Venture into an Advent adventure

Missing you...

Disaster – we forgot to buy an advent calendar.

No teensy, hard to get at, unidentifiable shaped chocolate treats hidden behind cardboard doors and impenetrable foil for me this year.

Still, there’s plenty of time left to consume my own body-weight in mince pies, cheese and pigs in blankets before the inevitable guilt (and medically necessary dieting) kicks in as 2019 shows up excitedly just when I’ve started getting used to 2018.

So, instead of wasting a shed-load of packaging to get at the equivalent of a very small chocolate bar, here are my environmentally-friendly Adventness Delights for you – a treat for every remaining day as we count down to the online sales. (And Christmas.)

18: Jona Lewie successfully Stops The Cavalry.

17: You win £50.

16: The kids are well-behaved.

15: The algorithm that shoves ads into your social media timeline fails for the day.

14: Unlimited Chocolate Hob-Nobs.

13: Calorie-free cheese that still tastes fantastic hits the shops.

12: There’s nothing on the news about Brexit for 24 hours.

11: The work Christmas party is actually quite nice, nobody gets stupidly drunk (or drunkenly stupid), and you aren’t forced to dance.

10: No hangover!

9: Donald Trump says sorry. For everything. (Might need to allow a couple of days for this one, thinking about it.)

8: When you go for another chocolate from the selection box, you always get the nice one you like. Get bent, toffee penny thing.

7: For the first time in ages, you realise you haven’t got anything you need to be doing, and get to just put your feet up for a bit.

6: No-one attempts to try and find badness in old Christmas songs written decades ago.

5: We finally agree on whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas Movie or not.

4: Doctor Who gets moved back to Christmas Day.

3: All episodes of Mrs Brown’s Boys mysteriously vanish.

2: No one famous that you like a lot and associate with happy times in days gone by pops their clogs and reminds you of your own mortality.

1: You get to spend Christmas Day exactly how you want it, with the people you want to spend it with, wearing what you want and watching what you want on TV.

I suppose I could still buy a regular Advent calendar and play catch-up. Or 24 Wispa bars, write numbers on them and tape them to the fridge. I love Christmas.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 7th of December 2018. The version used on their website used the opening line (without a dash) as the title, starting the piece itself with the second paragraph.

No sign of the print edition yet, but it does now appear to be showing up again. Hurrah!

One line that I replaced before submitting was (surprise!) about Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes not winning everything in F1 next year. Didn't quite fit, and perhaps a bit niche, so it was left out in favour of something else.

(CD A-Z: Still that monster Freddie Mercury box set, and the final interviews disc. Strange, hearing Fred talking in 1985 now...)

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Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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