Well, as usual we’ve been rushed off our feet here and if I wasn’t in desperate need of a coffee break this wouldn’t be getting written at all.  As you may have noticed, on www.artistsuk.co.uk we are committed to dispatching all orders for delivery within the UK in time for Christmas and we hope to maintain this right up to 23rd December with last orders being delivered on Christmas Eve.  Obviously, overseas customers will now need to contact us for courier rates if they want to stand any chance of getting their goodies by Christmas.  My guess is we’ll definitely have to switch off the guarantee to dispatch in time for Christmas for delivery within the UK before the 26th December because Bruno’s project to develop a time machine still hasn’t borne fruit.  Apparently, the hamster keeps falling off the treadwheel or something 

Just to give you an idea about what date you can order up to at  Artists UK for a good chance of delivery by Christmas this year, these are the recommended last posting dates for Christmas for 2009 :

4th December for South and Central America, Caribbean, Afric, Middle and Far East, New Zealand, Asia and Australia.

10th December for Japan, USA, Canada and Eastern Europe.

11th December for Western Europe

21st December within the UK

Of course, if you just get on and order straight away then you’ll get your goodies with plenty of time to spare

We are coming up to Christmas yet again!  As usual Artists UK will have a dispatch on each of the last posting dates for Christmas 2008 so as long as an order is in before the last posting date and the items are in stock it should go out by the last posting date with plenty of time to get there for Christmas.  You can always email us if you want to check if it will reach you by Christmas although you can normally assume that if you can order it then it is in stock and if there were any unusual problem you can be sure we would email you immediately.  The last posting dates for Christmas 2008 are as follows:

Last posting dates for Christmas 2008 within the UK -

• Last First Class Recorded posting date for Christmas 2008 = Saturday 20th December (but our last collection will be on Friday 19th December)
• Last Special Delivery posting date for Christmas 2008 = Tuesday 23rd December (best to order early to avoid having to upgrade to Special Delivery)

Last airmail posting date for Christmas 2008 for Western Europe = Friday 12th December

Last airmail posting date for Christmas 2008 for Japan, USA, Canada and Eastern Europe (Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Malta and Iceland) = Wednesday 10th December

Last posting date for Christmas 2008 for South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Far East, Asia, New Zealand and Australia = Friday 5th December

Most orders are dispatched by airmail so these last posting dates for Christmas 2008 should apply for almost all orders.  Large framed items for delivery overseas (over 61 x 46 cms) will normally go by courier and we will contact you by email if this is the case (and it is explained in the product description).  Any questions about ordering by the last posting date for your area in time for Christmas 2008, just click that button and send us an email.  If you want to go browsing to look for Christmas presents then click here.  We are not currently able to supply to the following destinations - The Moon, Mars, Venus or in fact anywhere off-planet so a big sorry to all you wonderful alien beings, you’ll have to get your stuff from the Betelgeuse Intergalactic Store again, even if their customer service isn’t as good as ours

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a Very Happy New Year from Artists UK. We hope you had a fabulously brilliant time and are ready for an excellent New Year.

I was in Germany over Christmas and I’ve always been astounded that the Germans have such a poor reputation for having a sense of humour. It has never seemed to me as if they lack one but as you’ll see from the following they have an innovative one as I doubt that we’d ever come come up with an expression like the one I just came across - “Ich muss darauf aufpassen, sonst habe ich zwei!”

All us boring lot can say is that we’d better keep an eye on it or someone will nick it. They came up with the above, which translates as, “I’d better keep an eye on it or I’ll have two of them!” Of course, it may be limited to north Germany where there are a lot of different expressions due to the prevalence of an older dialect called Platdeutsch (they say “Moin” instead of Guten Morgen for instance .. or at any time of day in fact). The Platdeutsch is closer to Dutch and has many nouns closer to English than high German (words for door, water etc etc).

German children also have the advantage of getting their Christmas presents earlier. They get them on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas Day. They go off to their room for an hour or so while Santa does his rounds and come out to get their presents in the early evening. So now, if your children ask how Santa manages to get round all the houses in the world in one night you can tell them he distributes some presents in some countries on Christmas Eve. I’m sure there will be the inevitable rejoinder of why can’t we have ours earlier! … coz yor not German that’s why