Month: December 2020

In the early-90s, during our “hilarious flatshare comedy” period, the tradition on the last working day before Christmas, was that I would pick up my brother from Launceston (well, from the Westgate Inn).
And there every year we’d meet the husband of bruv’s secretary (whose name my memory is failing to provide, although I’m sure my brother could). It became a ritual marking the arrival of Christmas, to share a drink with him, to shake hands and wish each other a Merry Christmas.
Every element of that, three households in one car, a pub serving drinks, meeting strangers, brief physical contact, is out this year. What a lot of us will miss probably isn’t the chance to show off a perfectly-cooked dinner or a militarily-polished house, but simple interaction with people, from almost-strangers in the street, to friends and family.
In looking back I’m reassured that, as they say, this too will pass. My Grandparents, for example, probably didn’t relish 1977’s first Christmas away from home and family – but they got through it. For that matter, Christmas 1976, up in t’frozen North, was possibly tough on Dad and Mum, and (older) brother too.
I was 5 so the only trauma I suffered from ‘The Big Move’ to Carlisle was not being able to immediately find where the Ready Brek had been packed – but that was August, by December I probably couldn’t remember ever having lived anywhere else. Bruv, on the other hand, based on the photos of him pedalling his blue truck around St Keverne, may have recalled bigger and busier Christmasses. But they got through that too.
Hopefully, 12 months from now, we’ll all be able to look back and think, blimey Christmas 2020 was rough.
I remain oddly hopeful that we’ll get through it.

I love Love Actually actually.
It doesn’t reinvent the motion picture for the 21st century, it won’t change your life, or reveal anything new about the human psyche. But it’s warm, comfortable viewing, with some laughs, some tears, some early-noughties pop music, and, well, and I always enjoy watching it.
Mind you, I have rules (I’m like the Dua Lipa of Pyworthy). I only ever watch it in December, and only then before the big day, never after. The film is so run through with the excitement and anticipation of the build-up to Christmas, that watching it at any other time of year produces a wistful, melancholy feeling.
It’s a lovely “coffee table book” kind of a film; by which I mean you can dip in and out of it without much confusion. I’d watched it half a dozen times before I ever saw the first twenty minutes, but it never held me back. There aren’t many films like that – off the top of my head, Four Weddings & A Funeral and The Great Escape are the only others.
To my surprise, however, I’ve discovered that Mrs Curnow is… not so keen. She’s not fond of Hugh Grant, but even allowing for that I thought she would enjoy it. But no, quite the opposite, and when I suggested putting it on the other night she more or less said (to paraphrase (but only slightly)) that I was a bit of a girl for watching it. She may even have used the word “squee” in her attempt to label me a fangirl!!
After which she headed upstairs to her sewing room, fearful I might want to braid her hair and talk about boys. Frankly it makes you wonder how on earth we ever got together.
(I suppose it’s love, actually.)

As far back as I can remember, come Christmas Day lunch, there was always one last little present on the table. I never thought it was Father Christmas come round again on a lap of honour, I’ve always known it was Mum – but it was a way of eking out the Christmas presents, stretching them out just that little bit longer.
Nowadays, we don’t always have Christmas Day lunch all together (certainly not this year, in case the boffins at the Track & Trace are listening in) but there’s generally some kind of ‘gathering of the clans’ inbetween Boxing Day and New Year – and, other than not having to stop at three o’clock to find out what her Majesty has been getting up to, it’s effectively a second Christmas. Another large meal, often crackers, a few daft games, and a long period of synchronised snoring as we gradually one by one drift off on the settee.
Like the table presents, it’s a pleasant way of stretching Christmas out beyond just the day itself. As a kid, I really loved the period between Christmas and New Year (the “post-present/lazing around” holiday); and frankly I’m still rather fond of it now (the “pre-work/lazing around” holiday).
Maybe it’s a reaction to how fleeting the actual day itself is; but there’s also a guilty pleasure in hitting the snooze button on the daily grind, putting reality on hold for a few days, just letting the moment stretch out. This year, ironically, we’re more in need of it than ever; and for once unable to properly indulge.
No conclusion today I’m afraid, just lazily enjoying a few more memories. Letting the moment stretch out.

The first Christmas present my wife ever gave me was glossy, large-format book Doctor Who – The Eighties. It’s a great book, and a great gift, and frankly if we hadn’t already been engaged it would probably have sealed the deal.
Buying presents can be difficult. Especially when you first get together, there’s a real anxiety about wanting to get the perfect gift – even though the recipient, equally anxious, will probably say they love it anyway, whatever you give them.
It gets easier, and in some ways Mrs Curnow is very easy to buy for because of all the many hints she drops. On the other hand, it’s sometimes hard to know which hints to take! I feel like Stan Ogden (not something I say often) when he observed that Hilda looked “in so many shop windows”.
But there’s also the desire to surprise with something UNexpected. It can be risky of course – I don’t think I’m misremembering a camera that Grandpa gave Gran one year, to considerably less than a rapturous response. (Conversely, but equally unexpected, Mum was thrilled when Dad bought her a globe. (It takes all sorts.))
So present-buying has evolved into the predictable (or at least the hintable) mixed with the surprise. That’s pretty much like the relationship itself, and maybe if there’s anything to account for still being together, it’s that. I love my wife equally for the things I can rely and depend on her for, as for those moments of total unpredictability – whether it’s giving away sticky buns to a complete stranger, or her extraordinarily methodical microwave piercing.
Which is why, at Christmas and birthdays, although sewing stuff or crafty bits are an obvious gift, I still try to surprise her. This year I’ve got her a *r*** ***** ***** *o*!
I hope she likes it.

The C-word.
That’s code in our house for Christmas, a word never to be uttered before my wife’s birthday (19th September, feel free to put it in your diaries now).
Another, entirely different, C-word has dominated this year of course and in those early days, in March and April, I must admit I had a lot of sympathy for the people in charge, for Hancock and Johnson. Although it’s not quite true to say it was a disaster nobody could have foreseen, certainly very few people had considered it and fewer still were prepared.
But then, after Barnard Castle, and as we learned of millions wasted on unusable PPE sourced from colleagues and chums… And when our leader recently announced the ‘saving of Christmas’ – it was blatantly a political move. Not “guided by the science” (quite the opposite, according to science) but motivated by headlines, by the expectation it would be a vote winner. Because naturally, getting to have a few days intermingling over Christmas will more than make up for a miserable January where deaths rise yet again.
His resolute sticking to his guns, his dogged insistence that the Christmas easing would absolutely remain in place sounded like the worst possible decision Mr Johnson could make. Until yesterday, when at the last moment, when anybody working this coming week is out of time to fill up their cupboards, or to post the presents they’d planned to deliver – THEN, he decided to cancel it after all.
Meaning that what was already a bad situation has, yet again, almost unbelievably, been made even worse.
As I say, I started with some sympathy, but now it’s impossible not to lay the blame for this disorganised, floundering, chaotic mess squarely at the door of number ten.
Boris Johnson.
The C- Word.

At the risk of sounding like an old-style continuity announcer, “there’s a host of famous faces” who come around each Christmas. Morecambe & Wise, The Good Life, Only Fools and Horses, their Christmas specials pop up every year, often on several different channels.
That’s not a moan by the way, I love seeing them again (and again). In a curiously comforting way, it makes them not just a part of this Christmas, but also a pleasant reminder of Christmasses past.
At the same time, though, I’m often puzzled by the ones who we DON’T see each year, who seem to have been lost in the mists of (TV) time(s). I don’t mean obscure, long-forgotten performers who even in their heyday struggled to find an audience, I’m talking stars. Mike Yarwood. Dick Emery. Val Doonican.
OK, I can see that perhaps Val Doonican is a product of a different time – though I used to admire his casual manner while perched on a high stool beside the balcony of TV Centre in a way which nowadays would no doubt give a dozen Health & Safety inspectors a conniption fit.
But all of them, at least in my admittedly sometimes-flawed memory, were BIG names who had BIG shows on (or around) the BIG day. Somehow, they’ve slipped through the cracks.
On the other hand… Mike Yarwood’s talent and invention is clear in Rory Bremner and Alistair McGowan, while Dick Emery’s spirit runs right through Harry Enfield & Chums and The Fast Show. There’s that torch carried forwards, just as there’s not a Christmas goes by when something doesn’t remind me of my Grandparents, and of Uncles and Aunts, and friends, who aren’t with us any more.
And that, at the risk of sounding like an old-style continuity announcer, “concludes our programming for today.”

There’s a definite knack to hiding stuff. I recently discovered that bruv’s granddaughter has taken to hiding his humbugs, and was very impressed with the location she’d chosen – which I am not at liberty to divulge, in case he reads this and goes on some kind of black & white striped sugar rush. (Plus I’d be worried she might beat me up.)
At this time of year, especially if you have young children (or easily-excited adults) it’s important to have a secure place for hiding presents. My other half has recently taken this to the next level… which is a charitable way of saying that she hid one of my presents so well, she forgot where it was! She also made the mistake of telling me. If she hadn’t done that I’d never have known there was one missing (meaning she could have achieved the ambition of many a Scooby Doo villain, and got away with it).
As for me, my hiding place of choice is the bedroom – but again that’s a charitable choice of words because hiding suggests concealment, whereas the policy I’ve adopted is just to keep piling up cardboard boxes by my side of the bed, like a gradually encroaching shanty town.
I appreciate that this lacks imagination, but I’m assuming my other half is mature enough not to go rummaging through them the minute I go to work. If I were ever to find out this is not the case, I would be very disappointed.
Frankly, she might be in for a hiding!

(Obviously that’s just a lame way of wrapping this up, I’m not advocating or seriously suggesting I would ever administer corporal punishment to my wife, I don’t approve of that sort of thing whatsoever.)
(Plus I’d be worried she might beat me up.)

One of the age-old Christmas debates, along with does the Queen use an autocue and how early is too early to open your presents, is whether to go real or artificial for the tree. I prefer real to be honest, but at the moment we’re using an artificial one which we picked up from B&Q seven or eight years ago.
It was cheap even as a one-off, but with my accountancy hat on (it’s dark blue with a dinky little badge on the cap) I’m aware that the more times we use it the cheaper per Christmas it works out. Which is of course why it has been used every year since.
The last time we considered a real tree, we drove to Homeleigh Garden Centre to get one. As we browsed around the shop, I noticed a single flake of snow drift by one of the windows but thought nothing of it – until we emerged into the car park to find the single flake had been joined by several million of his friends!
Needless to say we set off home straightaway, but with the roads already covered and it still coming down, we ended up crawling all the way at no more than twenty in a sort of improvised convoy. Eventually I realised that the car directly in front of me was my old driving instructor so, as you can imagine, I immediately put my hands on the wheel at ten to two – but so atrocious was the weather we didn’t get home till twenty past three. (Sorry.)
Which is another reason why we’ve stayed artificial for so long – say what you like about the battle between real and artificial, the furthest I ever have to go now to get the tree is the top of the wardrobe.

I’m NOT dreaming of a White Christmas.
It’s a nice enough song, but in reality I’ve never known a White Christmas in the sense of it properly snowing on the day. Even by the bizarre “one snowflake falling on the Met Office roof” definition I’ve not seen many – yet there is still an undeniable association of Christmas with snow. It’s likely due to the deep impression left by a certain, well-known book which popularised the idea of snow at Christmas. You may have already guessed which book I mean…?
A deafening QI-style klaxon if you answered A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – but twenty-five bonus points (please note, points have no monetary value) if you said Mr Snow by Roger Hargreaves.
Mr Snow is one of the early Mr Men books and, without wishing to spoil the plot for anybody who’s still got it in their “to read” pile, it’s about a snowman brought magically to life by Father Christmas.
As a child I was thrown by the appearance of a real person (ie, Father Christmas) in a Mr Man book – because the suggestion, or so it seemed to the five year old me, was that Mr Snow (and by extension all the other Mr Men) might be real too!
It probably goes without saying, I’ve never met any of the actual Mr Men in real life (although over the years I’ve certainly encountered several Mr Uppitys and a Mr Mean or two). Yet there’s something about Christmas which encourages the suspension of disbelief – it’s as illogical a connection as the idea of snow at Christmas, but still there’s the thought that maybe, maybe this year I will see something magical.
So, even if the weather outside is frightful, let it snow, let it snow, let it (Mr) snow.

It may come as a shock to those who think of me as a wild, party-going, international playboy type, but I’m not really a fan of the Christmas Do.
I’m not sure if that’s shocking or not, it could easily be one of those things that takes just one person to say out loud, before being met with a chorus of unanimous agreement. It feels churlish to complain given that it’s free food (and often free drink) and it’s true that, in every single instance, despite dreading it for weeks in advance, I’ve always ended up enjoying it. Nevertheless I can’t help but wonder if that brief moment of blissful relief afterwards is worth all the anxious sweating beforehand (what you might call ‘the foreplay dilemma’).
Maybe it’s because of my antisocial nature (certainly that’s the odds-on favourite) but it’s also possible that my reluctance, especially at Christmas, is a subconscious echo from childhood. More specifically, the Sunday School Christmas Party.
Inexplicably, our CHRISTMAS Party was a fixture of each January, and always took place on a Saturday afternoon – which meant that in those pre-VCR days we were fated to miss an episode of Doctor Who every year, on the grounds of having to go to the party.
(Granted, 1978’s Underworld could only possibly be improved by not watching all of it; but Power of Kroll part 4 (1979) and Warriors’ Gate part 2 (1981) remained sorely-felt losses for the almost two decades before they popped up on UK Gold.)
Of course, in a ‘silver lining’ kind of way all these years of being a miserable antisocial beggar have stood me in good stead – because if ever there was a year to NOT go out, and NOT see anybody, this is the one…
Bah humbug, and so on!