Advent #11

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, The C-Word

For the past several years we’ve done all our Christmas shopping online. Inadvertently that stood us in good stead last year (as did my ‘long game’ policy of being antisocial and not going to parties) – so in the circumstances, it’s hugely ironic (six verses you could have had Alanis, six!) that today we’re going out Christmas shopping.

I’m not shopping’s biggest fan anyway – and rather than giving it an exciting festive buzz, I find ‘Christmas’ only adds to the pressure. But I’ve been outvoted so, as our household’s designated (not to mention, ‘only legal’) driver, we’re off to Exeter!  

To be fair (in a ‘trying to be optimistic about it’ kind of way) there are some advantages to being in a real shop rather than on the ‘net. It’s much easier to browse in person than it is when you’re faced with the prospect of clicking through 116 pages of ‘Lactofree Sweets’ or ‘Christmas Bras’ – and there’s always the chance of stumbling upon something so unexpected that you’d never think of typing it into a search bar.

On the other hand, to quote Sartre (who famously hated shopping) hell is other people, and inevitably there are going to be crowds. Other like-minded people who, in the absence of a pre-planned excuse with which to head their wives and daughters off at the pass, have ended up Christmas shopping. I’m not bothered about this week’s ‘return of the mask’ business – frankly none of us three has got anywhere near the stage of giving them up yet, so in that sense we’re carrying on as normal. Hopefully the assorted crowd will be like-minded in that as well. So anyway, that’s my Saturday. It’s an earlier than usual post from me today because, well, I’m going outside and may be gone some time… 

Advent#10

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who, Family

Tuesday’s tactless labelling of my relatives as ‘old’ notwithstanding, Christmas IS a time for visiting. We usually get to Mum and Dad’s on the day itself, but not often bruv’s as well – although I do remember managing ‘the double’ in 2012. Lovely to see everyone obviously, but also rather pleasing to get several rounds of food –  a bit like the Vicar of Dibley, but not so unwilling (and no sprouts!).

The knock-on effect of this giddy social whirl was that by the time I got home I was both so drained and so full that I left the Doctor Who Christmas Day Special until Boxing Day. Inevitably there was some suggestion I should hand my anorak back but I got away with it – only to end up doing the very same thing five years later! Meaning I gave Peter Capaldi’s Doctor an extra day and let him breathe his last on the 26th instead.

It was curiously appropriate. He was announced as the new Who live on BBC1 in 2013, the same day I’d agreed to take my daughter and her friend to the cinema. I meticulously checked the film times, made sure I had time to drop them off, drive home to see the announcement, and pick them up again. Not so meticulously, I forgot to check which cinema they were going to…

It turned out to NOT be the one fifteen minutes down the road, but the one an hour or so away. Meaning I didn’t get to watch the live reveal, but the recording some hours later. (Meaning also that I spent the evening in a carpark metaphorically (and later, when my phone started pinging, literally) with my fingers in my ears going lalalalala.)

Sometimes it’s nice to give people a bit of your time. 

Advent #9

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

They say, don’t they, that the best thing to do after falling off a horse is to get straight back on. I’ve never fallen off a horse (I’ve never got on one, either) but I fell off a tree in 1982 and have never shinned up one since, and in a similarly defeatist vein I’ve not made a trifle since Christmas 2009.

The trifle came in one of those little kits made by the Birds company. (Why bother making it from scratch when Birds has put all that time and effort, and presumably millions of research hours, into it?) Melting and stirring the jelly crystals was a breeze, likewise the ceremonial breaking up of those oddly-moreish sponge fingers. But…

I came a cropper with the custard.

It burned.

Due to my wife being so intolerant I’d made the custard with Lactofree milk; and even now, whenever my trifle comes up in conversation (which is unexpectedly often) she always advises people, to save them from unnecessary suffering, that you cannot make custard with Lactofree milk. I have to be honest, I think she’s being very charitable – much more likely, the problem wasn’t her milk but my making.

Not that it was apparent there was any problem until the trifle was fully assembled. Even then, having dished it up, my brother was unconvinced that it actually was burnt – to the point of taking half a dozen mouthfuls, each giving him a contradictory opinion (like that blue dress/gold dress meme from a few years ago). Luckily, in the nick of time before the rest of us decided to tuck in he concluded that yes,  it WAS burnt – meaning that from that day on, our Christmas Day trifle was consigned to history.

And 2009’s Christmas trifle, of course, was consigned to the bin

Advent #8

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, BBC, Christmas, TV

For several years through the 1990s, One Foot in the Grave fielded a Christmas special. Often, but not always, on Christmas Day, not even always about Christmas, but still in a quiet sort of way it was an annual fixture just as much as the far more feted Only Fools.

My memory, which granted may be at fault, seems to think that often, but not always, they flirted with the idea, or at least teased it enough in the hype beforehand, that the latest special might be the last ever episode, that they might even kill Victor off. They never did of course – not at Christmas anyway.

Ironically perhaps, given that its leads are two… older characters, both Richard Wilson and Annette Crosbie are still with us (whereas it’s with real sadness that I look at the regular cast of The Vicar of Dibley and see that only three of them are left now) so in theory at least they could come back and do some more…

…If it weren’t for the fact that, again ironically (I’m beginning to think that if Alanis Morisette had just held on a few more years, she could have got a fifth verse out of this) they DID, ultimately, though not at Christmas, kill Victor off.

There’s a case to be made that One Foot was/is the last great BBC sitcom, and in a way that I can’t quite explain (unless “it’s because you’re getting old, Curnow” is any sort of explanation) it really takes me aback to realise it started over 30 years ago, and ended over 20. I… Well…

I don’t believe it.

Advent #7

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

As usual, the early days of December have brought a slew of BRAND NEW Christmas songs: Ed ‘n’ Elton, George Ezra, and, although I may have imagined it I’m certain I heard somebody say ‘Sinitta’ the other day.

Naturally the airwaves are also full with a whole load of OLD Christmas songs, and if I was short of something to say I could easily reach three hundred words just by running down the list, all the way from I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, via Stop the Cavalry and Stay Another Day, to December Will Be Magic Again and Santa’s a Scotsman.

I always think hyping up a BRAND NEW Christmas song is a pointless exercise – even for the Sheeran/John gestalt, chances are it’ll be three or four years before we decide if we like it or not. If we do, then it’ll gradually become a regular on the annual playlist (just as, in recent times, Sia’s Santa’s Coming For Us, and Leonna Lewis’ One More Sleep, have joined the gang). If we don’t… then it’s doomed to the occasional ‘novelty hit’ special, or to just making up the numbers on a Readers Digest compilation.

In an odd sort of way Christmas is one time when we eschew the new in favour of the old and the familiar. Maybe that’s why we regard it as a time to go back home (and not just in a ‘Ceasar’s census’ sort of way) to be with, to spend time with, family.

I worry now that I’ve written myself into a corner, as I appear to have just labelled my assorted family as ‘old’. Awkward.

You know, in hindsight maybe I should have just carried on listing Christmas songs. Like Shakey’s Merry Christmas Everyone, or Cliff’s Mistletoe and Wine, or…..

Advent #6

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

From late October onwards, I drive home from work in an oppressive darkness. I don’t mean in a, black cloud hanging over me/”‘I need those reports on my desk by eight am dammit, John” sort of way – but literally, as in the sun has gone down by 5pm and it’s already night.

As we move into December (and this year it seems to have been while we were still bumbling through November) people start to put their lights up – outside lights, along walls or along gutters, sometimes around trees or hedges. We don’t ever put them up ourselves (see also, ‘bah humbug’) but I have to admit, just as other people’s washing-up is always more interesting than your own, I like to see them.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that outside lights were the exception rather than the rule. Coming back up from Cornwall one Christmas night some years ago, all was darkness as we ventured through Launceston– until suddenly out of nowhere, in the middle of an otherwise darkened back street, there blazed just one single house, not so much decorated as smothered by glorious and gaudy lights of all manner of sizes and combinations. Seeing that light suddenly appear in the dark may have given us just a sense (once we’d got over the shock and established we weren’t blind) of what it was that got those Magi all fired up.

Risk to eyesight and good taste aside though, as December progress I love to (If you’ll forgive me sounding a bit Vera Lynn-y) to see the lights come on again, providing an ever-increasing series of landmarks along the route – a bright and comforting sign that it’s nearly Christmas and that I’m nearly home.

Advent #5

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Christmas

(This post has been rated PG for adult content.)


Not long after I started my first full-time job, in Autumn of 1991, a ripple of excitement went round the office at the visit of ‘The Calendar Man’. One of the directors in particular was very excited – and very thorough, taking an hour or more to decide which calendars our company would be distributing that year.


You may be ahead of my naive younger self, but come December we took delivery of a small quantity of calendars with pictures of wildlife on them, and a much larger quantity with pictures of… of a very different sort of life. I wouldn’t want anybody to get the wrong idea, we weren’t giving out calendars of naked models – but this was only prevented by the very tiniest amount of fabric.


Nowadays, although not quite consigned to history the ‘girlie calendar’ seems the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, the last time I even heard mention of one was a few Decembers back when a sales rep came round to give us a pictorial scenes calendar but intimated, in a black market spiv, ‘back of the van’ kind of a way that he had ‘something else’ if we were interested.


No doubt the wildlife calendar is a step in the right direction away from young women and scraps of cloth; but the shine was taken off them for me when a friend pointed out that the photographers don’t spend months, Attenborough-like, assimilating themselves into the natural world in order to take the perfect picture – the cute animals greeting each new month are all dead and stuffed (in that order).


Say what you like about the not-quite-naked models that ‘The Calendar Man’ used to trade in, at least none of them died for their art!

Advent #4

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Christmas, Family

A staggering forty-one years ago, my Mum and/or Dad was given ABBA’s Super Trouper album for Christmas. This was an LP of course, what we now for some reason call ‘vinyl’. Vinyl has had a revival in recent years, and I can only assume that’s because it’s been long enough since its heyday that we’ve forgotten what annoyed us about it in the first place. Because, never mind all this “it’s a warmer sound” nonsense, records are so annoyingly fragile.

Super Trouper got a lot of play ergo within a very short time a lot of scratches, possibly (though unproven) due to some inexpert pre-teen handling of the stylus. So it was literally decades before I unravelled the baffling lyrics of Happy New Year (Side B Track 1, Pop Pickers) and discovered that the opening line isn’t actually “No more champ fire through.”

‘Literally decades’ was, to be more precise, a gap of 39 years because in 2019 I was gifted the same album, also for Christmas, but now on CD. More resilient than its larger, vinyl-ier ancestor, nevertheless the CD’s reputation has suffered since it was first introduced in the mid-80s with claims of being indestructible – and it felt entirely appropriate to discover that although I can now hear every word of Happy New Year, for some reason Super Trouper itself (Side A, Track 1) skips and stutters as if it’s been covered by Norman Collier.

I’m hoping to get the new ABBA album for Christmas this year (I’d certainly better after all the hints I’ve dropped). I don’t know whether it’ll be on vinyl, or compact disc, or even (and to be honest this is a nostalgia trip too far, even for me) on cassette. But I look forward to thanking them for the music one more time.

Advent #3

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Confused, Family

As we head towards Christmas and the chance to finally do something with the duck that’s been taking up valuable real-estate in our freezer since before the clocks changed, I’m faced with the usual dilemma: when it comes to Christmas dinner, and with only four rings on the hob, which vegetable(s) do we sacrifice?

The philosophers among you (when not busy not listening for trees falling over) may have taken part in the sort of light-hearted debate where you imagine yourself on a balloon ride needing to lighten the load. The point of the debate being, what value we place on different people and roles in society – so, for example, you’d have one person arguing as a lawyer, one a farmer, one an actor, etc. (Incidentally, my uncle once told us he had debated as ‘Balloon Pilot’!)

In similar vein, my wife and I recently had a provisional discussion on the vegetable issue – and I must say I was rocked to my core when she nominated boiled potatoes, rather than carrots, as the most likely to be discarded.

Vegetables are a bit of a sore point with us anyway, afflicted as I am by Cornish Vegetable Blindness. The turnip/swede debate was one of the early features of our married life; and it subsequently emerged that what I’d always called broccoli was wrong too, and was actually (and even now I have to check) cauliflower. (I’m not sure I could pick cabbage out of a lettuce line-up either, while we’re on the subject.) Not that any of the ludicrously over-populated brassica mob is getting a look in while I’m in charge of the cooking (well, except sprouts). Frankly, never mind throwing them out – that dull and duller pairing, broccoli and cauliflower, aren’t even getting ON the balloon.  

Advent #2

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas

Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I’m never convinced that ‘this year’s Must Have toy’ is actually a thing. Much more likely, I suspect, it’s shrewd advertising by the toy company in question on the basis that (a) suddenly your kid will want it and therefore (b) there’s bound to be a huge increase in demand from parents leaping in early to buy one, thus ensuring they’re not (c) in for a long, grumpy Christmas.

I certainly don’t remember hearing the phrase in my youth when it could be said I was in the key toy-buying demographic (well not so much ‘buying’ but, you know, nagging…). If it DID exist back then, presumably the Palitoy cardboard Death Star was 1978’s ‘Must Have’ and 1980’s was the Kenner Millenium Falcon. (Much as I loved the Cantina Playset I got in 1979, I would be reluctant to put it in the same league.)

The first time I can really remember hearing about ‘must haves’ was Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear in the mid-90s, but it didn’t bother me because I didn’t want one. (Er, I mean because we didn’t have any children who wanted one.). A few years later it was the Teletubbies, by which time we DID have a child. At the risk of sounding smug, without having to wrestle anybody to the floor of our local Woolworths we managed to get all four.

Within twelve months the fad had changed, and I can’t honestly recall my daughter playing with her Teletubby toys for very long. But then I guess we’ve all been like that, obsessed with something one minute, only to lay it aside and never play with it again the next.

I’ve certainly done that, and I surely can’t be the only one. Come on, admit it: you must have!