Durham

FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER 2007

TRIVIA FESTIVAL
A big thankyou to everyone who’s been sending in trivia and useless information for the upcoming Nightshift Trivia Festival. I’m busy attempting to collate it but it isn’t easy trying to categorise the whole world, which is what the job amounts to. Judging from your contributions so far, the Festival will prove – night after night – that the world is truly an awesome, sometimes ludicrous and often perplexing place and that – as Douglas Adams said – no-one will ever really know what exactly it’s for!
A category of trivia I’m particularly interested in is Christmas itself. A season as camp, self-indulgently excessive and wholly out-of-the-ordinary as Christmas must have acres of trivia and useless information connected to it. Do you know any?
(Incidentally, there’s no need to respond to blog-posed queries like this on the blog itself, if you don’t want to. You can use any of the contact methods shown at the bottom of each posting.)

YOU AND CHRISTMAS
I’d also be interested to know what your plans are for Christmas and the New Year. I’m not just asking because I’m nosey, either. One of the things that makes Christmas unique is surely the massive dislocation of our ordinary daily lives that comes with it. We do and say things that we wouldn’t at any other time of the year, we incur debt that it will take the next 12 months to repay, we go to places that would normally be anathema to us and we eat and drink to an extent that would normally horrify us. Sometimes it seems to me that Christmas has developed into a kind of collective temporary lunacy. A friend of mine came to this conclusion some years ago and decided not to go with the over-indulgent flow. He and his girlfriend now go to Holy Island every Christmas Day to get as far away from the tinsel as possible. They reckon watching the Christmas sunset from the island is about as spiritual and other-worldly as you can get.
What your plans are will show whether I’m right or wrong. So what will you be doing? Who with? Where will you be going? Are you happy to be ‘swept along’ or have you stamped the season with your own determined individuality? If you have, how? And how have those around you reacted?

THE GREEK PARROT
Just to prove that the story of the Greek macaw threatened with a parking ticket is true, Loz has sent this picture of the offending bird. Through Lawrence, I’ll keep you informed of what happens when the case comes up before the beak.

CANADA
The origins of the country-name Canada – prompted by a What’s In A Name? question the other night – have (as usual) generated more questions than answers. Pat in Morpeth tells me that her great-great-grandfather worked there as a platelayer, returning home to Scotland in 1856 to get married. The certificate gives his place of residence as British America. So for the many Nightshift listeners I know we have in Canada.......is the story I told about the origins of the name Canada true? How long has the country had that name? What did the Canadian flag look like before the maple leaf design was adopted in 1964? And.....are there any juicy snippets of trivia about that glorious country for the Festival of Trivia?????

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.