Christmas Eve - A special message from The Barnet Eye

If like us, all of your teenagers have returned from Uni for the season, I'm sure you are having fun with your routine thrown out of the window. Much as I love having all of the children home, I'd forgotten the joy of hearing them squabbling. My solution, put on some really loud punk rock music to drown it all out. This is the tenth time I've written a Christmas Eve blog. What was my message ten years ago? I thought I'd have a look. I wrote

For me personally 2008 has been an awful year. I hope it's been better for all of you.  

Peace and goodwill to you and in the words of the great and wise Leonard Graves-Phillips - keep watching the skies !!!!! 

It was a rotten year. My mum had died, my father in law had died, my mother in law had had a heart attack and unbeknown to us was about to be diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. There had been a global credit crunch, with the country plunged into recession. Boris Johnson had replaced Ken Livingstone as London Mayor, Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, David Cameron was leader of the opposition and I was still a very disaffected member of The Labour Party. David Bowie, Mark E. Smith, Amy Winehouse and Pete Shelley were all still alive and kicking.

A lot of things have changed. Gordon Brown and David Cameron have long gone. We had an Olympics in 2012 when the whole world saw Great Britain at its best. How times have changed.

But my message to you at this time of year, when we hook up with old friends and new, see family members that we've not seen for ages (some we wish we weren't seeing at all), eating, drinking too much and generally enjoying ourselves is the same. So Peace and goodwill to you and in the words of the great and wise Leonard Graves-Phillips - keep watching the skies !!!!!

This year we lost Mark E. Smith of the Fall. Here is one of his finest compositions, which has a rather festive tone. Enjoy!