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.

You Have Been Reading!

Advent #14

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family

Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, Facebook Memories has popped up to remind me that exactly twelve months ago today I drove my daughter to a medical appointment and we had lunch in Bideford. With a very real danger of it becoming a tradition (certainly if I have anything to do with it) the same thing happened today. It wasn’t EXACTLY the same, it was my wife rather than my daughter; but I definitely had the same turkey lunch (and I still didn’t eat the cranberry sauce).

As we drove home, Mrs C was about to ask if we could get some of the large, new-style fuzzy fairylights that everybody seemed to have decorated their houses with – when it dawned on her that her eyes were still hugely dilated by the eye drops she’d been given at her appointment, and in fact they were just perfectly normal fairy lights. I was reminded of another December drive home from Bideford when my mother-in-law was very opinionated about lights, heavily disapproving of multi-coloured ones, while our baby daughter slept through it all in the backseat alongside my wife who was PRETENDING to be asleep to avoid the conversation.

Nearing home, and you may recall me mentioning Connie Francis’ Baby’s First Christmas on Tuesday, a song I’ve never, in 52 years and counting, heard on the radio, a song I only ever hear on my Readers Digest CDs, a song I heard on those very CDs at half one this afternoon. I was reminded of all that when, no more than four hours later, Sara Cox was playing it on national Radio 2!

Thank goodness we’re finally back home, where the tree is still not up, and our day out is over. It’s been quite the Nostalgia Trip.

Advent #13

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas

Of all the Star Wars toys I had as a kid, and there were certainly some big-hitters, ultimately my favourites were always the miniature figures. Oddly, I rarely got them for Christmas – other than 1978, when I got two Sand People from Gran and Grandpa (wrapped in single file so as to hide their numbers); and C-3P0. As one of ‘the stars of Star Wars’ you might think he’d have been an essential part of my collection long before that but in those pre-Amazon days we were limited to whichever figures our local shops stocked – so, of the original twelve I’d only whittled it down to ten by Summer 1979 (Princess Leia and the Jawa, in case you’re wondering).

It’s lucky (for Father Christmas’s overdraft at least) that they didn’t really do Doctor Who figures back then. Well, apart from the Denys Fisher ‘dolls’ which included a recycled Gareth Hunt, Leela with a perm the size of a small moon, and a Cyberman with a nose – all in all, a pretty cack-handed and second-rate bunch (naturally therefore I coveted them deeply).

As regards the Star Wars figures, it always puzzled me and my brother that the first dozen didn’t include a Peter Cushing to go with its Alec Guinness. At the risk of annoying Darth Vader  (not something that ever ends well) Grand Moff Tarkin is clearly THE villain in the first film, so it seemed such an odd omission. He didn’t make the second wave either, even though they were clearly struggling to make up the numbers with ‘Death Star Droid’ and ‘Walrus Man’.

Because of all that, when the best part of thirty years later, bruv found a 4” Tarkin figure to give me for Christmas, it needed no explanation. Small and beautifully formed. (Like me.)

Advent #12

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas (according to Michael Bublé (who else)). Maybe it LOOKS like it; but I don’t FEEL very Christmassy, we haven’t even put our tree up yet. (Oh! Does the tree go up when I feel Christmassy – or do I feel Christmassy when the tree goes up?! Either way, it’s not up.)

I suppose we all get the odd Christmas which somehow doesn’t ‘do it’ for us (unless it’s just me?) but in such circumstances I have a ‘break glass in the event of emergency’ last resort –  that is to say, lurking in the glovebox of the car are my CDs of Christmas Songs.

Years ago I bought a set from the Readers Digest (yes I know, it only encourages them – but a mere six house moves later and I’m off their mailing list). Like every ‘Greatest Hits’ or ‘Best Ever’ album, although it boasts some of the obvious big-hitters (Last Christmas, Stop the Cavalry, etc) there’s also an awful lot of filler or, more charitably, rarities. This CD set is where I first encountered Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again, and all these years later I still can’t decide if I like it or not (all I can tell you is, it scores highly on the singalongometer). But there’s also stuff like Cliff’s Christmas Never Comes or Connie Francis singing Baby’s First Christmas. Yes, quite.

So, given that we’ve less than two weeks to go, it’s time to dig out the CDs and either jumpstart the Christmas frivolities or conclude it’s a ‘fallow’ year and just enjoy the food (and company (and time off work (and Doctor Who Christmas special))). If not this year, perhaps NEXT year December will be magic again. Not ‘arf pop pickers!

Advent #11

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Never mind all this “how many sleeps till Christmas?” business, a more pressing matter here at Curnow Towers is “how many paydays till Christmas?” The answer is “one” (today in fact) and since the answer to the follow-up question “how many delivery days till Christmas?” is “only twelve” you can well imagine there’s going to be a lot of online present buying today. That’s not to say we haven’t given the matter any thought until now. No, in anticipation of payday we’ve already put together a very detailed list specifying items, recipients, retailers, etc.

In other words, and this won’t surprise anyone who knows me, I have a spreadsheet.

I use Excel (other spreadsheet packages are available… Well, probably. But frankly why would you bother?). I use it A LOT, in fact. Not just at work, it’s in regular use at home too. The bank balance, cashflow, daily electric meter readings, the account with the milkman…

There’s something almost instinctive about the simple elegance of its Alt+E+C key stroke sequence (to COPY) and that’s just scratching the surface. It has so many gorgeous features from straightforward SUM or AVERAGE calculations, through to IF formulae and (my particular favourite) the VLOOKUP function. Running my fingers across O+C+A (adjusting the column width to suit the cell contents) feels so automatic it might as well be a race memory.

It regularly takes me aback that Excel and Word are contemporaries, and although I wouldn’t quite go so far as to call Word the evil twin, it’s certainly the stupid one. Clumsy, lumpy and awkward to use, its arbitrary tab set up remains one of the eternal mysteries like “is there a God?” and the offside rule.

But enough of this nonsense, I’ve got to get clicking! It’s only fourteen more sleeps till EXCELMas!!