Here's the giant hollow Christmas tree in Cherry Creek Mall. Somewhere inside, Santa had little kids on his knee.

Somwhere outside, a team of paramedics where mopping up after the Mal au Mall incident.

And yes, this is actually two photographs, photoshopped together by my own fair hand.

Sometimes life shows you just how, much as you might think you're hard done by, there are people worse off than you.

As I write, I'm in Cherry Creek Mall. Just minutes ago, I was in one of the glass lifts, descending to the lower level. The guy next to me, facing the glass, says "oh crap!". I look at what he's looking at. At first I see the long line of children waiting to visit Santa. Then, I focus on far more chilling site.

Below us, in front of the queue for Santa's Grotto (or whatever it's called in the US), is a man, lying on his back with policeman and paramedics around him, an intravenous drip in his arm, and one large paramedic pounding at his chest, giving him CPR.

He's fighting for his life, whilst all around him, perfectly healthy people are rudely pushing past each other, snatching things off shelves, that other people are looking at, all as if their lives depended on it.

Looking at the big picture, from above in that glass elevator, their lives don't.

Update
ONLY hit the 'read more' link if you want to know what the outcome for the man was.

Since I started writing this, a man next to me, co-incidentally another Briton, has told me that he believed that man with the heart attack died.

He also tells me that he watched as for a good 10-15 minutes, no-one including the mall staff, gave the man any CPR.

However, I have just found a member of the mall's security team, and after assuring him that I wasn't a member of the press, interviewed him briefly. The man did survive and is now making a safe recovery in hospital. He went on to tell me about all the medical training they have, and about the paramedics getting there in good time.

Whilst I never intended this site to be a "dear diary" kind of site, sometimes I feel you should know a little of what's going on with me.

My trip to Britain and Ireland has been postponed indefinitely. I will now be spending Christmas and New Year in Denver. I will be going back to Europe for a couple of weeks, at some point in January or February, depending upon finances, work and a few other factors.

You don't need to know why the trip is cancelled, it just is.

To answer your next question, yes, I'm extremely bummed about not going home for Christmas. I've spent several other Christmas' in Denver, but this is the first one I'll have spent effectively alone.

I've had a very nice offer to spend Christmas Day with my roommate's family, and so Miles and I will do that.

Given how independent I normally am, having no problem being thousands of miles away from my family and loved ones, I think I've been hit really hard by how upsetting this cancellation has been.

And so, whilst I have the week off work, I'll be taking the opportunity to get out and hike, see friends, and do some radio shows. So far I'm on-air tonight from 7-10pm, and on Boxing Day, from noon-1pm. There may be other shows, should anyone need a stand-in.

This all kinda reminds me of why I started doing radio in the first place. I was unemployed, and needed some kind of break from the constant reminder of having to find a job in Bush Jnr's America. Now, I'm doing it to forget how much I wanted to be seeing friends and family.

Anyway, Miles is being very stoic throughout all this, and has promised to take me out for lots of walks, to make I'm well-exercised. He's such a self-less dog.

If any of you want to join Miles and I for walkies, let Miles know, via the secure web form, accessible to the right, marked "Contact DMfM"

Update
It occurs to me, I could be using the time off to finally fix up the image pages properly, and add those long-promised extra pages, such as the Coffee House Guide.

Then again, it also occurs to me that I now create websites for a living, and I should put the mouse down, and go get some fresh air.

This is probably doing the rounds of corporate email the world over, but in case you miss it, the following arrived at DMfM Headquarters today:

And that is the only mention I'm going to make, of Dubya's latest victory in the War On Re-Election.

Update
It would seem that the gentleman in the "After" picture is not as well-known in the US as I had thought. He is the opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

This Thursday, I will be making the annual pilgrimage to the Old Country. My stay won't be as long as last year, but I'm sure I'll report faithfully on all that's of note.

Last year I introduced you to my home town of Bath, and some of the curious customs of the locals. I seem to remember Guinness and Indian food played a big part.

The Royal Crescent, Bath, UK

I will also be visiting Galway in the west of Ireland. It's one area that, despite my many trips to Ireland, I've never been to before. I'm assured it's absolutely beautiful, something which could be said of every other part of Ireland that I've seen so far.

Passage East, Co. Waterford, Ireland

Click the images to see enlarged versions.

I'll see if I can do more panoramas, now that I've gained my black belt in Photoshopping. The two above are from old pictures from previous visits.

Sorting through old photos I found several "skyscrapers at odd angles" pictures. Here are two of them:

The Dark Tower of Finance

The Three Towers

More odd Photoshopping experiments to follow...

On Saturday night I attended the CD release party of a band, fronted by fellow jazz89 broadcaster, Easy Bill (host of R&B jukebox). The band, Easy Bill and the Big Beat were launching their debut CD - "Midnight Creep" - at The Skylark.

Fearing a repeat of another evening out back in April this year, where everybody but Grainne and I was dressed in R&B period outfits, I wore my antique Daks suit (fine British tailoring, circa 1960), a bold choice of shirt, and my drinking coat. Hell, I was ready for anything.

The Skylark was a pleasant enough place, not too fancy, but not too down-at-heel. It had central bar, á la "Cheers". When I found out that its Guinness at a dollar less than most places in Denver, I decided to play the part of Norm Peterson.

I had been greeted outside the club, by Easy Bill, looking resplendent (and somewhat nervous) in a suit and tie that perfectly matched his band's blues/R&B music.

Much as I'm more a jazz fan than I am a blues fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the band's live performance, much of it featured on their album. All the members of the band performed well, and Bill's singing had just the right tone for songs they played.

In front of the small stage, was a hard-core group of swing dancers, all of whom seemed to have attended the same dance school together. I say this because they all continually swapped (dancing) partners throughout the performance, and all danced with the kind of calculated deliberate nonchalance of people who'd trained really hard to dance in a way that came naturally to their parents when they were teenagers.

On the way out of the club, the swing-dancers, who by this stage, I'd dubbed "The Kids From Georgie Fame", were having a series of team photos taken, outside. The same level of military organisation shown before, was being used to get everybody in the frame.

All in all, a very pleasant night out, great music, superb atmosphere, good crowd of folks, and cheap Guinness.

Of course the cheapness of the Skylark's Guinness was soon forgotten, when I called in at The Hornet, to find that on Saturdays, their Guinness is only $2 a pint (it's usually $4 - $4.50 in Denver). It's amazing how thirsty you can get after watching all that energetic dancing.

*a Fast Show reference

"Wow! You must have been close to death or something!", a friend remarked upon hearing that recently, I was so ill, I didn't even feel like sitting in bed and surfing the Internet.

It's true. A week or so ago, I was so unwell, with the sudden violent onset of a gastroenterological virus that had me bed and/or loo-ridden, that I didn't even feel up to going online, even whilst lying down. Sitting up wasn't an option, let alone standing, without experiencing stomach pain more usually associated eating a pineapple without peeling it first.

OK, so I'm a guy, and we all know how good men are at being unwell. However, on this occasion, I think the fact that I couldn't even sit upright without being in pain, suggests that it might not entirely be my imagination.

According to experts (women), men are notoriously bad at coping with illness without grossly exaggerating the condition, symptoms, and likelihood of death. Apparently, we (men) don't know what real pain is (childbirth), and thus are in no position to complain about any illness.

Now, OK, I know that there are some guys out there, prone to exaggeration - "The fish that got away was this big", or, "This is eight inches" etc., but don't tar us all with the same brush. When my body is doing an impression of a multi-head sprinkler system, I think I'm allowed to resort to curling up in a ball and watching M*A*S*H* DVDs.

Of course this virus, which has been doing the rounds in Denver, alongside a very popular flu strain, is highly contagious. My roommate had had it the weekend before, and so had my boss at the day-job. By all accounts you can contract it by touching surfaces, breathing in near, or it would seem, just looking at someone who has it.

You'd think, wouldn't you, that being confined to bed, without the strength to do anything but lie there, would cause me to contemplate the great issues of life, or to dream up ideas for well-written DMfM articles. The sad reality of it, however, was that I spent the majority of the afternoon and evening, clutching my guts, fading in and out of consciousness, and hoping that I didn't eventually have my stomach burst open to reveal a baby alien (á la John Hurt)

OK, so I didn't spend the evening being a 'brave little soldier', I spent it with feverish aches, being more of a 'little soldier who took a bullet in the guts, and wasn't going to let the world forget it'. I'm not proud. I'm just a guy.