My Top 10 Wants List For Santa (Christmas in General)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Christmas in General
Date:	21/12/02 (187 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Would be nice

Disadvantages: Blinking impossible

1) World Peace

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a cliché to wish for world peace, but it is truly the most important thing and something I desperately wish for. I have been anti-War since I was old enough to have my own opinion. I protested against the Gulf War in 1990 and now it looks as though a second is imminent.

If you have read my George and Sam story here (in Bombs Over Baghdad), my political viewpoint is apparent. (George is Bush, Sam is Saddam.) I certainly don’t think Saddam is blameless, but Bush is an evil warmonger and if we end up in a major conflict, I will put the blame for it at his feet.

Since 9/11, our lives have changed. The previously eradicated smallpox is now a real threat. Terrorism is pretty much a daily part of our lives now and the days of our biggest danger being an IRA car bomb seem a long time ago. Now terrorists are ‘cheating’, the threat is everywhere, all the time and could come in many guises.

I daren’t go to London. I daren’t use public transport. I even think carefully about going into town.

I want my pre-9/11 innocence back and the same for my children.

2) A House

On a much smaller scale, I want us to own a house! Being a family of six, it would be great to have a decently sized house (not huge – I can’t cope with the housework as it is!) so my kids can have bedrooms of their own.

I would love us to be able to buy a house, but round here, terraced ones are £120,000 and there’s no way we can afford that, even though Hubby works full time. I am fed up of renting, I hate the idea that someone can just turn up and inspect your home, I resent paying £800 a month rent and I hate the insecurity, knowing that at any time they can give you a month’s notice and you have to move out. It’s so hard finding somewhere affordable, in the right area for the schools, that takes pets, etc. I hate moving too!
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Ideally, I would stay here but have my relatives move nearer. My parents and other family live in Lincoln, 180 miles away. I’d like my Dad, step-mum and little sister to live next door. Beth is two years old and my only sibling, so I’d love to spend more time with her.

Mum and her fiancé could live a few streets away. My Nan (who will be 96 in a couple of weeks), Gran, aunts and cousins can all live within walking distance, because I don’t drive.

3) Good Health For My Family

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, I’d like all of us to be healthy – all the time preferably, but especially over Christmas and the New Year. I have lost count of the times we’ve had to take a child to the emergency doctors on Boxing Day or New Year’s Day.

Over the past three weeks, all my four kids have been off school and Hubby has been off work ill too. A bad cough and throat infection has gone through all of us and I am sick of it. I am fed up of dishing out Disprol, waking up at 4am and finding someone’s got a temperature, visiting the Doctors’ surgery and listening to endless coughs and sniffs.

4) A Peaceful Xmas At Home

Keeping in with the Christmas spirit (and a Eurovision winner by Nicole), I also want a little peace! I very rarely seem to have a chance to hear silence. With four kids, seven pets and a husband who should be a town crier, the house is usually filled with gleeful sounds of shouting, screaming, stamping, slamming doors and loud music.

I would love a peaceful Christmas where everyone is thrilled with their presents and doesn’t covet their siblings’ gifts, where all the batteries are included and everything comes ready assembled, where no-one eats too much and feels sick, where we all agree on which TV channel to watch and where Christmas Day doesn’t start until after 6am.

I hope for a Christmas where I don’t
have to listen to S Club Embryos screeching ‘Puppy Love’, where the dog doesn’t poo on the carpet and chase the cat under the Christmas tree, where the only raised voices are in happiness and where the whole day goes perfectly from start to finish.

5) Good Luck

I would like us to have some good luck – to win the lottery would be ideal (and sort out number 2!), but even some competition wins would be great.

I would like the sort of good luck that stops it raining between 3pm and 3:30pm, so I don’t get soaked doing the school run.

I would like the sort of luck that when I have an afternoon nap, the phone doesn’t ring or my mum-in-law pops round.

I would also like the sort of luck that if my mum-in-law does pop round, it’s just after I’ve finished cleaning the house and I can pretend it’s always like that.

6) A New TV Series Of Dr. Who

I would love a new TV series of Dr. Who – not a new Americanised film where our hero kisses the love interest (bleurgh!) and not repeats of the Tom Baker years (although they were wonderful). I also don’t want a radio play or another webcast.

I want a new series on BBC1 on Saturday evenings around 6pm. I don’t mind a new Doctor (although I think Colin, Sylvester, Peter and Paul could all reprise the role successfully). I would happily welcome a black actor – Paterson Joseph, Colin McFarlane and Patrick Robinson would all be great – but it’s got to be a man and he’s got to be British. No women, no Hollywood stars, no Americans.

Oh and one of his companions should be an unknown thirty-something woman plucked from obscurity. How about me? ;-)

7) Snow

An oft-requested classic. Yes, another white Christmas to add to the hundreds of similar requests.

You see, Christmases in my childhood were better. We had proper seasons then – it wa
s hot and sunny in Summer, freezing cold and snowy in Winter.

I would sledge down the West Common in Lincoln. Schools would shut, roads would be impassable and I’d build big snowmen in our back yard, snuggled up in my matching hat, gloves and scarves.

Since moving to Bristol in 1998, we have had two days where it has snowed – one of which was this month – but it never settles (the locals say ‘pitch’). It’s sad to think my kids might grow up without ever having had a proper snowball fight or a sprained ankle from a particularly slippery path.

8) 10 Sexy Men And Women

Well, I need something to look at, don’t I? I thought my top ten sexy celebs could pop over for a chat and a cuppa. I could get their autographs, have some photos taken with them and get dressed up so I look good (ish). (I only do ‘ish’.) I might even have a kiss and cuddle, if I was lucky.

So I thought I’d choose five men and five women, just to be fair. I chose people I have never met before, otherwise Paul Darrow and Colin Baker would have naturally been included.

So on my guest list would be Helena Bonham-Carter, Sinead Quinn (from Fame Academy), Cheryl Tweedy (from Girls Aloud), Melinda Messenger and Kylie Minogue for the women. Then Darius Danesh, Mark Owen, Malachi Cush (from Fame Academy), Kris Marshall (the elder son in the sitcom My Family) and Keith Semple (from One True Voice) for the blokes.

9) 10 Mundane Gifts I’d Like

Just to round things off, I thought I’d pick ten smaller, more achievable presents I would love to find on Christmas Day morning.

Darius’ CD album ‘Dive In’
Hotch-Potch, a TY beanie dog
The Popstars – The Rivals video
A new printer cartridge (or ten!)
Tickets to the Fame Academy or Popstars – The Rivals concerts in Cardiff next year
The new Terry Pratchett book ‘Nig
ht Watch’
All the ‘Are You Being Served?’ episodes on video (I’ll let you watch them too, Kate/mattygroves, LOL!)
A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy – female – which I would call Bonnie (after Bonnie Langford)
A hair dye that turns out a bright purple (a ‘P*** off’ purple, not an ‘Excuse me, would you mind awfully if…’ purple!)
A freezer full of decent ice cream

Do you know, that was the hardest bit to write!

10) Things To Improve At Dooyoo

Reads to improve, new (good) members to join, new products added quickly - you know, that kind of thing ;-)

*** WISHING YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A SAFE, PEACEFUL AND HAPPY 2003! ***

Karen xxx

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