The last few days of term before Christmas were the best. Advent calendar chocolate with breakfast, Wizzard at lunchtime, colouring for Maths. A tantalising lead up to the big crescendo of Christmas Day. Since growing accustomed to this build up, it became a struggle to gather Christmas momentum without a sugar headache at the school christmas disco. In an attempt to resuscitate this festive misdirection of working energy into festive energy, Lonely Boy have created Lonely Christmas. An excuse to draw with your daughter, take photos with your ex or pin a Santa hat over your paintings. A place for bad drawings and strange research. Put an advent calendar under your tit - ’tis the season. In true Christmas fashion this zine started as a fun group activity and quickly got quite stressful due to improper planning, illness, a lack of money, and the oppressive feeling that we should be having more fun. That being said, now it’s almost over, I’m figuratively eating cheese and crackers while my step-dad sleeps in front of a bad movie, and I’m thinking over the great times we’ve had. We all came together and thought about a the same thing and some people liked it and some people found it terrible and now we’ll all sleep and wait for next year, when George and I will almost definitely decide that we should try and one-up ourselves and make this zine again. God bless us, every one. Izzy and George
Meet Miss Clause. Likes the Jersey Boys, Chardonnay and ‘Live Laugh Love’ Wall Art, Hates Dophins, Dust and Dirty Jokes. She's Merry, Menopausal and is look for that special someone to spend christmas with. Will this Zine help her find Santa?
~Festive~ Banana Bread This is a total rip off of the Hummingbird Bakery banana bread recipe but I’ve added chocolate chips cos they’re nice. It’s christmassy because its got cinnamon in it and cos its my stepdad’s absolute favourite so I make it every time I’m home.
270g soft light brown sugar (you can use any sugar tho really — darker sugars are more rich and caramelly, lighter ones are….. lighter. Both are tasty!) 2 eggs 200g peeled bananas, mashed 280g flour (((( you can use self raising or plain but if you use plain you also need 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda ))) 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (christmassy) 1 teaspoon ground ginger (christmassy) 140g unsalted butter, melted Preheat oven at 160°C or gas mark 3. Mix sugar & eggs together then add in mashed banana. Add dry ingredients, mix, then beat in the melted butter. Pour the mixture into a loaf tin (( if you don’t have one I’m sure a cake tin would be fine, or section off a part of a roasting tin with some tin foil )). It takes forever to cook - normally at least an hour, but start checking earlier if you’ve used an ~unconventional tin because dimensions will affect it. If you forgot to preheat the oven thats fine but it’ll take a bit longer. Sometimes mine can take up to an hour and a half if I’m baking at my parents because their oven is really old, so don’t worry if it’s taking a while. Check on it by sticking a knife in it and seeing if it comes out clean. If the top starts burning a bit before the inside cooks, put some tin foil over the top.
*Christmas* Empanadas Admittedly these empanadas 1) aren’t very christmassy and 2) are a complete bastardisation of actual empanadas. They developed because slowly my family has become more and more vegetarian and still harbour a distaste for nut roast. My granny only likes cooking meat for christmas, so my mum began experimenting with vegetarian alternatives and ended up here. We have them every year. They don’t taste nice with gravy.
olive oil 2 cloves of garlic 450 g mince 1 fresh red chilli ½ tablespoon sweet smoked paprika 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 tablespoon tomato purée tin of tomatoes ½ a veg stock cube 2 eggs 1 rolls of ready roll puff pastry Preheat oven to 190°C or gas mark 5. Fry the garlic in olive oil, then add mince for a little bit then add chilli, paprika, cumin and puree and a bit of the tinned tomatoes to loosen it all up. Don’t use all the tinned tomatoes or the filling will be too wet!! Lob in the stock cube then let it all cook down a while. You want it to thicken as much as possible! Hard boil an egg (10 mins? Mebs) and chop it up smallish and add eggy chunks to the filling. Let the filling cool down a little, then unroll the pastry. Chop it up into shapes (hearts! rectangles! little circles!) then put little spoons of the filling onto half of the pastry, use a bit of the second egg to wipe round the edges of the pastry as a weird eggy glue then fold and seal it all up. Wipe more egg on the top of the pastries, pierce a little hole in it to let air escape, then cook for 25 to 30 mins. You might have to do a couple batches!
IMG_8968.jpg Sit this one out IMG_8974.jpg Sit this one out pt. 2 IMG_9068.jpg Junk mail IMG_8985.jpg No one ever arrives on time IMG_9076.jpg Last to leave the party
by Rory Spencer
I bought some churros once. They were covered in cinnamon sugar and came with a little dipping pot of chocolate sauce which, after I’d carefully broken and dipped all those doughy pipe cleaners, I chugged back making sure to scrape every last bit of sauce under my fingernails. Then I went to watch Bohemian Rhapsody. When I came out, as it often is, the sky had darkened considerably. I’d spent money at the end of a very productive working week and felt like I was part so something. The smells of the Christmas market still lingered; sage topped fries, sweaty bratwurst and fried onions, and the warm smothering scent of that churro stand. But none of the people were there, and I could walk through the empty alpine village without worrying about standing on my own toes or wanting to elbow a kid in the face. I work for Uber Eats, and I ride a bicycle. Yes I’m one of those sweaty pricks, jumping red lights and barging my way to the front of the queue at McDonalds to pick up food for some layabout student whilst dripping all over the floor. I think my bike probably flicked oil onto your nice clean Adidas as I flashed past, sorry about that. I’m sure you’ll be glad to
hear that with the introduction of, like, 5 Christmas markets to Manchester’s city centre my job has annoyingly become that much harder. However my role in a pedestrianised society, that lightning rod of tutting disapproval and shouts of “Get some lights wanker!” has become even easier to fulfil. You see I won’t really be trying to stop even as the crowds build to suffocating levels, I don’t even really want to. I don’t want to hurt anyone, I just imagine you not being there. Far better for me that you be at home eating the crap I serve your snatching claw with my frozen hand than choking up the pavement I want to take a shortcut over, umming and ahhing about which uggs you’ll wear to death all year. Those boots are made for walking (out of my fucking way please). Ok. I’ll calm down. I’m full of adrenaline you see, the only way to make this job functional and fun is to challenge myself to snub whatever phantasmal authority figure I see in my way, whether it be the passage of time itself, older men not cycling, other cyclists, in particular all cars and towards the end of the month my impending rent. So you see, while Christmas is a joyously profitable time for all other businesses for me it encourages exactly the type of consumerist unity that I benefit from the rest of the year. The Christmas market could burn down in a mound of fake timber and real bratwurst, and I’d be happy. After all, I need to buy presents too.
Artists (in order of appearance) Chris and Jess ........................................ Santa and Tree Drawing Katie Tomlinson ..............................................................Mrs. Clause Jess Bewell............................................. Messages from her mum Alex Leigh ........................................................ Fortune-telling Fish Lily Kroese ............................................................. Advent Calendar Edward Jones ..................................................... Christmas Dinner Izzy Kroese .............................................................. Festive Recipies Claire Dorsett ................................................. Pub Carpet and Fire Joe and Effy .................................................................. Photo Essay George Gibson .................................................................... Krampus Rory Spencer ..................................................................... Uber Eats Amritpal Randhawa .......................................................... Deliveroo Agathe Dananai ................................................................ Sketchers Jed Buttress ............................................................................... Note Eleanor Haswell ............................................................... Metal Tree Jed Buttress 2 ......................................... Bates Family Christmas