The Christmas guide

Just a handful of days left until Christmas – the tree is up, presents are wrapped, and the eggs have been nogged. That means it’s time to revel in one of the season’s greatest joys...

When I say “Presents are wrapped”, I’m obviously excluding any virtual vouchers, which are currently wafting through cyberspace and probably disrupting Santa’s sat-nav, so don’t blame me if you’re a 48 year old, burly, man who gets One Direction’s latest album and a Barbie Doll on the 25th.

Whilst the remaining turkeys on the farm are just starting to realise that their friends haven’t gone “on holiday”, we are now firmly into the timeframe reserved for one of the most indulgent moments of the festive season – going through the bumper Christmas & New Year TV guide to plan what we’re going to watch.

It is a vitally important exercise, and not one to be undertaken in a rush. Without this military planning, how will you know what to watch whilst seeing off your own body weight in mince pies, chocolates and those tiny sausages wrapped in bacon that seem hard to come by the rest of the year?

Let’s face it, with the amount of food and drink available, getting off the sofa or leaving the house become tricky events, so knowing in advance what time Morecambe & Wise is on could be a lifesaver, especially if someone else in the house wants to watch The Sound Of Music and sing all the way through for the 50th year in a doe. I mean row. The holder of the remote always triumphs.

Can Sherlock solve the mystery of where the spare bulb for the fairy lights is? No – even he isn’t that good – but you can make sure you’re in the best armchair with a full glass and bonus bowl of Twiglets with five minutes to spare.

And you wouldn’t want to mistakenly be on the phone, thanking your Auntie for the lovely comedy boxer shorts, just when someone’s Christmas wedding is being disastrously ruined on your favourite Street/Square/Farm/Emergency Ward, now would you?

If you’ve managed to get this perfectly right, you should even be able to plan things perfectly to avoid having to pop to the shops, go round to the neighbours for the annual awkward glass of sherry, or get involved in trying to shoehorn some leftovers into the freezer.

So get your pen at the ready and start circling whatever tickles your fancy. A date with Doctor Who? Dive into Downton? Call some Midwives? Swoon at Strictly? It’s all there for the taking– book your place on the sofa now to avoid disappointment!

Hang on... wasn’t this one on last year?

A very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year to all of you, and thanks for reading my ramblings for yet another year – you are surprisingly tolerant. Remember: a 1kg bar of chocolate is the gift that keeps on giving, and not a 12 hour challenge – whatever you big brother says.

See you in 2016.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 18th of December 2015, where it was retitled as "TV planning is a festive treat". You can view it on the paper's website here.

In a rare conjunction of the stars (just in time for Christmas) it not only made it onto their website, but I also go the print copy in the post too.

I'm now entering a rather strange period. Normally, today I'd be considering what to write for the next column, and often creating a stream of conciousness version, which I then go back through on a Tuesday night to correct spelling, grammar, repetition of words and a re-write where needed, before a final check and submission on a Wednesday evening.

As the NWEM won't be published this coming Friday, I get a week off. And then, as the following Friday is New Year's day, I won't need to write anything for that non-existent edition either. After three and a half years, this will be the longest break from writing I've had.

Still - I might drop in here and empty whatever is wandering around my head out now and again...

Happy Christmas to you.

(No CD this morning - listening to Ken Bruce on Radio 2 instead.)

Faking it for real

As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...

Going Underground

The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog