Advent #11

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

Last weekend, perhaps full of Christmas enthusiasm, more likely hyperactive after catching-up on my Advent Calendar, I put up our tree.

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To be precise, I put up two-thirds of it. For the first time, it suddenly struck me that it might look nice on a table – but a bit like my grandfather’s clock, our tree is too tall for that. But it also suddenly struck me that I could just leave the bottom section out….

…Which is exactly what I did, and in fact it’s now a much nicer size than it ever was before. Plus it removes that slight paranoia I get from there being something taller than me in the room (that’s one of the reasons Mrs Curnow has to stay sat down so much of the time).

In a move my mother-in-law would certainly have approved of, I have gone ‘white lights only’ with the tree, and have also hung a set around the window to ‘frame’ the tree. And in a bit of blatant pandering to the minimalists, I’ve gone for just nine baubles and NO tinsel.

It’s a striking departure from other, gaudier, years and although I wouldn’t necessarily want to put words into people’s mouths I did quietly think to myself that, finally, I might have nailed ‘tastefully understated’…

…On seeing it, however, my daughter was of the opinion that it looked “squwarky” – and when I (rather hypocritically) pointed out that you can’t just make up words to win an argument, she gave me a definition: “you remember when our cat got old – and she looked all wisht and hanging…”

But it’s up (well, two-thirds of it is) and it’s staying up!!

(Until this weekend that is, when we’re going to swap it for my daughter’s tree, which is much nicer!)

Advent #10

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

My wife has bought me an advent calendar!

It is, I think, the first time I’ve ever had a chocolate-filled one, although despite yesterday’s diatribe it’s not Quality Street. Which is, on the one hand, ironic; but on the other hand saves my wife from having to deal with my Perry Como impersonation each morning as I open the next door.

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There was one for her as well – in Mrs Curnow’s case, being intolerant of lactose and its ilk (and indeed its milk) hers contains Vegan chocolates. I was a bit dubious about the manufacturer’s need to picture Santa in a blue coat on the front (unless they imagine that the normal red is only that colour because it’s soaked in the blood of a thousand turkeys?) but once I’d got over my ‘outraged of Tunbridge Wells’ moment I must admit I was rather impressed.

For one thing, the doors have a picture on the inside flap – meaning there’s the immediate hit of chocolate, followed by the more slow-burn appeal of a new image each day. Even more impressively, rather than the usual, scatter-gun approach of most advent calendars, where doors of all shapes and sizes are randomly strewn across the box-front, on the vegan one they are neatly arranged into six rows of four doors each, all exactly the same size.

I mean, now that I’ve written it down I appreciate there’s maybe just a hint of “making the trains run on time” about it all – so although it appeals to my sense of neatness, I don’t think there’s much danger of it converting me to Veganism.

For one thing, I’ve got another fourteen days worth of non-Vegan chocolates to get through. It would be an awful shame to waste them…

Advent #9

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas, Family
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I’m not knocking Celebrations, or Heroes, or Roses (I’m not turning them down either, if you’re offering) but I can’t help but feel that they are all, when it comes down to it, without beating about the bush, to be frank, mere yuletide also-rans: eagerly, valiantly, but ultimately unsuccessfully trying to knock Quality Street off the top of the pile.

It may simply be that Quality Street has been around in our Christmasses for as long as I can remember – whereas given I can recall when even the HobNob and the Wispa were upstart newcomers, these other collections of miniatures feel dangerously-modern.

Perhaps because of the brand’s sense of history, for many years the Quality Street Christmas ads played up the nostalgia angle by using a Perry Como song, the perfect match of American music and English chocolate.

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When I was very young, when we lived in what I later discovered was actually my Uncle’s bungalow, my parents had a double LP of Perry Como hits. Looking back, I suspect it was those canny folk at K-Tel quickly releasing a collection off the back of his renewed high-profile, in the wake of his 1973 hit “For The Good Times”.

One night literally decades later, in another county and another century, I happened to catch the end of the Jo Whiley show on Radio 2, only to find she was playing that very song. I recognised it from the intro alone, even before Perry Como gives us just two verses, simple and heartbreaking with no need for a middle eight or autotune. In that instant it took me right back to a record I’d loved in a house I don’t even remember.

It was, I can tell you, a little bit of a Magic Moment.

Advent #8

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Pets, Weather
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In anticipation of Storm Darragh yesterday, I brought our wheel bin indoors. The last time I had to do that was only a couple of years ago – but having recalled the occasion, it struck me that back then we had four dogs (who I slept downstairs with to avoid them getting scared by the wind – whereupon they all slept soundly on the sofa and I gave myself backache perching on a footstool worrying about the fence) whereas now we are down to just one, after losing Ellie.

Ellie arrived, like the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who, in the Spring of 2010, and was our first small dog. And perhaps because of that, and although we always try to treat our childr—our PETS, treat our pets the same, we would often take her out with us rather than leave her home with our giant labrador and stupid collie and run the risk of her being inadvertently sat on.

So she visited both my brother’s flat and my parents’ house, peeing in the corner on both occasions (which I suspect they might have all forgot about by now if I hadn’t just reminded them) and spending one St Peter’s Fair evening tucked inside my jumper.

She was also, which is often the case of small dogs surrounded by idiots, very protective/aggressive (depending on which side of her teeth you are standing on). That’s why, this time last year, I was worried about Ellie’s first meeting with Claudia’s new dog. Rikki is large and gangly and towered above Ellie – but after a moment’s sniffing, frankly it was ‘business as usual’ and back to dozing on the settee.

Despite my worries, it was peace and goodwill to all men (and dogs!) after all!

Advent #7

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Christmas, Family, Moaning

Not to knock our local shops, but as a rule if we need to do any ‘serious shopping’ we go up the road to Barnstaple – although I’m old (and grumbly) enough to think that, without Menzies, without Woolworths, it’s not what it used to be.

At Christmas however, things get even more serious and we go to Exeter. Exeter doesn’t have a Woolworths either (obviously) but it does have an HMV, two Waterstones, and a Partri– sorry, no, and an outdoor Christmas Market.

Oddly, given that it’s no further from us than Exeter, we never shop in Plymouth.

We did venture to Plymouth at least once when I was young – possibly just once,  given that my Mum recalls it as a fractious and largely-unsatisfying Christmas shopping trip. I don’t remember it at all, so either it was actually perfectly fine and she’s worrying over nothing – or it was so bad that I’ve blotted it out. Either way.

Maybe there’s something about Plymouth that makes it forgettable (I mean, maybe it’s my poor memory but sure, let’s blame Plymouth instead) because likewise I remember almost nothing from another Christmas shopping trip there, during mine and bruv’s ‘hilarious flat-share comedy’ era.

This was in December of 1993 and I can be certain of the year because of the only thing I remember about the entire day (having forgotten why we went, where we went, what we bought, what we did). Which is that our friend Colin came with us and bought the Mr Blobby single on cassette and although we surely CAN’T have had it playing all the long way home (can we??) it very much felt like we had.

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Ironically, given how traumatic an experience that was, I haven’t managed to forget it at all. Blobby blobby blob!

Advent #6

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Christmas, TV

I’ve scarcely mentioned it at all, but over the past few years I’ve been watching classic Scots soap Take The High Road from the beginning.

It shows its age of course (it ran from 1980 until 2003) and, perhaps because back in the good old days different ITV regions showed programmes at different times, it rarely pins itself down to being set at a particular time of year. Episodes with a Scottish transmission date of June and July, for example, will often have scenes set in blizzard weather, betraying the filming rather than broadcast date. And strikingly, to the modern viewer accustomed to big Yuletide storylines (sensational weddings/murders/divorces/alien abductions/plane crashes and the like) TTHR doesn’t make a big thing of Christmas – never mentions it at all in fact.

Or so I thought until I came across this picture in an old book about the show:

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I’ve religiously avoided any spoilers (if you can even have ‘spoilers’ for a programme that finished over twenty years ago) so I don’t know anything about it other than what can be gleaned from this brief entry. But it’s a tantalising hint of something unusually specific, a Christmas episode – and it comes with a tantalising caption, making it clear that as a sassenach viewer I didn’t just miss it, I never even had the chance to watch it.

Perhaps, when I finally finish watching the series proper, I’ll trawl the internet to see if I can track down ‘the Christmas episode’ (I’ll put it on the list alongside the actual final episode of Secret Army). But for now, perhaps oddly, I’m happy to leave it a mystery – to leave it, if you like, as one more present to unwrap.

Meanwhile, episode 1210 and Mrs Mack has a new hat…

Advent #5

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who, Family
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It’s new Doctor Who Magazine day today!

As you might expect, the December issue always embraces the season. For the past twenty Christmasses that’s been easy, celebrating the imminent broadcast of the Christmas (latterly New Year) special. Covers featuring David Tennant in his dressing gown, for example, or Jodie Whittaker sporting a scarf against the winter weather. (Doctor Who wearing a scarf? Plus ça change.)

In the old days there were no Christmas Specials to hang the magazine off. Indeed, for a good decade and a half there wasn’t any Doctor Who at all. So it’s understandable that December’s mag’ would sometimes come and go without Christmas rating a mention – which is a shame, because when they DID mark the occasion we got some great covers. Probably my favourite is issue 247 from December 1996 (shown above) which ignored the gloomy news that that year’s Paul McGann TV Movie had not relaunched the show and that Doctor Who was consequently ‘dead’ again, and instead encouraged the lovely Sylvester & Sophie to get daft with some tinsel.

All these years later (issue 611 arriving today fact fans!) I still love getting the Doctor Who Magazine… and especially, I suppose, since I’m not paying for it!

That’s not code for ‘this is my last ever post, the Feds have finally caught up with me, I leave for Switzerland by the morning train’ –  no, it’s simply that my parents have given me an annual subscription to DWM every year since Christmas 2004 (which is as near as dammit twenty years or seven Doctor Whos ago, depending on which unit of measurement you find more helpful).

Which is very kind, and much appreciated – and means that every month I get news, reviews and interviews through the letterbox. And just a little bit of Christmas too!

Advent #4

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning
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I have a Christmas jumper.

Well sort of. Leastways, it’s more Christmassy than my non-Christmas jumpers (or ‘jumpers’). I was considering wearing it last Saturday to the big Christmas light switch-on. But below a grim-faced Darth Vader (as opposed to, what, the flirty, playful-faced Darth Vader you usually get on jumpers?) it says ‘This Is My Jolly Face’ which I concluded was not quite the right tone after all. In similar vein my wife has a Santa hat, but in black and with ‘Bah Humbug’ on the front. (My apologies to any Victorians reaching for the smelling salts due to my shameless use of the H-word on a public forum.)

Taking things to another level, my daughter’s neighbour has an inflatable Grinch outside their house! Well, they did on Sunday afternoon. Monday, it was gone. But yesterday it was back again – which is why I inadvertently found myself saying “Hurrah, the Grinch is erect” (a thought we could all have done without):

The Whos down in Whoville

Were peaceful and placid

But the Grinch on the mountain

He was anything but flaccid, etc

There’s certainly a place for this ironic, ‘pretending to be grumpy about Christmas’ sort of schtick. But there are also people who AREN’T pretending, and genuinely DON’T like Christmas – which is fine, just as there are people who don’t like it when the World Cup is on, or Glastonbury is all over the BBC.

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What irritates me is when they try to inflict their displeasure on everybody else, as if nobody should enjoy it. We can’t all like the same thing, but even if you hate Christmas there’ll be something along soon that you CAN enjoy (January probably).

In the meantime, grit your teeth and accept that some people like it.

And, er, may the Force be with you?

Advent #3

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas
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Maybe I just missed the memo, but I don’t remember Gingerbread being a Christmas ‘thing’ in my childhood. Mind you, I’ve often said the same about the Nutcracker and that’s apparently been around since 1892, so what do I know? (Rhetorical question.)

When I was young, the bakery up the road from us used to sell gingerbread men. They were very hard, and had currants for eyes, and because the currants were added before cooking, it meant they came out shrivelled, crunchy and burnt, like tiny bitter rabbit droppings. Needless to say, I loved them.

Gingerbread men nowadays tend to be soft and bendy rather than hard and brittle; and, unfortunately for my wife, they also tend to be full of butter. She is lactose intolerant (and quite prejudiced against oranges too) so has to be careful what she eats. Sometimes, perhaps with just a hint of paranoia, she’ll point out that not only does such-and-such contain milk or butter, the manufacturer also lists actual lactose amongst the ingredients, which they’ve presumably bunged in just to make quite sure they finish her off.

We recently discovered almost a whole shelf in Lidl full of Christmassy gingerbread, none of which contained lactose in any form whatsoever. As you might imagine, she was like a kid in a sweet shop (almost literally) and we came home with what I can only really describe as one heck of a stash.

I thought that the plan might be to make them last until Christmas, but I suppose I can’t blame her for taking advantage of the fact that for once there’s something she can actually binge on.

With the result that, rather like the gingerbread man crossing the river, the not-so-little Lidl pile is already three-quarters gone…

Advent #2

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Christmas, Moaning
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I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like (to coin a phrase). Or at least, what I DISlike.

Certainly, I can remember quietly seething in the Winter of 1987 when the Pet Shop Boys ‘stole’ the Christmas Number One slot from The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl. The Boys’ high-speed, technopop cover of an Elvis classic seemed to my teenage ears a very poor excuse for a Christmas number one, not mentioning trees or snow or Santa once, not even jazzing up the backing-track with so much as a sleigh bell.

But as time has passed, with each year I find I rate You Are Always On My Mind a little more. Maybe my taste has improved, maybe UB40 murdering another Elvis classic in 1993 helped put it into perspective for me. Either way, in hindsight I have to say hats off to the record-buying public of 1987 who got the Pet Shop Boys to pole position that December.  I can’t include myself among their number, my single-purchasing days spanned the Smurfs in 1978 to Anita Dobson doing the theme to EastEnders in 1986, after which I think I pretty much gave up on buying records. (Or possibly the Hit Parade carried out an intervention and told me to just give it up as a bad job.)

This year the Pet Shop Boys are back, with a cover of All The Young Dudes. I’m not that struck to be honest. I mean, it’s OK but it doesn’t really add anything to the superb Mott the Hoople original, and frankly–

No, never mind. Give it another three decades, I’ll probably be telling you the Pet Shop Boys version is the best record ever made.

(Although of course, I don’t know much about music.)