Advent #10

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Confused, Family

We have ourselves a Christmas mystery.

It’s not the one where I can vividly remember being drilled in how to enunciate the lyrics to White Christmas, hitting a definite ‘T’ sound in the line “and may all your ChrisT-masses be White” – the mystery being I cannot work out who or when, or why for that matter as I don’t recall ever singing White Christmas, certainly not in public. (I remember putting it on the jukebox in the Old Market one February evening, clearing the bar in the process, but that’s probably more a cry for help than a mystery.)

But anyway, this isn’t anything to do with that. This mystery is a Christmas Card that arrives each year, addressed to my inlaws, but which the postman delivers here because he knows they’re no longer with us and (therefore) aren’t living in the house at the other end of the village. It comes signed – but the names mean nothing to us.

It’s a peculiar puzzler because clearly it comes from somebody who knew my inlaws well enough to send them a card every year (and this despite the fact that they certainly haven’t received one back since 2017) but not well enough to know they’ve both passed away.

And so the mystery remains. The postmark is never legible enough for us to determine where it’s from, I suppose if we really HAD to find out who sent it we could try a post on Facebook, or maybe in the Portsmouth local papers (they were both from there originally)… But I have to admit, regardless of the unsolved mystery, I like that my inlaws are still getting a card each year. It’s a nice reminder of them, at ChrisT-mas.

Advent #9

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who

Since David Tennant’s return to Doctor Who last year the anticipation has been huge. Finally, just a fortnight ago, after thirteen long months of looking forward to them, his new episodes began… since when I’ve mainly felt impatient for them to get on with it so we can get to the NEXT new Doctor.

I don’t think it’s a complaint unique to Doctor Who fans; we’re so keen to be onto the next thing that we don’t always enjoy the thing we have. When I was young, the Summer holidays would hardly be upon us before shops were advertising ‘Back To School’ clothes – now we’re scarcely out of Summer before the shops are full of Hallowe’en; and with pumpkins still on the shelves, out comes all the Christmas fare. No doubt even as I type this there’s an Army of Easter Eggs in the back room of our local Waitrose, ready to be rolled out for Boxing Day.

Maybe it’s the hectic pace (or the often-ghastly nature) of modern life that propels us always to be looking ahead – this Winter’s TV ads for next Summer’s vacations, Christmas Cards on sale in the Summer, Easter Eggs on sale at Christmas – but there’s the danger that it robs us of the opportunity, the ability even, to simply enjoy the moment. No doubt, in a few years, we nostalgic old fans will reminisce about that crazy fortnight when Tennant & Tate did a victory lap – but for now we just seem keen for them to make way for Gatwa & Gibson. (Other, non-alliterative Doctor/Companion combinations are available.)

So, I know it’s a time for peace & goodwill to all men – but please don’t come knocking on my door at 6:30 this evening. I will be TRYING to enjoy the moment.

Advent #8

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Pets

I mentioned last year that our dog Bobby probably wouldn’t make it to another Christmas, and sure enough he didn’t, and I thought I might write something about him, but there isn’t much to say really. He arrived as a puppy in 2008 and he left March this year. It wasn’t any big drama, it was just time. And of course it was a bit sad but I’d certainly be lying to say I think about him every day.

Not many WEEKS go by though. Often it’s when I’m walking the two smaller dogs, and I find myself trying to remember what it was like when I used to walk them alongside Bobby – and sometimes I can remember, and sometimes I can’t. When he was younger, when I was younger, occasionally a walk would go on for miles, across muddy fields, or across slippery ice, and then I can remember us both getting very literally bogged down in the one, and the impatient bugger pulling me arse over elbow on the other.

Many dogs chase their own tails – he’s the only one I’ve known who could actually catch it. He was less accomplished on Christmas morning, where we always scrunch up balls of wrapping paper and throw them for the dogs. He enjoyed the game but never managed to catch anything, approaching it all with a mix of enthusiasm but no talent, rather like my attitude to Games when I was at school (except for the enthusiasm bit).

If we scrunch up some wrapping paper for the other dogs this year, I think it might be legitimate to miss Bobby a little then, because he was our dog for a very long time. Not much to say really.

Advent #7

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

As I slowly begin to creep towards middle aged, I’m aware of lots of things that have become increasingly commonplace during my lifetime. Public displays of emotion. A more liberal attitude towards sex. And yorkshire pudding served with turkey.

For at least my first thirty years I only remember encountering yorkshires as an accompaniment to beef. Nowadays, I can’t think the last time I went out for a roast meal that DIDN’T come with one. (Sidebar: in the past two or three years I notice roasts are also often accompanied by a little bite-sized suet pudding – and although to my no-doubt prejudiced thinking ‘suet pudding’ conjures up an era of powdered egg and spam, it’s actually very nice.)

I’m not complaining (which at least makes for a nice change of pace) but I am baffled; and in the interests of full disclosure the madness has spread from restaurant to home, because we now have yorkshire puddings with roast, regardless of whether it’s beef, chicken, duck or lamb.

Perhaps more controversial, we’ve also embraced the flipside of this wave of laissez-faire food accoutrements in that we also have stuffing with beef. And yes, I appreciate that sounds mad because after all stuffing is called stuffing because it was originally… Well… Beef joints don’t have orifices is what I’m saying.

Be that as it may, since it always gets eaten and sometimes gets complimented (in other words ‘due to popular demand’) I’ve now given up arguing the point, and whenever I knock up a roast I always do both stuffing AND yorkshire puddings. I have not, as yet, ventured into suet pudding territory – because, although my useless knowledge of seventies advertising jingles tells me that Atora Suet can do it, I’m not convinced that I can.

Advent #6

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Back in the days of more-conventional gender stereotyping, one of the reliable Christmas gifts for a male relative was a Haynes Manual.

Like annuals for grown-ups, but with fewer comic strips and no crosswords, these legendary tomes contained everything you needed to know about whichever make of car the book was about – back in the day, it was probably a great relief to present buyers when they learnt that Uncle Bob had bought a new car, because it meant you could get him the Haynes Manual for Christmas. (And not just convenient for the buyer, the recipient was usually pleased about it too.)

These manuals, in the unlikely event that you don’t know, contained written details, along with exploded diagrams, of everything you could ever want to know about your car, plus step-by-step guides on how to repair and maintain it. So if you wanted to change the foglight, say, it would tell you which screws to undo, where they were located, and which type of bulb you’d need once you finally got in there.

I don’t think they still do them. I’ve certainly not seen any new ones in many a year, and it may well be that the rise of electronics in cars has put paid to the home mechanic, and thus the call for the Haynes Manual. Every page reading “plug in your diagnostic software” would get a bit samey. Needless to say, given that I’ve been driving for nearly thirty years and still don’t understand gears, I DON’T have a Haynes Manual.

Not for my car anyway. I was given one by my brother a few years ago, but that was for the Death Star. Could come in useful if there’s ever have a problem with their small thermal exhaust port.

Advent #5

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

I love slippers. I can remember my Gran, possibly Mum too, looking forward to getting a new pair for Christmas and at some point in the past decade I’ve reached that same Zen-like state of contentment at receiving, and wearing, them.

It’s a rough sort of love, mind you – within a very short time of getting new slippers I’ve usually pressed down the backs into a sort of improvised mule (don’t bother suggesting I should just get mules in the first place, I have a system and I’m happy with it) and by the time I’ve started wearing them when I take the rubbish out, and going into the back garden, and just in general using them shockingly beyond their design parameters, well, they tend to wear out. Often they’re all but falling apart before they are replaced (and not always ‘all but’). Nevertheless, to recap, and putting aside my appalling mistreatment of them, I love slippers.   

One of our dogs, despite the very real danger of becoming a cliché, brings me my slippers the minute I get in the door of an evening. Or rather, my slipper singular; and to be honest he doesn’t always relinquish it, sometimes he brandishes it around like Del Boy with his Filofax, even taking it outside when (the first and most pressing task on getting home) I let him out for a wee.

As a rule my daughter buys me a pair at Christmas and often for my birthday too which, falling at the end of June, means each pair only needs to last six months. My current ones, given their daily exposure to the elements, the dog, and indeed my feet, are starting to show their age – but luckily I think a new pair for Christmas is a shoe-in. (Sorry.)

Advent #4

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

Like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or other similar portents, one of the sure signs of an imminent Christmas is the sound of Michael Bublé  – so much so that when he unexpectedly appeared on the car radio during the Summer both my daughter and I had to take a moment to check we hadn’t dozed off and it wasn’t actually December.

I’ve heard Bublé interviewed a few times now, he sounds a really nice, very genuine guy, great voice, good with his fans… So all in all, season of goodwill notwithstanding, I feel rather bad saying that I don’t like his records.

No, maybe that’s unfair. I don’t so much not like them as I find myself wondering why he bothers. I can see how it must be tempting for a singer to lean towards that easy-listening, Frank Sinatra, crooner style, because I know it’s incredibly popular. But the harsh reality is that he’s been beaten to it. By Frank Sinatra.

It just seems, to grumbly old me, that there are certain instances where something has been done so well that as a species we can consider it ‘job done’, stick a pin in it and leave it alone. Madonna didn’t need to cover American Pie, it had already been perfected by Don McLean (branching out while Peter Glaze was busy in Panto (sorry)). Similarly there’s no call, no need, for anybody to fill the easy-listening, 50s-style crooner slot because it’s already been well and truly conquered by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.

Why would we want a new Michael Bublé album when we could just listen to the master belting out New York or Fly Me To The Moon?  Bublé’s got a really good voice, but in my opinion he should try and do it… His Way.

Advent #3

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Christmas, Doctor Who

They used to say that if you could remember the sixties you weren’t there – in similar vein, if you don’t remember Trivial Pursuits in the eighties, then you weren’t there either. An extraordinary blend of a boardgame with the opportunity for passive aggressive one-upmanship, it seemed to be, for just a couple of years, a constant threat hanging over any social gathering.

We were given it as a family one Christmas; and, for those few mortals unfamiliar, the premise is a quiz where you have to collect a different coloured slice or segment from each category, the first to get all six wins. Green was Science & Nature I believe, and there were questions also on History, Geography, Sport… in other words all the things I know nothing about. All I can really remember is that my only hope of ever possibly getting an answer right was if it was pink for Entertainment.

The game became, in Doctor Who circles, notorious for getting the answer wrong to the question ‘Who created Doctor Who?’ because, although his Daleks likely made it a success, Terry Nation (the answer on the card) didn’t actually create the show. With my anorak on I’m not sure you could definitively give one specific name in answer to the question. (Or alternatively, if there’s a pink slice in it for me, definitely Sydney Newman.)

It became, in our circle, if not notorious at least briefly memorable for the fact that when the local Superintendent Minister and his wife were around one evening, he was given the question, “What is the name for an animal with two penises?”

In case you’re wondering, no, I can’t remember the answer. And I’m certainly not Googling it to find out!

(I’m pretty sure it’s not Terry Nation though.)

Advent #2

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas

Sometime in the late 70s, or so it seemed to me at the time, Snooker suddenly became A Huge Thing, getting bigger and more mainstream as the 80s arrived – and, very much riding the crest of this wave, for Christmas 1981 my brother got a Pot Black snooker table.

It was only a fraction of the size of a proper table, but then, at ten and thirteen, we were similarly smaller than Ray Reardon (and certainly Bill Werbeniuk). The older lads in the house next door (whose faces I can now only remember as the sons in Butterflies) had a much bigger table, about half-size… but somehow, they also had the balls from a full-size table meaning the balls occupied more of the table than they should. (So did the table, which even at half-size took up so much of their kitchen there wasn’t room to swing a cat. (They also had a cat.))

Bruv’s Pot Black table however, in a small but beautifully-formed sort of way, did us very well – especially given that Dad, not satisfied that it came sans legs (presumably designed for a casual ‘just bung it on the dining-room table’ sort of gameplay) had built a proper wooden table, including cut-outs for the pockets, so that it could stand in permanent residence.

Despite a lot of play neither of us, it has to be said, quite reached Crucible standards. It didn’t put my brother off sporting activities, though, as a few Christmasses later he got a dartboard. Despite getting a snazzy set of blue-striped darts that year, I was never any good at that either and so, alas, I never did manage to win that speedboat.

Advent #1

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Just as some backwater places are described as ‘one horse towns’ we live in a ‘three flagpole village’ (but no horses). One of them is in the garden of what was formerly my in-laws house, and every time I see it I can’t help being relieved they never had a flagpole when they lived there – my mother-in-law would have spent a fortune buying flags online, and my father-in-law would have spent all his free time having to put them up.

All three pole owners have quite a range of flags, but the most varied by far is the one around the corner from us. Scarcely a fortnight goes by without a change, yet although we’ve lived here since before the turn of the century I’ve never once seen the actual switchover take place. The gentleman in question is ex-army so I like to imagine it’s done to the accompaniment of his wife on the bugle (although probably not).

Either way, over the years we’ve had flags of all nations, some suitably patriotic ones for royal occasions, even the Jolly Roger – and yesterday morning (dragging myself towards the point) I noticed he had put up a ‘Merry Christmas’ flag, which I presume will be up a lot longer than the regulation fortnight. I did think, privately, that it was a bit early for it, being only November…

…but today of course it’s December (meaning this morning I’ve turned over to the last page of the calendar and have finally discovered whodunnit). So with that in mind, I’m not convinced I’ve many more thoughts about Christmas – but if I do, I’ll run them up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes!