Month: December 2023

Advent the Last

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Friends

One thing I especially like about the new Beatles song is that it comes to a definite end. Compare that with, say, Hey Jude where the song proper finishes, but there’s still time to go and make a cup of tea, answer a couple of emails, walk the dog even, before the song finally fades away.

Real life of course isn’t like that, not even at Christmas when maybe we’d like to think the everyday hustle and bustle comes to a definite end for everyone. When I casually dropped in on my brother this morning, in full-on holiday mode, my sister-in-law was busy cooking for Christmas because she’s working tomorrow (and Boxing Day (and Wednesday)).

For all that it’s not a full stop, there is a definite and unavoidable suspension of normality about Christmas, and it gives us the opportunity to wish friends, family, colleagues, a Merry Christmas. I like to think, behind and beyond that, we’re not just hoping they have a good day on December 25th –  we’re, without articulating it properly, telling them that they mean something to us, and that we’re thinking of them.

I’ve friends who’ve lost their Dad recently. Friends who had a rough time of it last Christmas but are hoping, and deservedly so, for a better one this year. Then there are friends who are recently married, or have had a baby this past year, and I’m pleased for their excitement. But then again, there’s at least one friend who I suspect is struggling more than they’re saying.

It isn’t just about (to quote if not THE Beatles, at least A Beatle) “simply having a wonderful Christmas time.”

So with that in mind, what else can I say but….

Merry Christmas

X

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas

My work colleague has been on holiday this past week so with the charitable but slightly-flawed logic of a child, my boss’s nine year old daughter has been in the office to help me out. We’ve sorted out drill bits, we’ve unpacked deliveries, and she’s demonstrated the correct way to flatten cardboard boxes for recycling (which is, apparently, to jump on them until they give in). We’ve also discussed numerous hot topics of the day: what sort of person likes Ketchup; where the Penguin sits in the ranking of chocolate biscuits; and whether Health and Safety is two words or three. I have, however, avoided the topic of Father Christmas.

EITHER she’s at the wavering stage, and would have bombarded me with questions (How can he do it so quickly? Can reindeers really fly? Why’s he on the Zoe Ball breakfast show when he should be busy in the North Pole?). I don’t know if it’s possible to get a written warning for shattering the dreams of a child, but I didn’t really want to find out.

OR—she already knows he’s not real, and when I pretended he was would have given me SUCH a look.

On the other hand, aren’t we’re all Father Christmas? Not in an “I am Spartacus” way; but because we’re the ones whokeep it going. All the time I knew him my father-in-law said he wanted nothing for Christmas. And of course we always bought him something – because crucially although we know there isn’t a Father Christmas, I think deep down we’d all like it to be true.

Anyway, both me and the nine year old have clocked off for the week and excitement is starting to build. Come tomorrow evening Father Christmas may (OR MAY NOT) be on his way.

Advent #22

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, TV

As per usual our daughter has been more organised than us again this year, and got the tree up in her flat several weeks ago. Which is all very laudable, but I must confess to being surprised (maybe even a little horrified) when I discovered she’d put it in front of the TV. This is not, let me tell you, a position that I would find in any way acceptable, and indeed if we had no option but to do likewise then I suspect the tree would not be going up at all!

I’m not feeling in the least bit Christmassy – I won’t bore you with that, but my point is that even with that being the case, I’ve enjoyed a run of Christmas specials this past week. I missed last weekend’s repeat of Dad’s Army’s 1975 episode, where Arthur Lowe plays not just Captain Mainwaring but also his alcoholic twin brother; but on Monday we caught the brand new QI Christmas special, as well as most of a slew of ‘new to Dave’ QIs from previous Christmasses (tonight’s was the 2010 one, which ends with Graham Norton apparently killing off Harry Potter (spoiler – he doesn’t (or does he (no he doesn’t)))). Yesterday we not only watched The Great British Sewing Bee but also (I’m beginning to feel a trifle embarrassed now, maybe we SHOULD put our tree in front of the telly…?) 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

Over the next few days there’ll probably be a Bake Off, possibly a Pottery Throwdown, and definitely a Doctor Who. I’m quite looking forward to all of those, so I hope nothing gets in the way – and especially not a Christmas tree!!

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Pets

I’m beginning to think that simply by mentioning Connie Francis’ Baby’s First Christmas I’ve invoked some kind of curse. First Radio 2’s Sara Cox plays it at peaktime, improbable enough – and now we find ourselves with an actual baby’s first Christmas situation.

Well, sort of.

If you’re picturing me stood on the steps of Curnow Towers a la Mrs Thatcher (“we are a grandfather”) you’d better back up the truck. Our daughter is responsible, but only in the sense that as of last Thursday she has acquired a three-legged friend (and yes, that is 75% of a Roy Rogers song).

Her dog is called Rikki and he’s a Podenko (no, me neither) and somewhere in his past he’s lost a leg. He’s four, so it’s his first Christmas WITH US, in the same way that TV programmes are ‘new TO DAVE’. He’s very quickly warmed to both my daughter and wife but he’s not all that keen on men so as yet he’s only got close enough to tentatively smell me. (You can decide for yourself how close that is depending on how pongy you think I am.)

Getting a dog as a single person is a bit like Brexit in that it restricts free movement; but in fact I think our daughter will be glad to have some company around the place. Having moved from our ‘home complete with menagerie’ it’s probably been rather quiet living on her own this past year. I can’t, to be brutally honest, see Rikki fulfilling any kind of ‘guard dog’ role given how timid he is – but on the other hand, missing leg or not, as soon as he twigged he could jump on the bed he appears to have really found his calling as a hot water bottle.

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Childhood, Christmas

It may be that it was around long before and I’m just misremembering (again) but I always think of Connect Four as being an invention of the early 80s.

I like a game at Christmas, but there’s no point reaching for the Monopoly unless you’ve cleared your afternoon schedule first. Cluedo’s something of a long-runner too (and Trivial Pursuit) but Connect Four is the sort of game you can quickly play a couple of rounds of in the gap between stirring from your post-lunch nap and heading off to the kitchen to research potential answers to the question of what’s for tea. It’s easy to understand (for kids from 8 to 80 as they say) and it even makes that deeply-satisying noise when the counters clonk into place.

My memory (with the usual qualifiers) also suggests that at the same time as Connect Four, we were gifted Guess Who. That’s another game that’s easily and quickly understood, and it too makes a gorgeous sound, when you flip over the tiles.

Given the absurdly huge number of variations of Monopoly (we got our daughter the Simpsons version one Christmas, cue much hilarity and a lot of very bad impersonations (and in my case, a chain of bankruptcies)) I’m always surprised there aren’t lots of different Guess Whos, themed around films or TV shows. (Does he have a hat? Does he have a moustache? Was his first wife tragically electrocuted and did his third wife have a scandalous affair with Mike Baldwin?)

The only thing I can’t remember is who actually gave it to us, although whoever it was certainly deserves our heartfelt thanks. Maybe it was… Is it a man? Does he have a big white beard? Does he drive a sleigh pulled by nine reindeer….?

Advent #19

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who, TV

I know I spent most of November droning on about Doctor Who but anyway: unlike past years, there are no new Doctor Who BluRay boxsets heading my way this Christmas. There is a single story, though, which somehow passed me by when it came out on disc earlier in the year, so I’m hopeful that might materialise come Christmas Day – it’s the animated version of Patrick Troughton’s The Abominable Snowmen.

It won’t be the first time I’ve received The Abominable Snowmen for Christmas in fact, as I got the book of it (from Father Christmas!) in about 1979. By coincidence I’d seen the book in our local WH Smith’s but it wasn’t one I was especially drawn to, I think because I’d got it into my head that it was one of those tedious ‘faffing about in history’ stories they used to do in the old days. It’s true that the story is set in Tibet in the mid-thirties –  but it does also have a bloody great monster (a titular monster no less) on the front cover! Fortunately Father Christmas was far more discerning than me, so he got me that one and I have to say I loved it.

Another thing I wasn’t especially drawn to when the idea was first floated, was the idea of animating all these missing Doctor Who stories but I must admit that there too I was wide of the mark. I’ve enjoyed them all so far – although it suddenly occurs to me, I’d better get a move on if I’m hoping to get The Abominable Snowmen for Christmas. I got The Underwater Menace several weeks ago, and I haven’t watched any of that one yeti. (I’m very sorry.)

Advent #18

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Having sung the praises of Love Actually three years ago, I hadn’t managed to watch it again until, well, last night. It comes in for a lot of stick nowadays, largely because of all the things it’s not; and even at the time (twenty years ago!) it was a very selective, romanticised vision of London. Nobody’s poor, nobody’s worried about Christmas, and it’s all just rather cosy. Still, it’s a great film (with a small ‘g’ obviously).

Several years since I last saw it, I remembered all the ‘big hitter’ moments: Emma Thompson and Joni Mitchell, Hugh Grant dancing, the garbage compactor (that may be a different film). But there were also many smaller moments that I’d either forgotten about or which had previously passed me by. Laura Linney’s moment on the stairs. The Prime Minister’s security guy carol singing. The reaction of young Sam to Liam Neeson recalling, “Ringo Starr married a Bond Girl” – “whatever” says the young boy after the perfect pause, with complete disinterest in the older generation’s pop cultural references. (I was reminded of this today when my boss’s nine year old daughter asked me what a Lion Bar was, and I ‘explained’ that the advert featured Wild Thing by The Troggs. Her reaction was… similar)

Of the various strands, I think Colin Firth’s is my favourite. There’s something about the proposal scene, where the reaction of the diners and the crowd perfectly evokes one of the joys of being older, a delight in seeing two young people in love.

So, after several years ‘off’ it was worth the wait, and I’m glad I got the chance to watch it again. But it’s definitely a treat suited to this time of year – unlike cute puppies, Love Actually isn’t for life it’s just for Christmas.

Advent #17

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Moaning

Setting aside the stuffing/yorkshire controversy, I quite like cooking Christmas lunch. Much of it, to be honest, is done by the cooker so I can only really take credit for the preparation, the timings, and the co-ordination. However, for all that, I’m nominally the cook, and that’s all fine, and I don’t mind it.

But (and I suspect this will be just the sort of thing to prompt parents, Aunts, etc to say, “YOU used to do it when you were young!”) I can’t stand people being in the kitchen while I’m doing it. Particularly, and especially so, as we near the climax (that came out wrong but you know what I mean) I don’t consider it to be an area into which non-combatants should be admitted.

This isn’t, of course, some abstract, hypothetical irritation; it’s a very specific one because without naming any names, it’s something my wife and daughter both do. Paul O’Grady mentioned this kind of phenomenon on his radio show, referring to people who “just come in to stir something” – in his case, he was making the point that they want to do something so they can somehow lay claim to having done everything. This is not, I know, what my other two thirds are doing, they’re not looking to claim ownership they’re just as far as I can tell doing it to annoy me (I’m not sure if that’s better or worse). There is a time for coming into the kitchen to help bring the plates and dishes through – and that is when you’ve been asked to do so because everything is ready – NOT ten minutes before that moment.

Anyway, it may not be so much of a problem this year as, if they inadvertently read this, I’ll probably be dining alone…

Advent #16

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Christmas, Family

He is risen – he is risen indeed!

That is to say, in case anybody’s worrying that I’m getting myself mixed up and that everybody’s getting a chocolate egg for Christmas; and in a slightly less pretentious fashion, the tree, our Christmas tree, is up. Up – and lit up!

It will of course be switched off before we go to bed, I still remember those seventies ad campaigns urging us to unplug our televisions before retiring for the night. (I also remember, because it was only yesterday, my work colleague telling me his girlfriend’s toaster had caught fire while she was out). On the other hand, our neighbours at number three leave their tree lights on all the time. Whenever I go past, day or night, the tree is blinking away, like the eternal flame. (I mean that as a nod to the Kennedy Memorial, not the Bangles mid-80s banger.)

For the first time in all our years together, we have gone tinsel-free (proving that even after twenty-six years of marriage there’s still ways of spicing things up).  If I’m completely honest, it wasn’t just apathy that stopped the tree going up sooner. Last year our local supermarket was selling real trees for a penny come 23rd December. When I tell you our local supermarket is a Waitrose (ooh, get me!) you can well imagine, coming down to a penny, how the pricey have fallen. So I was half-tempted to suggest we play “cheap tree or no tree” this year. However, I suspect it would have met the same reaction (ie, “Hell No!”) as my suggestion that we don’t each have a designated side of the bed, we just pick whichever we fancy each night.

Turns out tinsel-free is one thing, but you can get TOO spicy. Even at Christmas!

Advent #15

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas, TV

A couple of Christmasses back my wife bought me the complete It Ain’t Half Hot Mum on DVD. I’d suggested it of course, she hadn’t just Googled “what can I get a curmudgeonly old bigot for Christmas?” It’s a show I remembered fondly, but distantly, from my childhood – to be honest, mainly just the final few episodes.

It has a lot in common with its spiritual brother Dads Army. In both series, the funniest material is often the bits of business at the top of the episode, before the plot kicks in. UNlike Dads Army, which usually manages to round off most of its stories, IAHHMum too often fizzles out simply because it’s time for the credits to roll, or ends on “an old Hindu Proverb” which is usually neither relevant nor funny (nor, needless to say, an old Hindu Proverb).

Be that as it may, I was pleased and relieved that the last episode turned out to be as good as I’d remembered from 1981, a surprisingly moving ending where the regulars finally get home only to find the UK is as unfriendly and uncaring towards them as the locals and the Army were when they were overseas.

It’s what we would today call troublesome, for all sorts of reasons, but still I by and large enjoyed it. Nice to see a young Jeffrey Holland pop up (later Spike in Hi-De-Hi) and getting good material both times; and there was a Battleship Potemkin joke in the last season which deserved a much bigger laugh; and of course Windsor Davies giving a superbly rounded performance of a character which we ought to detest but somehow don’t. So overall I’m glad I gave it a watch, although I don’t expect I’ll rush to rewatch it.

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