Ninety-Nine Problems…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Moaning, Weather

…but the Beach ain’t one.

My colleague at work came into the office yesterday to declare that the workshop was “literally boiling”. It wasn’t of course, any more than he was “literally dead from the heat” when he came in to tell us so an hour later – but in the sense that it was very hot yesterday, is very hot today, and (spoiler alert) will be very hot again tomorrow, he was right.

This sort of temperature always serves to highlight that there are two types of people – those who like it and those who don’t. True, that could be said of almost anything from the kumquat to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, but the difference seems particularly acute when it comes to hot weather.

I’m not, without wanting to sound too much like a prude, madly keen on seeing a lot of flesh out on public display (that’s probably why I don’t even allow a full-length mirror in the bedroom) but during this morning’s trip into town there was, it must be said, an awful lot of it on show. Sadly the word ‘awful’ is very much applicable there.

I’m not a fan of barbeques either which, like beer bellies and knees also appear out of nowhere the instant hot weather kicks in. Call me an old-fashioned hater of food poisoning, I’ve just never eaten anything that was enhanced by being served either still-pink or charred to a cinder, and it’s never been redeemed by the offer to half-bury it in onions either. If I’m honest I don’t really think, deep down, with our grand history of Agas and Gas-Stoves, that the Brits are made for Barbeques – and I’m certain the increase in them during my lifetime is far more to do with Australian soap operas than it is any change in the climate.

And then there’s the beach.

In and of itself, it’s OK – but the problem is, the very time when the weather suggests it would be great to go to the beach is exactly when the very same suggestion occurs to everybody else. Finding a peaceful bit of real-estate on the beach is next to impossible on such occasions, and there’s no obvious enjoyment to be had from walking barefoot across shingle or from sitting on burning-hot sand. And then there’s the aftermath when for days after, in some kind of vague homage to Marilyn Monroe, you end up finding sand in places you didn’t even realise you had places.

That’s not to say I’ve never been to the beach, obviously. My hazy memories of what I believe we’re all now contractually-obliged to call “the long hot summer of 1976” are of going to the beach. Maybe, living nearby, we went EVERY Summer and I’m just too young to remember; or perhaps it really was “the long hot summer” that prompted it. Either way, I seem to think we went to the beach A LOT that year, and certainly that was when I first saw practiced what has sadly become a dying art in the intervening decades – namely tying a knot in each corner of your hankie and using it as a sun hat. But now that the urge to build sandcastles or collect seaweed has left me, I kind of think I’m done with beaches.

Not that I want to sound like a killjoy (although, if not already sailed, I accept that the ship is literally slipping from its moorings as I type). I wouldn’t want anybody to picture me as hunkering down in a darkened room praying for rain. I’ve been out with the dogs and the lawnmower and the laundry today. But only in the morning. This afternoon (which at time of arriving is about two hundred minutes in) is not, for me, a time to light the BBQ, or head to the coast, or even (heaven forbid!) to get my legs out.

In other words, to go back to my original point, there are those who like the hot weather and those who don’t. And rightly or wrongly, and as has probably become very apparent, I don’t.

What a proper little ray of sunshine I am!

The End of the Road (or Street, rather)

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, TV

Spoiler warning: Neighbours has ended.

I have to admit, until the recent reports of its impending demise I’d have been hard-pressed to say whether it was still going or not. I don’t know when I stopped watching exactly, although I daresay any Neighbours afficionado could work it out from the fact that I still think of Dr Karl as “the new guy in Des’s house”. Certainly, when I left off the show was in rude health – so too were Jim Robinson and Helen Daniels and, as far as I can remember, Bouncer the Dog.

All these years later I gave into the hype (of course I did!) and watched the final episode. I went in feeling slightly guilty – like those people who vociferously complain about their local bank being closed even though they never actually use it, so I was bemoaning the passing of something that was ending because I’d stopped watching it. (I know, nice of me to take the blame isn’t it.)

Years ago, in what I’m going to call its heyday, Neighbours used to get something like eleven million viewers – and in that long-past golden age it seemed to be the show that everybody watched. When I did my A-Levels there was a girl in my English class, probably the first proper Goth I ever met, and absolutely not the sort of person you’d expect to be interested in sun-soaked perky Aussie melodrama. All these years later I can’t even remember her name, but I do vividly recall that she nipped home at lunchtime to watch Scott and Charlene’s wedding because she couldn’t bear to wait until teatime. (Her verdict, incidentally, was that Kylie was trying to be raunchy during the kissing bit.)

That huge audience has dwindled since then, and at some point passed beyond the Channel 5 ratings event horizon. So I felt a little hypocritical tuning in to watch the final episode, like the spectre at the feast.

Fortunately (or perhaps just very insensitively) my feelings of guilt didn’t last long – initially replaced by confusion as to what was going on, although it’s remarkable how quickly you get back into the swing of it. In fact, it turned out to be just really nice to meet up with old friends one last time; in the same way as half a dozen famous faces I recognised were pleased to come back. No doubt there were at least half a dozen others I didn’t recognise, but which will have similarly delighted fans of the show in the nineties and noughties.

The plot, what there was of it, wasn’t terribly important – it certainly didn’t matter that I entirely missed the appearance of Toadie’s dead wife, or that I didn’t know exactly which number wife Paul Robinson is onto now (going back to those afficionados trying to carbon date my era, I remember him married to the spiky-haired Gail, and then to at least one of a set of twins). Along the way there was something oddly moving about seeing the ghost of Madge momentarily sat alongside Harold; I also spotted Shane Ramsay briefly, not a ghost but very much in the flesh based on the fact that he promptly ended up in bed with somebody I didn’t recognise; and it’s entirely possible that all three Lucy Robinsons were under my nose the whole time.

Of course the main hype was around the return of Scott and his raunchy-kisser of a wife Charlene – from that very golden age which I recall with such affection. True, despite some tremendous work on the part of the editing team, it was sort of obvious that Kylie and Jason were filming on a different day to everybody else, but that didn’t detract from a very cleverly put-together finale. We begin by thinking it’s the end of an era because everybody is selling up and moving away; and by the delightfully-improbable end everybody has decided to stay after all, giving us the definite sense that life in Ramsay Street is still going on.

Except that, in future, nobody will be watching.

(Um, which is pretty much the reason it’s ended of course… Awkward.)

Signing Off

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Childhood

Controversial perhaps, but I’m really going to miss him.

Oh I know he’ll be with us until the Autumn, but that’ll soon come round… and then, no more ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon’ on Radio 2. I know!! If there’s been a more surprising news story in the past week, I’ve yet to hear it.

Radio’s an odd thing. Certainly I know I take it for granted. It’s never ‘appointment listening’, I never make a point of putting it on and giving it my full attention – it’s just there, a convenient soundtrack when I need it. In the car is the obvious example, or in the background at work, or (in the very specific case of Paul Gambaccini’s Pick of the Pops) when I’m mopping the kitchen floor.

But on the other hand, despite my cavalier approach to it, and my treating it as unimportant and disposable; at the same time I definitely do expect it to be there, fixed and unchanging. In every other medium – in film, on TV, books even – we’re always after the next big thing, something new. With radio I think we want, we like, it to stay the same.

Hence why it seems entirely natural that Steve Wright has been doing the same show since before the millennium (and Ken Bruce seems to have been doing likewise since God was a boy). Even relative newcomer Jeremy Vine has been in his lunchtime slot for 19 years – and there’s maybe no better indicator of the seemingly-fixed and unchanging, monumental nature of radio than to point out that, name aside, what Mr Vine is actually presenting is ‘The Jimmy Young show’.

The voice of Jimmy Young, always sounding ever so slightly as if he had a boiled sweet in the corner of his mouth, instantly makes me think of Summer holidays – perhaps wistfully and probably inaccurately, nevertheless I associate his voice with sitting in the back seat hearing him during long car journeys. Just as Terry Wogan was the voice that heralded each school day, during his first stint on the breakfast show when he made Dallas a household name and when he insisted (which is why I still sing it of course) that the opening line to ABBA’s Super Trouper refers to calling “from Tesco.”

And Steve Wright is the voice of teenage days, more specifically the thrilling relief of the bus ride home from college. That was on Radio 1 of course, and yet it seemed entirely right that, years later, when I came back to radio, he had graduated to doing pretty much the same show on Radio 2.

That’s not a complaint or a criticism, and although it’s not actually the same show there’s enough comfortable familiarity to give the sense that he’s been a fixture for even longer than the twenty-three years he’s been there. So the largely-nameless posse of Radio 1 is now Tim Smith, Bobbie Pryor, and Janey Lee Grace (with the sexiest laugh in radio). The Friday Montage is not that distant a relative of the 3 o’clock Non-Stop Oldies. And there’s a very clear line from the ‘Factoids’ of today to the ‘Another True Story’ of yesteryear.

He’s not everybody’s cup of tea, I’ll admit. My colleague at work (who’s a bit younger and a lot less nostalgic) isn’t as keen, but even he has come to accept that Steve Wright on Radio 2 is infinitely preferable to being bombarded by Johnny Vaughan on Radio X. His main bugbear is Friday’s final feature, 45 minutes of “Serious Jockin’” which is basically dance with a heavy beat. I don’t mind the music so much, but the pedant in me struggles with Steve’s claim that taking the ‘g’ off the end of the word is a pun. It’s not clever or witty wordplay, not in my book anyway; on the contrary (and as the apparently never-ending stream of ‘no-g’ messages makes clear) any idiot can do it.

Be all that as it may, I will still very much miss Steve Wright (in the afternoon) when the time comes. Still, I suppose we have to accept that nobody can go on forever.

Not even Prime Ministers…

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, The C-Word

(Risky I know, but nobody’s confused me with Aretha Franklin yet so I’ll take my chances.)

A tiny little news story which in the hustle and bustle of daily life you could easily have missed this week, was the release at long last of the Sue Gray report.

I have to confess that every time I hear the name, my instinctive thought is of Linda GRAY who played SUE Ellen in Dallas – which is of course entirely inappropriate. Or so I thought. Now that the report has been published, detailing regular and excessive booze-fuelled events at Downing Street, there is a hint of Sue “Your mother is a goddamn drunk, John Ross” Ellen Ewing about it.

Unfortunately, the whole sorry saga has dragged on for so long that it’s not easy to remember where it started. In particular, this week’s ‘defence’ such as it was seems to have revolved around confusing or misinterpreting a work event as a party…

…Which is all fine and dandy except that, unless my memory is at fault, work events weren’t allowed under Covid restrictions any more than parties were. If we’re now being told that these were in fact permitted, then all those restaurants and pubs must be feeling pretty stupid for closing in 2020 rather than hosting a load of ‘work events’. ‘Work’ itself was allowed of course, but only in an inevitable ‘the show must go on’ kind of way; it wasn’t as if ‘the science’ had discovered you can’t catch Covid in the vicinity of staplers and filing cabinets.

For that matter, forget coronavirus restrictions – where I and/or Aretha came in is that even in normal times on the day of the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral I would not expect a boozy event of any sort at the heart of government. It’s so fundamentally disrespectful that it should be enough on its own to have prompted a flurry of resignations.

Luckily, because I wouldn’t want anybody to think that this report has been in any sense a colossal waste of time and money, the Prime Minister has accepted full responsibility. Phew, what a relief, what a guy.

Except… He has ‘accepted full responsibility’ knowing that it doesn’t mean anything, because the Sue Gray report is all bark and no bite. Our system is built on the assumption that anybody at the top who has broken the law or deceived the house will honourably resign. When that doesn’t happen, it turns out there is no mechanism to force them out.

In effect the only people who can get rid of Boris at the moment are the other members of the Tory Party – which they won’t do while he might win them the next election, and which they’d do in a heartbeat if they think he’ll lose it. In other words, they’ll happily do what’s right for them but have no interest in doing what is simply right.

The same might be said of the Chancellor, who has been back to the magic money tree again. Less than four weeks after saying how silly it would be to provide more support for the energy crisis until knowing what will happen in the Autumn, he has decided that he’s going to do something after all and has announced it the very day after the Sue Gray report was released. Just coincidence I’m sure, it would be the height of cynicism to suggest otherwise…

Either way, it’s hard not to feel that the Chancellor and the government don’t have any real interest in helping people because they’re starving and/or freezing; but that they are all for it if it can divert attention from a report suggesting the PM, in claiming not to know a party when he sees one, is either a massive liar or a complete moron. In the interests of balance I wouldn’t like to say which of the two options is correct, but neither screams ‘leadership material’ at me.

But, for all that, unbelievably it seems that we are still stuck with Boris (and, heaven help us, his cabinet).

Better say a little prayer…

Prevent the Dog from Barking with a Juicy Bone

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Pets

We recently inherited a dog.

She arrived one Thursday evening in January with several toys, lots of food and an air of desperation after her owner was rushed into hospital. In theory it was temporary, but in practice neither owner nor dog went home again.

Snowy was one of those small white hairy types, with Denis Healey eyebrows. For the first week-and-a-bit she was ‘overgrown’ and in as far as we could see her eyes at all, it was like someone peeping at you from deep inside some bushes. After we got her clipped she looked completely different, it took 1.4286 years off her (that’s 10 in dog years).

And then Snowy bit one of our other dogs.

Not just one bite and done. No, the two dogs were suddenly a whirling, spitting blur, like the cartoon version of the Tasmanian Devil. With our two boy dogs there was no problem, no tension at all. But with our Jack Russell, a scruffy grande dame called Ellie, it was a different matter.

Ellie’s nearly twelve now and was the last of our dogs I got away with naming after characters from Dallas before my wife rumbled me. She doesn’t back down. Which means that where the boys always back off, any kind of minor growl from Snowy or Ellie would be met with an escalating growl in response from the other. There were several vicious spats, and several more that we managed to head off at the pass by distracting them early doors. And then after a while they seemed to settle down, and all was well.

And then it started again.

And then, last night, Snowy bit me!

Not deliberately and not maliciously – at least I don’t think so –  it was more that, by intervening in the thrashing, snarling frenzy of fur, my arm accidentally got where Snowy (and particularly her closing jaw) thought some part of Ellie was. (Twice.)

So this morning saw me making an uncharacteristic and unscheduled visit to the nearest Minor Injuries Unit. I was of course asked when I last had a Tetanus Booster, and gave the slightly shamefaced response that it was probably not since the millennium. In fact, the actual answer is even longer ago, before I was married, possibly over 30 years ago. It’s much easier to pin down the answer to the question now, I last had a tetanus booster TODAY (about ten minutes after I mentioned the turn of the century). I’ve also, for the first time in my life as far as I can remember, been given antibiotics, so I can finally find out what all the excitement has been about all these years.

The morning got worse of course. Any alternative housing prospects for Snowy had already been unsuccessfully sounded out before that January night when she was metaphorically left in a basket on our doorstep. When we had her checked up recently, she had a string of cancerous lumps along her belly which sooner or later would become an issue. And now, even if we could find one we couldn’t with a clear conscience offer her to another home, knowing that she might snap. All of which is a long-worded way of avoiding the end of the paragraph, because we had to make the painfully obvious, but obviously painful, decision to put her to sleep.

Ellie is dozing happily on the settee now, so that’s good. Three weekends ago me and Mrs C were away leaving Miss Curnow in charge of the dogs, so in hindsight it’s lucky nothing happened then. So that’s good. Snowy didn’t get to the stage where the cancer became painful or debilitating. So that’s good too. All these things are positives – and I should know, because I’ve spent a great deal of this afternoon reminding myself of them in an effort to convince myself.

At the moment the house feels both empty and full of Snowy. There’s a gap where she would usually be, and there are still leads and bowls and baskets around even though they’re no longer needed.

Like my faintly-throbbing arm, they’re just… painful reminders.

Stormy Weather

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Pets, Weather

(Good title for a song that.)

Last week, I very nearly ‘blogged’ about how, with my other half away, the dogs were sleeping upstairs with me… but then the two girls started fighting, which rather took the shine off it I’m afraid. (Tt, women!)

I only mention it because last night, in something of a role reversal, I found myself sleeping downstairs with the dogs. It’s been said before that I can pretty much sleep anywhere, which is just as well really because, perhaps unhappy about me muscling in on their territory, the lion’s share of the sofas (well, the dog’s share I suppose) was already taken up and I spent quite a lot of time leaning against the side of a settee with my behind on the footstool. Despite that, and despite the need to go outside for a wee (twice) I slept very well.

Let me quickly head off at the pass the thought that this bizarre behaviour was the result of a “you’re sleeping on the settee” row (or, in our case, a “you’re sleeping as near to the settee as you can get” row). One of our dogs is tremendously nervous, easily spooked by loud bangs, or raised voices, or the noise of his own breathing. Consequently, with storm Eunice en route I knew that every shake of the window, every rattle of the letterbox, every general shudder and gust, would have Max running straight upstairs and scratching frantically at the bedroom door – and most likely with the other three close behind, not out of fear but the opportunistic chance of getting to sleep on the bed again. So the easiest thing seemed to be to stay downstairs to reassure him without the need to go pelting upstairs like a thing possessed.

Thankfully, at time of writing anyway, I can report no damage from Eunice. I have of course had to spend an hour so far this morning trying to explain to the dogs why I’m not taking them out for a walk (I felt a little like Homer Simpson when he says, of trying to convince Bart not to do something, “God help me, I even tried reasoning with him”) and if nothing else it certainly says something for the scale of this morning’s Red Weather Warning that I’ve promised to take them out this afternoon… when the wind will be down to a mere sixty miles per hour!

Luckily after a while the dogs always revert to their default position, ie they are now asleep again across two settees and a dogbed. Personally, and unusual sleeping arrangements notwithstanding, I’m wide awake – and simply from having had a good night’s sleep, I’m not wide-eyed in fear at the storm raging outside. My only concession to worry (so far…) was a sudden panic at five am about the wheelie bin becoming airborne – whereupon I brought the poor thing indoors, which is why it’s now stood by the front door in the incongruous fashion of, say, a time-travelling police box standing in a junkyard.

The storm, I gather this morning, has prompted a second Red Weather Warning for this afternoon – perhaps seeking its fortune, Eunice is heading on to London. I don’t know whether in the heart of the city it’s quite as easy as it is down here to, at very short notice, close the schools and cancel some buses and sleep half-perched on a footstool for the night. Luckily I don’t work on Fridays (my boss is forever complaining about it, tells me to stop snoring at my desk) but even if I did I think I would have absented myself today. Hopefully, given the advance warning, everyone has been sensible – and hopefully with minimal damage to property and no damage to life, the storm will literally blow over.

Meanwhile, based on our forecast, we’ve another hour or so of not walking the dogs and of not being able to hoover the downstairs hall carpet because some idiot has parked, of all things, a wheelie bin there! Hopefully my other half isn’t TOO annoyed about that.

Otherwise I might find myself sleeping on the settee again tonight.

Having Your Cake And eating It

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics, Trump

There’s a Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story (bear with me, non-anoraks) which I often cite as the worst ever. The plot concerns the miners of planet Peladon, who strike in order to demonstrate to the Federation just how badly they are treated; but when the Federation turns up to investigate, the miners pretend to be working so that the Federation will go away again…

I mention it only because I was reminded of this bizarre turn & turn again of events by the news that the police, having ruled out looking into this Downing Street party business, prompting the government to launch its own enquiry instead, have now asked for the enquiry’s report to be put on hold because they have decided to investigate after all…

As a rule I always assume cock-up rather than conspiracy, but in this instance it’s very hard not to say it sounds like a cover up – delay after delay, presumably hoping the issue will go away in the meantime.

Throughout it all, in a breathtaking manner which would be almost admirable if it wasn’t so absolutely not admirable whatsoever, Mr Johnson remains Prime Minister with (after just the briefest of wobbles last week) the support of his party. It’s very hard now, really, to see that this story will topple him.

I suppose part of the problem is that, in an unspoken, unwritten kind of way these things have traditionally policed themselves, with people in that position ‘honourably resigning’. For example, in my youth I remember Cecil Parkinson, who absolutely had to fall on his sword after getting his secretary pregnant – nowadays, I can’t imagine even a single eyelid being batted at the news.

It’s like queue jumping. If you have the nerve to actually do it, even though it breaks another unspoken, unwritten rule, you will almost always get away with it. It’s the reason Mr Trump used to get away with so many outrageous things – not because he had any special ability or talent that his forty-four predecessors lacked, but because he didn’t care a jot about unspoken, unwritten rules.

Hardly an original observation (even Peggy in Hi-De-Hi has made it) but, Power Corrupts. I daresay that only five years ago Mitch McConnell would have absolutely refuted the suggestion that he would ever even tacitly support the claim of an ousted President that the election was rigged – but when it came to it, the appeal of remaining in power without integrity turned out to be stronger than the idea of being in opposition, with it intact.

The same is true here – once you’ve crossed the line (or in Boris’ case, crossed and crossed line after line) you’re no longer restrained by the consideration of conducting yourself in a proper manner. None of us really think that the government in 2020 WASN’T breaking its own regulations. But the events can be redefined as work events, as not being an offence, as being minor, as being (on paper) excusable. Ultimately, the only thing that will bring Boris down is if his own party is worried – but not about its integrity or honour or reputation, only about its chances of winning another election.

As if I’m channelling Auntie Beeb herself in order to apply a bit of balance I’d also like to moan about Sir Keir Starmer. Not about going to parties, which I don’t think he did, and not about having no honour, because I daresay he probably does (well, sort of). But because, with the government such a shambles, the Labour party ought to be riding high in the polls like it’s 1997 again. They’re not – and in fact if there was an election tomorrow I think it would be a brave person who claimed the Tories would lose.

Sir Keir has two jobs as far as I can see. One is to hold the government to account, the other is to provide a viable alternative. He’s doing a lot of the former, at the expense of the latter. I would respectfully suggest he spends less time focussing on what the Tories have been getting up to.

He needs to worry about his own Party.

Advent #24

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Now is the time to say goodbye (if you’ll excuse me going not only a bit Peter Cook for a moment). Now is the time to yield a sigh (but also a bit Dudley Moore). In other words, it’s the end of another countdown to Christmas.

I know the internet comes in for some (often justifiable) criticism, but at this time of year especially I can see exactly why we still like it so much. Even in the good old pre-Covid days, it enabled people to get together irrespective of distance. This year more than any other it seems to me, people have been finding their own ways to mark off the ‘advent days’. It delights me that, for example, somebody in Slough can produce pun-based reindeer memes simply because they know four people across three continents who will find them hilarious.

But now the build-up is all done, and although I’m unconvinced the science is genuinely telling the government that restrictions are essential but only after Boxing Day (unless ‘the science’ has a lot of parties to go to over the Christmas weekend) in the words of Noddy Holder, it’s Christmas!!!

Just enough space left to thank everyone and anyone who’s read this daft nonsense in the past three-and-a-bit weeks, and taken the time to comment in any way, shape or form. We famously don’t send cards, so I’d also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy, fun-filled, safe and restful Christmas and, with a tentative crossing of fingers, all the very best for 2022. And that pretty much wraps it up from me. I’d better sign off because I do believe there’s somebody at the window. Is it a certain well-known jolly gentleman, red coat, white beard…?

No, it isn’t. Bloody Greta Garbo. 

Merry Christmas

X            

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Childhood, Christmas, Friends

Although (as previously advertised) I’ve never been homeless, I did once escape from workhouse servitude only to fall in with a criminal gang, involved in all sorts of felony, and even (to give the game away) picking a pocket or two.

In other words, in my dim and distant past there has been the occasional Christmas thesp, and in December 1984 our school put on an over-ambitious and under-rehearsed production of Oliver!  From memory, and for those of you who love numbers, it ran for Four nights with Two Olivers– and I was One of them!

To be tediously pedantic, I was a back-up Oliver, a Spare Twist, until one dropped out. (Gruel overdose I believe). I was easily able to meet the requirements of being small and pathetic-looking, but there was considerable debate between the music and drama departments about my lacking the traditional blond hair – there was talk of either bleaching or a wig but ultimately neither option was followed up on and I simply played it as a brunette, with my own then-black now-grey hair.

The first act, which was heavily rehearsed, was considerably better than the second, which… wasn’t. Not that any of that bothered my English Teacher. He was playing Fagin with only a very distant relationship with his lines, so he was already in improv’ mode.

I’m not sure I saw any reviews, and I certainly didn’t see any share of the Box Office takings, but I do remember having an awful lot of fun and, for all its dim and distant past-ness, it remains a memory of a very pleasant time with in particular two or three very good friends. But that was pretty much it for my theatrical career.

After seeing me as Oliver, apparently nobody wanted to have some more.  

Advent #22

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas, Family

We can’t be the only family whose Christmas involves lists of present ideas, can we? I used to love putting a list together when I was young (a relation once pondered how I could possibly know there WERE that many Doctor Who books) and I still rather like it now.

Not that long ago (it seems) we would pester our daughter for a list; now it’s the other way around – even before Halloween, I’d been forced, really forced, to put together some suggestions of what she could get me for Christmas.

She’s in that sweet spot, after the wages start arriving but before too many bills do, and is very organised in the Christmas (and birthdays!) department, and often very generous – I said this evening that I hope she hasn’t gone mad this year, and she assured me (although I remain not assured if I’m honest) that she has not.

At the same time, although we get a list in return, it’s tricky because they’re all things she could easily buy herself, for the exact same ‘sweet spot’ reason. So we try to read between the lines and get something which she will almost certainly like but which she doesn’t appear to be aware of, to try and retain at least some element of surprise.

I’m sure it’s just rose-tinted nostalgia that makes me remember Christmas as being easier when she was little (and is likewise making me forget all the “he’s not been yet it’s only 3am” business, and the sneakiness involved in smuggling goldfish home under your coat during a two hour bus ride); and I’m sure it’s actually better now, when we’re all grown ups (well, ish in my case).

I’m sure it is, yes. For many reasons.

Maybe I should do a list…