to mark the close of this groundbreaking project by taking a final journey back through all 68 shirts. Here they all are. Gaze upon them for the last time. Bid them a fond farewell. And let us move on to pastures new.

Why, I think I might even wear a T-shirt tomorrow.