Radiotimes

2019's been a ropy old year one way or another so, by way of reaching for a comfort blanket, I've got my Christmas Radio Times so I can plan ahead. And pretty grim reading it is, too. A lot of the same old crap with the word "Christmas" slapped on the front. Discovery is bringing us "A Christmas Hitler," Discovery Science "My Christmas Tapeworm And Me" and the History Channel "Ancient Festive Aliens: The Wishbone Enigma."  We've seen all the Christmas editions of "Porridge," "Only Fools and Horses," "Last of the Summer Wine," "Gavin and Stacey," "Are You Being Served," and "Keeping Up Appearances" because UK Gold has been playing them on relay since October.

And then, of course, there's the Christmas Channel, which has been The Christmas Channel since the end of August and will remain so until mid-January when it becomes The Valentine Channel, rebranding at the start of March as The Easter Channel until, some time in May, it reverts to its official brand title The Films So Cloyingly Awful You Couldn't Sit Through A Whole One Without Gagging Channel. 

On Sky Arts "The Christmas Motion Picture Show" looked promising but turns out to be the artist's lived experience after a week eating nothing but turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, mince pies and Terry's Chocolate Oranges played out through the medium of Abstract Expressionism.

So that'll be me and the cat playing charades again. Here she is last year. The film was "The Big Sleep."

Have a cool Yule y'all.

Don't mock: it could be one of your own

How bitterly disappointing: the lads at work tell me that Talbot Rothwell didn't write "Game of Thrones."

Sweet F.A.

I have a long-distance relationship with football: mildly interested but not so much as to be arsed watching a match, even on the telly. Even so, I'm often amazed at just how badly run the whole shebang is. UEFA, FIFA, FA, Premier League, all skittering about in squanderbug worlds of their own.

It hit home this week. FA Cup Final weekend. Manchester City vs. Wigan Athletic. David and Goliath stuff, full of the romance of the FA Cup. So the run-up to it has all been about Alec Ferguson's retirement. And the Sunday after the the Final. And the game itself was rescheduled so as to put the mockers on the BBC's early evening programming.

Back when I was more interested, the FA Cup Final was the last event of the season. The league titles had all been won and all the promotions and relegations done and dusted so we could all settle back for the year's finale. 3pm on that final Saturday we and the world would know that battle had commenced. It might be a dour grind between the big boys of the time; a daftly romantic battle of unequals or just some scrappy mess but whatever it was it would be one for the books.

It still could and should be.

For the record, I'm dead sorry that City lost but I think it's good for football that Wigan won. It would have been better had Wigan's win been the last word on the season.

Probably stuffing his cheek pouches somewhere

Well, that's Easter done and dusted and not a sign of the Easter Hamster, the wretch.

Most years the Easter Hamster can be trusted to trawl across the land bestowing chocolate teapots to all the little boys and girls who have been good throughout the year. A bit like Santa Claus with more disciplined whiskers and a cute button nose. It is a highlight of the magical year.

 But not this year, and I have been colossally good: I haven't killed any library managers; I didn't send the "Fuck off you stupid bastard" email(s); and I didn't throw bricks through any of the windows. That's pretty damned good by anybody's standards. And what do I get for that? Not so much as a sniff of a chocolate teapot, I even checked in the back garden underneath the fence panels I haven't put up yet. Bastard.

I notice he drank the glass of sherry and ate the dish of sunflower seeds, though.

Some of the ones I should have saved for the secret secret blog

Some more post titles lost to the mists...

• Now look what you made me do: I've squashed a chaffinch!
• Can you hear the Trappists sing?
• Blue geraniums will mean your biro's leaking
• Jamming with the Freddie and the Dreamers tribute band
• Jimmy's magic patch: a social worker writes
• We've had to nail down the mobile chip shop
• The Girl With The Peggy Mount Tattoo
• Arsehole's Comedy
• Heaven and Charing Cross
• The Shrieking Pit and other lollipop ladies

Bone idle

All those things I put off until I had a bit of time to do it...

• Get some sleep.
• Read some of the books in that big pile on the sofa.
• Clean the bathroom.
• Vacuum the window ledges.
• Watch The Small Object of Desire de-flea The Cat I Do Not Have.
• Chop down all those dogwood bushes that have erupted in the front garden.
• De-flea  The Small Object of Desire after she's finished de-fleaing The Cat I Do Not Have.
• Do something about that back fence without hurting myself this time.
• Chop back the boysenberry jungle in the back garden.
• Write some blog posts about Julian and Sandy; the rôle of licorice allsorts in parliamentary democracy; speckled woods: bully boys of the brambles; and, perhaps Titch and Quackers.
• Do something about that pile of clothes on the spare bed.
• Take those jackets to the dry-cleaners.
• Clean that window. You know, *that* one..
• Write some posts in the serious blog about systemic failures in public library strategy; social media as stock promotion tools; and integrating back-office systems.
• Empty the cat litter tray that The Cat I Do Not Have only uses as my 4 o'clock alarm clock.
• Edit the contents of the fridge
• Find that sock that fell behind the cooker

What I actually did...

Give us a blob

The acting profession is a hard one. Spare a kind thought for Fireman Blob, one of British animation's fallen by the wayside.

You see, originally, it was Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Blob.

There they were, all kitted out and helmets freshly-polished when the nice men from Camberwick Green took themselves off to BBC Television Centre to sell the idea to children's telly. And all went well until... Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Blob.

"What the hell is that?" asked the Commissioning Editor.

"Fireman Blob," replied the animators.

"Get rid of that. It looks like you got that far and couldn't be arsed."

And so it came to pass: after a heated, but ultimately futile, discussion poor old Fireman Blob got his marching orders and was replaced by the felicitously-named Grub.

The rest is history. Embittered, Blob turned his back on the industry and went back to provincial repertory theatre, touring the West Country with Joan Littlewood's production of "No Sex, Please, We're British." When last seen, he was playing "unpleasant thing on the bathroom floor" in Robin Asquith's seminal "Confessions of a Sagger Maker's Bottom Knocker," a pale reflection of glories that might have been.

Such is the hardship behind the glamour of showbiz.

Birthday honours

We are slightly out of sorts, we are, by the concept of Sir Bruce Forsyth. Nothing against the man, please understand me, but not an easy one for my household to get its head round. We are actively outraged by the idea of Sir Tom Jones and the cold grim reality that in five or six years' time it'll be Dame Lulu.

I've long argued that it's more than time that Nicholas Parsons got a knighthood. The Small Object of Desire objected on the grounds that Peter Shilton hadn't got one for "being lovely." Even she had to admit that he couldn't have one before Gordon Banks. We agreed to disagree, eventually, over the merits or not of Sir Nobby Stiles.

John Inman and Roy Barraclough should both be made Dames of the British Empire for their services to pantomime.

As should Jeremy Paxman.

Ambition thwarted

It's a shame "Britain's Got Talent" is on before the 9pm watershed. I reckon my impersonation of Jimmy Durante could have been a contender.

Tripe

There is much in this life that depresses me. The idea that any part of Salford could be re-named "MediaCityUK" provokes a long howl of despair.

They'll be making tripe trendy next.

Sir Jos Fosdyke would be spinning in his grave.

Probably not really trying

There should be more to a mid-life crisis than a pot of tea...

Hello hello

For some time now my local railway station has been kitted out not just with new tannoys but also induction loops for hearing-impaired people. Presumably this latter is to fulfil obligations under the disability acts. Neither seems knowingly attached to anything and we certainly don't get any announcements but it's good to know that we have an equality of access to no information about our train services.

Waking the dead

I seem to have spent the past couple of months cutting back the overgrown bits of the garden and it still looks like the Matey Grocer. Last month's wet frosts have devastated the tree heather and a couple of lavenders but they look like they may pull through. Ditto the penstemons and Phygelius. Sadly, we've seen the last of the rather pretty "little" Phormium that was in a container by the patio. A great shame: the pink, red and dark green striped leaves were a nice touch on a bright summer's day.

The streets round our way are littered with Cordyline leaves. Every third house had a Cordyline in the front garden and every three out of four have bit the dust with the winter.

Once every so often Mother Nature insists on reminding us that we're only two degrees south of Moscow.

It's Sunday morning and the coffee is cold

Letting the side down

Catching up with Monday's incoming mail I find that the RSPB has sent me an Urgent Albatross Appeal.

If there's not a spare one in the airing cupboard I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint them.

Layers of regret

A friend. a good friend long since passed from us, once got more than usually annoyed with me when in her cups two hundred miles away and rang me in the middle of the night to give me an ear-bashing. She had decided, quite rightly, that in my timidity and cowardice I was damaging the feelings and self-esteem of a very attractive Scotswoman. And so I was and did.

(It is my way: my problem is that I actually like women very much. When I find my feelings moving from friendship to passion I'm afeared of ruining a friendship by saying something stupid and scaring the poor woman to death. I find it vanishingly unlikely that my feelings would be reciprocated and am consequently very hard work indeed and Extremely Trying To The Patience. The one time in my life that a woman has literally thrown herself at me in a fit of passion I thought she'd slipped on her high heels and that the subsequent tears of anger and frustration meant that she'd hurt her ankle. She reminded me of that for years.)

My friend on the 'phone had seen enough the previous weekend and wasn't going to shilly-shally any:

"Hello love, are you OK? Why are you ringing at this hour?"

"Ooh, you do annoy me! I've decided you need a good talking-to. Are you listening? Next time you see her this is what you do..."

"Oh. Right. Thank you for that. You know, if I'd ever done that to you you'd have given me a thick ear."

"If you'd ever done that to me you'd have deserved a thick ear. Now have you been listening to me? What have I just told you?"

And so on. For another half hour.

I don't know how we got into the habit. I'm not even sure which of us did it the first. Every so often when we'd get together one, other or both of us would bring along the current object of affection for approval. At the first opportunity, one would lean over to the other and whisper: "Well? What do you think?" We'd been doing that for a dozen years before I realised it myself.

My friend was a wonderful mixture of keen intelligence and apparent innocence. As wild as little strawberries, she was a humanising influence on me and she recognised that the attractive Scotswoman was both a civilising influence and somebody who'd put up with a bit of my routine stupidity without indulging me in it. And when I got that last, consoling, kiss on Blackfriars Bridge I realised, too late, that she was dead right.

My friend managd better. We all knew when she finally found the elusive "Mr. Right." As they told me stories of their adventures and their plans for adventures to come I leaned over to her, winked and whispered: "He's the one."

"Oh yes? How are you so sure?"

"You let him call you 'babe'."

Losing somebody at sea is a strange thing. It sounds like carelessness and there is no ceremony of closure. I find it difficult to let go at the best of times and the fantasy of its being an unfortunate happenstance with a happy ending was a difficult one to chase away. How long was Alexander Selkirk on that island? In my dreams I'd have a million-and-one questions, nearly all of which would already have been asked in wearisome and/or distressing detail. And in my dreams I'd just ask the one question: "have you time for a cup of tea?"

In a sane and just world she'd be surrounded by cats and kids and empty yoghurt pots with odds and ends stuffed in them. It isn't and she isn't and it is to be regretted.

Regrets...

I really shouldn't have shaved my chest.

Feeling left out

It occurred to me that:

• I hadn't been stopped and searched by the bogeys under the Anti-Terrorism Act;
• My wheelie bin hasn't been microchipped under the Retention of Information Provisions Act;
• My house isn't on Google Street View;
• I'm not an illegal immigrant, a director of a failed bank or an MP on fiddled expenses;
• I haven't slept with Paris Hilton or Russell Brand, nor been linked romantically with a reality television "star;"
• Sensational dramas about my life have not been featured in Heat magazine, OK or World Weekly News;
• I have not been featured in a kiss'n'tell expose in The News of the World;
• I have not been erroneously charged with driving a vehicle I don't own down a street I don't know; and
• My agents aren't bigging me up to Real Madrid.

I must be a great disappointment to my parents.

Adipose

I'm going to have to stop my mother reading the Sunday tabloids. It makes me feel old. The latest story that caught her eye involved a lady with naturally unfeasibly-large breasts (a hundred-and-odd double Z).

The big problem for me is my reaction. Am I assailed by testosterone-fuelled thoughts of ladies with big tits? Or puerile titterings about Norma Snockers? No. My reaction was:

The poor woman. She must get shocking backache.

Haven't you got homes to go to?