ANOTHER YEAR SLIPS AWAY

As I look back on 2011, I can’t honestly say it’s been that great a year. I mean, it hasn’t exactly been a bad year, just one that was kind of nondescript. The only thing that I can say with any real certainty is that it most definitely actually happened, but, for me, it is only ever likely to be remembered as the thing that filled the gap between 2010 and 2012, not that I can make any guess as to what 2012 will be like as yet.

The year might very well end up being regarded as that insignificant blip that brought the relative delightfulness of 2011 into sharp relief. Mind you, with the rest of the nation possibly choosing to fall into a frenzy of sporting related activity, perhaps I should slink away and decide not to pay it much heed for the duration, after all I am slowly coming to terms with the sad fact that I seem to live in a society where having any kind of viewpoint that is considered to be other than the “norm” is something that it is better to keep quiet about rather than make a point of sharing.

There’s something to ponder on there, anyway, as we embark upon a year of potential sporting related hellishness in pretty much all of our media outlets. Ah, well… perhaps it will fly by and so won’t seem to hurt quite so much. Then again, we are also on the brink of what we hope will turn out to be another Jubilee year which reminds me, with the sudden horror that accompanies such realisations, that the year of “God Save the Queen (the fascist regime)” and the “summer of punk” was now THIRTY-FIVE years ago and all of those rebellious young things who have survived time’s crucible will be rapidly approaching what we used to think of as pensionable age now, with all the “youthful rebellion” now passed to the hands of yet another generation.

But, as the years stream by, it has become pretty amazing to me how quickly a single year can fly by. Sometimes it just feels as if we’re all hanging on by our fingertips to the surface of this spinning globe as our lives flit speedily away...

Recently I wrote a short piece about possibly a tiny fragment in the long life of Harry Morgan and one of my acquaintances pointed out that he’d had a good innings by reaching the grand old age of ninety-six, which, I suppose, as observations go, is pretty astute. The problem I have is that as I hurtle through what others might call “middle age” (although to me it still feels as if I’ve barely started), ninety-six really doesn’t seem so very far away and, not only that, I have to consider that such an age is rather the exception than the rule and someone with my eagerness to consume more than the odd bag of crisps whilst getting stressed about the most trivial of things is hardly likely to reach such a milestone.

The last decade, for example, seems to have vanished in the blink of an eye. The decade before that seems even shorter in my memories, and so, if a decade can merely be a blink, that great age of ninety-six can only be a matter of five short blinks away from the age I’ve currently reached, and, as my father only managed to live to be a mere one-and-a-half blinks older than I am now, in the normal natural order of things that avoids any unfortunate incidents involving buses or something, I can hardly expect many more than that for myself.

The abyss stretches out before me and I’ve barely got anything done. Heck, I’ve been putting off ringing up a builder for two years, so what hope have I got of actually achieving any of those great plans I once thought I had?

The celebration of the new year, coming as it does so shortly after the marking of the solstice, always brings out the worst in me, reminding me, as it does, how short a year can really seem. Each weekend seems to arrive now before the working week feels like it’s yet got going and fifty-two seems such a very small number to count up to. I’m pretty sure that any reasonably bright child could count up to that with minimal coaching in (ironically) a matter of moments, which, of course, in the end, is precisely what life is.

The year ticks by. January arrives and the February love hearts are already in the shops whilst our minds race ahead to long hot summer days. The hearts disappear and are restocked with Easter Eggs and gardening equipment. We get to the end of June and some of the plants we planted are in bloom, and I usually make the joke that the nights are drawing in (ha, ha), and, before you know it, September has come and gone and you’re already giving thought to the next year’s holiday or the coming Christmas. Fireworks appear and disappear in a puff of smoke and then it’s all sleigh bells and snowmen and sparkling white wine and another year has vanished into history.

It snowed a few mornings ago and my mind found it so very hard to believe that it was nearly a year since the snow last fell. I was sticking Christmas cards to the living room door and it seemed just a moment since I had last done it. I opened up a box of tinsel to garland the pictures on my walls and it seemed as if it was only last week that I had been doing the very same thing in the very same place, as if I’d merely paused in my endeavours, dozed off as I stood upon that chair, shaken myself awake again and carried on. But somewhere in that moment of déjà vu, a year had gone by in a terrifying, aging instant.

I sometimes feel as if I could stare into a mirror and actually see the decay and desiccation of myself as it happens, the spreading greyness and the increasingly interlocking network of lines, watch as all of those hopes and dreams and grand plans just fade away into nothingness and defeat, as the memory of yourself becomes as that of the memory of an illicit smile shared with a stranger on a hot summer’s day just fades into a fond memory of might-have-beens that you eventually convince yourself probably never really happened and sometimes you start to wonder whether you yourself ever really happened either as the days turn into months and years and decades and slip away like butterflies upon the breeze of a bright summer’s afternoon.

Happy New Year, and, if this one doesn’t work out for you, just remember that there’ll be another one along any minute…

R.E.M., MASCARA AND UMBRELLA HATS

They do say that music transports you, but it wasn’t until I was driving around in the early morning sunshine of a recent December day that I honestly truly began to believe it. For many of the usual reasons, given the season, I had decided to book myself a day off in order to trudge around the remaining shops of our nearest large town and make a few token gestures in the general direction of gift giving which appears to be the fashionable thing to do around this time of the year.

Behind me the sun shone brightly if a little more low in the sky than was comfortable, and ahead of me the dark storm clouds were gathering in order to give me a bit of a soaking as I went about my business of squandering my gotten gains on fripperies and baubles of an unexciting and ultimately no doubt scornable nature. This juxtaposition of weather events caused the almost complete arch of a rainbow to form just in front of me and all seemed well with the world as I sat in a lengthy queue of traffic, most of which was, unlike myself, off in the pursuit of a day’s honest toil.

I myself was already far too early for the shops to be opening and was anticipating finding a space, popping my pound coins into the machine and finding that I had wasted my money on waiting time that was useless to me in my aims of retail therapy, so the delay, for once, did not concern me unduly. There’s something about a queue of traffic that seems somehow less awful if you are not actually in a hurry yourself or don’t have an appointment that is becoming imminently pressing that all of the other vehicles are preventing you from reaching with any hope of punctuality.

As the rain began to splatter and patter upon my metal cocoon, I noticed a crowd of schoolchildren eagerly making their way to school. I was, after all, driving (or rather slowly idly winding my way) through one of the smarter parts of town, where the children still see school as a privilege and an opportunity rather than a drudge to be endured. To my left I spotted a young lad sporting, with not the slightest sense of shame, what can only be described as an “umbrella hat” with multi-coloured panels perched proudly on the top of his head.

Nobody mocked him for this eccentricity, although I did smile to myself at the sight, feeling glad that there was still hope for the nonconformist to find a place in this increasingly bland and uniform society we seem to be creating for ourselves, where the individual is more often than not laughed at and pointed out and shamed back into blending in with everyone else.

Later on, as I got nearer to my destination, my movement was paused alongside a bus travelling in the opposite direction, back, no doubt, towards those other schoolchildren I had seen earlier on. On the back seat, almost oblivious to her friends around her, a schoolgirl was meticulously applying her mascara with that special intensity that only the young seem to have. I wondered to myself whether she was doing this on the bus, taking advantage of its prolonged stop in the traffic, because make-up was “not allowed” by her parents, and whether this small act of rebellion, if that’s what it was, was intended to impress the boy in the umbrella hat, but I doubted it. That kind of universal perfection only happens in the storybooks, even on a morning with a miraculous rainbow in the sky, but it gave me hope for a little while and made me smile again.

All of this had taken place to the acoustic accompaniment of the CD I had popped into the player as I set off that morning, so instead of listening to my usual slightly depressing soundtrack of hard news on Radio 4, instead I heard an overview of tunes from the lengthy career of that recently defunct rock band “R.E.M” and I was immediately transported back over a decade and a half to a road trip I once made to the west coast of the United States and my spirits positively soared at the memory, and, rather surprisingly, all of the autumnal colours and misty fields of the roads from Lesser Blogfordshire towards civilisation suddenly seemed in my mind to resemble those landscapes of that great continent so far away.

Maybe it was the light, or maybe just the ambience, but for a moment I was back there, heading south on the great Interstate highway, just setting out on a new adventure with a suitcase and a hired Ford Mustang and I felt young and excited again.

Strangely, I’m pretty sure that the tunes that were causing this epiphany weren’t even ones that I took along with me on that trip so very long ago. I do remember the lovely Miss Pearce presenting me with a cassette (yes, it was THAT long ago…) of what she described as “driving music” to help while away my many anticipated hours hurtling along that two-lane blacktop, and which led to one or two CD purchases as I travelled around, and I do remember listening to the appropriate “Hole” track as I approached the replacement Tacoma Narrows bridge, but I can only imagine that it was the simple joyous spirit I was hearing almost as if for the first time in listening to “Radio Free Europe” again that morning that reminded a corner of my mind of something rather special, from a time before I grew into the cynical, crusty, disappointed old sod I have since become.

I rather suspect that none of the things that I have described to you today, the rainbow, the umbrella hat, or the mascara girl are things that I would normally even have noticed on a normal morning’s commute, so I can only imagine that it was having the jaunty soundtrack accompanying me on my journey that made all of the difference.

Perhaps there’s something in that. Perhaps, if I am to become a happier and more forgiving fellow once again, perhaps I should eschew my constant desire to feel “informed” and instead pop a few tunes into the old CD player of a morning and maybe my own little life will seem a much jollier place to be living in.

NOT READY FOR CHRISTMAS

Well, at least that’s over with for another year.

“Oh, here we go again with the ‘Bah Humbug!’ bit” I can almost hear you mutter to yourselves and you’d probably be right. Sadly, for me, this really isn’t “the most wonderful time of the year” as the crooners might have us believe. It’s fair enough, I suppose. I’m not unduly unhappy that everyone else always seems to be having a fine old time of it, but, personally, I’ve always found the festivities a bit of an old chore.

But before you all laugh and point and call me a right old Mr Miseryguts, perhaps I should try to explain. For whatever reasons, historically speaking, in our particular brood, this time of year has always been fraught with stress and woefulness on an emotional level brought on by something we like to think of as “an unrealistic level of expectation” and which manifested itself, even when I was a very small potato indeed, by far too many of us going along with what somebody else expected us to do instead of digging in our collective heels and saying a resounding and guilt-free “no” and running the risk of the veritable floods of consequential waterworks, wailing and gnashing of teeth, lamentation and woe of the level of an extreme Hollywood melodrama that would no doubt have ensued.

Better, it seemed, for the many to endure abject torture than for the one to possibly get upset at not getting their own way. Miserably we would pack up the household and put ourselves through days of relocated misery and tension in order to give the Drama Queen and her Hammond Organ playing Consort the affirmation of personal greatness which they did not deserve in order to keep that intangible nothing that we used to call “the peace”.

This way of thinking has been passed on down through the generations so that, despite much in the way of reduction of circumstances and available players in this annual Danse Macabre, until recently, supreme efforts were made to keep everything “normal” and “traditional” in the face of considerable odds and despite the main cast seeming to gain little actual joy from the actual event as it inevitably unfurled once more.

But every year we would dance this merry dance and jump through the hoops and tiptoe across the eggshells and go away from it bearing yet more of the deep scars it left upon our very souls whilst trying to convince ourselves that we had been “happy” (whatever that is…), and wait for the next one to roll around to hit the same beats, and go through all the very same motions once again. As this time of year ticked ever closer with the inevitability of a particularly bloody “High Noon” I would find myself getting ever more tense as the bitterness and resentment began to bubble up inside me, and, as I got older, I came to view this time of year with a particularly gnawing sense of absolute dread.

This, of course, to all the happy, bunny-headed folk that always seem to appear around me when I mutter such heresies, might very well manifest itself as me being a “grumpy old sod”, a “Mr Scrooge” or a “Grinch” dependent upon which literary influence they happened to gravitate towards, but it is sometimes very difficult to explain your lack of yuletide spirit when the entire season can have you screaming inside, especially when all those around you seem to inexplicably find something to actually look forward to amidst all their own familial minefields. Many is the time when I have truly wondered whether, and I know that very few people seem able to understand this, that if there were some kind of pill I could take to make December just go away, I would willingly take one. There is just something about this time of year that genuinely seems to trigger a spiral of despair and depression in me that sometimes makes me think like that. Each and every year, I try to explain this, and each and every year, very few seem to understand it, no matter how hard I try, and tales of other Christmases, for other, happier folk, grate enough to leave me feeling raw and disappointed with my own lack of grace, charm and munificence. Somehow all of this unremitting joy can only bring your own heart of darkness into sharper relief and remind you that the self-loathing that you harbour is really just bubbling beneath a very thin skin.

In my head, Christmas time does still remain a special thing. I can see myself leaning against the fireplace in my smoking jacket, perhaps poking at the burning logs with a steel poker, whilst exchanging witty banter with my guests over a cup of warm punch as we anticipate the fine and hearty meal that is being signalled by the excellent cooking smells that are drifting from the somewhere in the dark depths of the east wing of Blogfordshire Towers.

Outside a foot or more of snow is crisply carpeting the surrounding fields and robins and small furry animals can be seen darting about beyond the frosty window panes, whilst we sit inside all snug and cosy and warm amongst the oak panelling and the scent of pine is in the air from the Christmas tree I cut down myself from the small forest that grows in the grounds.

In my head, that’s what Christmas would be like if it were an ideal world. I hear people talk of the Christmases that they have had and I can only sit here envious at the ease and the retained sense of wonder that they somehow seem to breeze through it with. Instead, however, it must be endured, and more often than not, and despite the fact that it is pretty much the only absolute one hundred percent certainty of the calendar year, somehow it still always manages to take me somewhat by surprise.

For quite a few years now, I’ve genuinely accepted that I’m usually just about emotionally ready for Christmas in February, which is rather sad, if truth be told, because by then very few of the shops seem to have it much in mind. Although, to be fair, unless everyone was doing it, I imagine trying to organise a festive event in February might prove more than difficult anyway, although, under those circumstances, I suspect that I might very well like it more.

Somehow, instead, Christmas Eve arrives when it usually does, and, once again, the spirit, or the much-advertised “Christmas Miracle” fails to turn up with it and once more there remains far too much to do, and far too little already done, and most of what has been done was done far, far too late to be of any useful consequence.

Ironically, last year, because of circumstances, I did end up unwrapping a few parcels in February and, to be honest, that somehow failed to raise any sense of “magic” either. Perhaps it never will, and, I suppose, if the whole wretched business were time-shifted a couple of months for everyone, I would probably feel no better about it as I’d still end up starting my own pitiful and meagre list of necessary preparations far too late again. Perhaps my reluctance to get things organised sooner is a manifestation of my hope that, if I ignore it, the whole sorry business will just go away instead, although that is never likely to happen, is it?

Humbug anyone…?

THE POISON CHALICE

Over the course of a year, I write many things, some of which I exaggerate, some of which are - so far as I can tell - true, and some of which are flights of fancy… However, I’m still struggling to write anything new of any substance about anything very much (there are those who maintain that I never could...) but when I struggled to manage to write the eight Christmas cards which I still feel honour-bound to actually send, it’s hardly surprising if words of a more deep and meaningful nature fail to spring to mind.

Hey, what can I say?

It’s a… complicated time of the year for me… and, whilst there is a system, you could quite realistically point out to me that, if that system were a wagon, then you could quite rightly say that all of the wheels have recently fallen off it. Mind you, with a little bit of advanced planning, I did manage to create a whole advent calendar of telly-related whimsy and, if many of those who could have taken a peek behind those doors chose not to, so that they didn’t read what I wrote when I was actually trying to put a smidgen of effort in, then I suppose that they shouldn’t be surprised not to receive a piece of decorated cardboard written to them in person.

Meanwhile, despite my absolute sureness that no events of any social significance ever trouble me across the festive season and my presence not being required at any of those ghastly embarrassments which others seem to regard as being “fun” of some obscure sort known as “parties” (shudder!), I was sitting at my desk, quietly going about my business when not one but two potential social events drew me into their terrifying orbits. A tap on the door, and the mysterious woman who seems to have taken it upon herself to manage the affairs of our office with regards to our general place in the grand scheme of the cardboard building we occupy (albeit in a small way), was explaining the “little party” they were planning for a weekday lunchtime and whether we wanted to contribute four quid each towards a buffet and “the opportunity to get to know” everyone else in the building. That I managed to let her go away without babbling incoherently at her about how I’d rather gnaw my own legs off with a pair of borrowed false teeth is testament, I feel, to how far I’ve come during these last three months of renewed daily interaction with the wider world (albeit in a small way).

With that potential minefield safely negotiated, or, as I immediately feared, possibly merely fobbed off to bite me back another day, I was then rather alarmed to get an email from m’colleague who had been safely considering the choppy waters of the Christmas rush in other harbours lately, wondering whether an outing for a work-related Christmas dinner event was on the cards.

“What fresh hell is this?” was the thought my mind immediately transmitted into my frontal lobes, but, in the end, we went, and it was fine… once I’d got my usual list of notifications about my abject fear of social situations across, which led to me being less than gracious company in the run up to said event, and might have explained why m’colls spent much of the time staring at little screens instead of indulging in post-meal chat with their Scroogesque companion.

Actually, I portrayed Jacob Marley in a school play once, you know, Scrooge’s even meaner partner (as I like to think of him). Perhaps I was typecast at an early age and, to be honest, I do seem to have spent every Christmas since feeling rather disappointed that those three spirits haven’t turned up to give me a shot at redemption. Ah, well… perhaps it is too late for me after all. Those chains must be very long by now… Instead I just get thrown curve balls like the poison chalice to make the whole hideous experience if possible even slightly worse than it has been before.

So, sadly, despite my hopes being cruelly raised each year, Christmas time remains, as it has for as long as I can remember, the most monumentally depressing time of the year for me, and to have it’s head above the rest of the grim days, it truly has to be going some to achieve that. Nevertheless, despite always having been a difficult time of the year for me, it somehow managed to get even more so this time around, since the handing over of what I am coming to regard as “the poison chalice” which my mother so delicately gift wrapped for me a few weeks ago:

“Don’t worry about running around after us, we’ll make our own plans. I want you to have the Christmas you want this year!”

A veritable time bomb if ever there was one, or, no, perhaps more of a minefield of emotional cluster bombs just waiting to go off and which will then expect me to be grateful for the maimings that they will have inflicted upon me.

Ever since this announcement was “gifted” to me a few weeks ago. it has been followed by endless enquiries as to what we were actually planning to do with this “gift” so graciously given, combined with the less-than-subtlest of hints that the correct answer should obviously have been “I want nothing more than to spend it with you, mother dearest!” There was, of course, never much chance of that, but the brewing disappointments are going to have consequences that last well into the coming year, mark my words.

Once upon a time, in the heights of summer, I happened to mention that I didn’t think it was feasible for my mother to come to the house in the depths of winter any more. It gets too dark and too icy, and the cobbles and the stone steps and the cracked paving slabs become far too treacherous for both her and her beloved to safely negotiate as they have both now reached a very delicate and vulnerable age. Equally, there far more personal issues, the swift solution of which would be impeded by attempting to negotiate our steep and narrow staircase, and frankly, the subsequent disaster is not something I wanted to be dealing with in my own home upon Christmas Day whilst I’m trying to cook a meal that neither of them would eat all that much of.

Faces pulled. No further comment. The subject quietly forgotten about.

I rang my sister at the time to see if she could drop a few subtle hints that she concurred with this notion and nothing more was said until that chalice was passed in early November, far, far too late, you’ll perhaps have realised, for us to be able to book in somewhere if we did think of any other plans, which, of course, we then failed to do anyway. However, unfortunately, as it turned out, if we had decided to revert to plan “A” there would have been another disastrous last minute cancellation anyway, so, all-in-all, and despite an overwhelming sense of Teflon coated beams of purest disappointment tuning in to my location from that very local and very specific radar tracking station not too far away from me both physically and emotionally (AKA Massively Over Theatrical Harbinger of Enduring Resentment – you can work out the acronym for yourselves), it did turn out that the selected option was probably for the best and, whilst I am sure that the fallout is yet to manifest itself, meant that, at least from a personal point of view, this year turned out to be more relaxing than most, which, for me, is saying rather a lot.

And so, another Christmas has now been endured, and the whole ghastly business can be put safely onto the back burner for another 52 weeks, whilst I try and put my head in the sand as the other ghastly ritual of New Year’s Eve steams over the horizon on its inevitable collision course, gawd-elp-us...

A VISIT TO BEDFORD FALLS

Did you go over to Bedford Falls this Christmas? I do try to get over there at least once a year although, to be honest, I had to skip it last year because of simply not having the time under the circumstances. I mean, it’s only a trip of two hours and nine minutes or so, but it tends to bolster my flagging festive spirits for far longer than that, and so the journey is most worthwhile.

Some people might try to tell you that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a load of sugar coated, saccharine nonsense, but I suspect that these are people who have never sat down and watched the whole film but have merely seen the “nice” clips on a “100 Best Whatevers” compilation, or walked into the room just as the movie is ending and everyone is reaching for the tissues to get that certain undefined “something” from out of the corner of their eyes, because, whilst it is ultimately a very uplifting movie, it has to travel to some very dark places to get there, sometimes scratching beneath the surface of small town America in a way that does in some ways remind me of some of the things that David Lynch would also do a couple of generations of film-makers later...

Yes indeed, to begin with, I will accept that the “talking stars” intro is a little bit twee, although very much of its time, but after that we are taken right away into witnessing a near fatal accident on a frozen pond, and we will spend a great deal of the subsequent couple of hours visiting some very dark corners of the human soul on our way to discovering how an ordinary life can come to be something quite wonderful.

Right from when Mr Gower the pharmacist is clipping young George about his bad ear for not delivering a prescription, on the very morning he hears about the death of his own son and his mind is naturally on other things, and we discover that he has accidentally made up some potentially lethal capsules, we are travelling across some very dark waters indeed, waters which will reveal to us in all their awfulness the notions of the life not lived, alongside the horrors of war, poverty, alcoholism, suicide and unfettered greed.

When you first see the “grown-up” George as played by James Stewart, his hopes and ambitions to travel and leave Bedford Falls far behind him as he prepares to realise his dream to see the world are constantly thwarted by circumstances, and the anger he sometimes displays, despite generally being a “good” man, is only too human. But it is by his words and deeds that we come to know him so that, despite the fact that he might very well be the only good-hearted moneylender in the history of the wider banking industry, we come to know that his motivations are not personal wealth or greed, but the general well-being and happiness of his fellow human beings, which is coldly contrasted by the wealthiest man in town (but clearly, as we come to discover, not the richest…) Mr Henry F Potter.

The scene with perhaps the most charm, which takes place after the dunking in the swimming pool, is when George and Mary have a mishap that leaves her hiding naked in a Rhododendron bush, and even this lovely moment has to be cut short by devastating news from George’s home and which means that more of life’s disappointments are coming crashing in. Even the joyous homecoming of George’s newlywed brother can only serve to trap George inside a life he never wanted and it is only his overwhelming nobility in the face of that personally crushing moment that prevents his own bitterness from ruining the occasion.

I sometimes feel that I could learn a lot from old George.

Then there is Potter, pretty much the most mean-spirited character ever committed to celluloid, and one who is never given the opportunity to redeem himself and why would he want to? He does, after all, live precisely the wealthy lifestyle he chooses to despite his handicaps, and it seems that it is only the Bailey family and their ridiculous notions that people should have the freedom to live in their own homes that seems to be standing in the way of his dream to have dominion over the lives of everyone in town. His life seems to have been plagued by two generations of the Bailey family who have remained a constant thorn in the side of his attempts to recreate Bedford Falls in his own image and it transpires that this is a dream which he would have fulfilled, as we are to discover, if only George had never been born.

Even when he knows that he already has the money Uncle Billy mislaid in his grubby, bitter little hands, and he realises that George is prepared to take the fall for Billy’s mistake, he does nothing to reduce his suffering and instead calls out the Detective who will present George with that warrant for his arrest when he gets home on that fateful Christmas Eve, and which leads directly to the moment of crisis that George is to face.

Before George has that final calamity, where ruin is staring him in the face and he genuinely thinks that his only way out is to consider suicide, he gets involved in a bar fight with Mr Welch, who’s wife he tore a strip off earlier for allowing his daughter catch a  chill, and has been so lost in his own worries that he has alienated his entire family, gone cap in hand to the one man in town he despises, who then reminded him that all his good works have left him without anything of “real” value to guarantee the loan he needs, and has left his  obviously slow-witted Uncle Billy in floods of tears at the prospect of prison. Finally he drives drunk and smashes up his car into the much-treasured “oldest tree” in Bedford Falls.

Not, if you’re being objective, the all-singing, happy-go-lucky picture of small town America you might have expected to see, but that’s nothing compared to the famous sequence set in what we might now term an “Alternate Universe” which we briefly visit in only the final half hour of the movie as, with a little help from Clarence, George’s Guardian Angel (Second Class), we get to see what life in Bedford Falls, now renamed “Potterville”, would have been like if he had actually never been born. It is a dark, cynical place of speakeasies, strip joints and gambling dens, where Mary, who just seems so “alive” in “our” universe, has lost most of her sparkle and lives as a lonely spinster Librarian, and all of the goodness that George has put into the life of the town has been cruelly snatched away simply by the lack of him.

Of course, all of this darkness is counterpointed by moments that define the very spirit of home and community. Mr Gower’s salvation because of the basic goodness of one small boy, the blossoming romance with Mary Hatch as “George Lassos the Moon”, Bert and Ernie’s serenade at the alternative honeymoon suite as the run on the Bailey Building and Loan is only rescued by George sacrificing another chance to see the world, and, of course, that finale when we get to see who truly is “the richest man in town” and which puts the icing on the cake of one of the most satisfying movies you are ever likely to see.

Oh yes, and it’s one of those films that remains far better in black and white, too, despite the fact that people might try to persuade you otherwise. Now I’m sure that colour tinting technology has come on in leaps and bounds since those gaudy monstrosities which were the early colourisations of the “Laurel and Hardy” films were released, but, to me, some things really do need to be seen in that crisp black and white as they originally were made.

So, if you get a couple of hours, do yourself a favour and visit Bedford Falls whilst you’re still in a vaguely festive frame of mind.

I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.

BOXING NOT SO CLEVER

To me, Boxing Day always has a strange atmosphere about it, and I’m not just talking about the after-effects of my annual dalliance with the dubious delight that is the sprout. Perhaps it’s got something to do with a feeling retained from childhood of being just about as far away from next Christmas as it is possible to be, but it always seems to dawn with a slightly melancholy air that refuses to shift no matter how many family gatherings have been organised to compensate for it, or maybe even precisely because of them.

It’s a gloomy sort of a day, like the morning after a particularly good party, I suppose (although I’ve experienced precious few of those…), when all of the anticipation has gone and all there is left is the prospect of clearing up all of the mess to look forward to, and the kicking to the kerb of any unwanted interlopers, and the removal of all those fag-ends from the last few dregs in the bottom of so many bizarrely located wine glasses.

Meanwhile, all of the leftovers, the rubbish, the tidying up and the washing up all sit staring at you, daring to goad you into action when only inaction really seems to be what you feel capable of. All of a sudden the long days of summer sunshine that the celebration of the solstice seemed to promise you of seem a very, very long way away, and between you and those lazy, hazy days lies a wodge of  seemingly endless dark and gloomy days, and hard work to pay for whatever “fun” you managed to eke out of the day before.

Then, of course, you realise that the dubious delights of Boxing Day itself still lie before you; All of those family commitments, now exposed and without the salve of the prospect of gift-giving to relieve the pressure and lighten the mood, or prevent all of those potential tiny explosions from actually mushrooming into another hysterical Hiroshima. Another day of fixed grins and artificial levity and the continuing pretense that these people with whom you share the most DNA are precisely the people you would prefer not to actually spend any real time with.

Or is that just me, then…?

All of those bizarre notions of “duty”, “loyalty” or “love” (delete as applicable) that can come a-knocking at your door just because it’s what you’re “supposed” or “expected” to do at this season of the year. All of that desperation not to “disappoint” or “let someone down” or “totally ruin their Christmas” as they quaff one too many cans of lager, or sips of sherry and let their guard down and tell you what they really think of you now that you’ve got the big day out of the way.

You know.

The important day. The one when everyone tries really hard to be on their best behaviour and not be the one to “spoil everything” or not let everyone have the Christmas Day they deserve or expect, the fixed grins across the dinner table, the daggers sheathed for the duration and all the petty battles not exactly forgotten, but certainly not talked about.

Well, not unless Uncle Frank had one too many whiskies and forgot where and when he was and mentioned the great unmentionable, said the great unsaid, and one of the several elephants in the room that are all suddenly trumpeting for all they’re worth is unleashed and doing a balancing act on the bowl of brandy butter that simply refuses to be ignored any more.

Boxing Day should, of course, be the calm after the storm, a golden moment to reflect and relax and enjoy flicking through the pages of those gifts you so gracefully and gratefully received was it really only the day before? A day for unpacking those undiscovered delights from their impossible packaging and reading through the tiny text of those instruction books written in so many languages, some of which even resemble your own. A day for popping new old movies into the player or watching the shows you recorded because no-one could be bothered with finding the energy for sitting through them the day before.

But instead, the mighty festive treadmill rolls on, the chaos and commitment continues and all of that “Peace on Earth” that you have actually heard about but have so rarely experienced that you have truly started to believe that it’s about as real as UFOs or the Loch Ness Monster becomes something that only someone else gets to enjoy, whilst your own day of rest explodes into madness again.

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS TELLY PAST (part twenty five)

I don’t know whether the Christmas telly plays such a big part in the festivities as it once did. Certainly these days there are many, many more channels than in my three channel youth, but somehow there always seems to be less on that’s actually worth watching. That, and the fact that nowadays there are so many more ways of watching programmes at the times that you choose for yourself and also the modern scheduling style that means that there can be three or more opportunities to see a show on the day of transmission, as well as myriad repeats across the subsequent weeks means that there really doesn’t seem to be much left in the way of “event” television or so-called “unmissable” television any more, and, if you should “miss” a programme, it’s not like in the days before home video recorders where it would be gone “forever” (or at least until someone invents the idea of the “complete series box set” thirty years later).

So what have we learned (if anything) from this brief and rather pointless trawl through the pages telling us of the televisual treats of Christmases past? Well, I’ve learned that there are a lot of shows that I used to enjoy that I’ve almost completely forgotten about, that Noel Edmonds has featured in far more Christmas schedules than seems strictly necessary, and also that, contrary to popular opinion, quite a lot of seasonal programming isn’t half as “special” as it would have us believe.

I’m looking at you, Tarby and Edmonds… Stop smirking at the back there!

I’ve also noticed a few patterns (and not just on the Edmonds jumper) where the same shows appear in the same places for year after year, and that sometimes it would seem that the current schedulers are trying very hard to recreate the Christmases of their own youth perhaps a dozen or so years later by repeating sitcoms that they remember as having been hilarious, and then perhaps finding that they weren’t all that funny after all. Sometimes things only seem hilarious because of the time and the place that they happen in, or because you are the age you are when they happen. Sometimes it’s just a memory of a long lost relative roaring with laughter that makes you think fondly of Frank Spencer’s antics and not the antics themselves when you see them once again. Perhaps most of all, exploring those fading old pages of those long-forgotten TV guides has made me realise that a lot of the shows ran for far longer than I thought they did, or dated back to a year far earlier than I expected, and that certain popular beliefs about certain films being on every year are not quite as true as we like to think they are.

Another thing that has become increasingly apparent is how much the TV landscape has changed since I first started putting those otherwise rather ephemeral magazines aside way back in 1975. Not only have we moved from an era of three channels that didn’t even seem to feel the need to be even broadcasting for much of the day through to our current 24/7 multi-channel multimedia environment, but also many of the old style programmes for New Year’s Eve, or the religious content of Christmas morning seem to have been lost, or at least heavily diminished, across those thirty-odd years. Whether that’s a good thing or not, is not for me to say, but it is something to ponder upon as we reach another Christmas morning.

This year, the TV stations will still be pulling out all the stops to grab your attention away from the shiny new X-Box or the Wii, and I’m pretty sure that they’ll keep on trying no matter how the broadcasting landscape twists and turns as the years continue to unfold and the holiday season keeps on turning up long before you’re ready for it to (although, that could, of course, just be me…). I’m sure that today a fair old proportion of you will settle down to slowly digest the kind of quantity of vegetables that would keep the “Five-a-Day” gurus more than happy if only we could keep the impetus up throughout the year, in front of another of the “Best Christmases Walford’s Ever Had™” or this year’s “Doctor Who”, or perhaps “Downton Abbey”, or maybe “Darcey Bussell Dances Hollywood” or even the “Alan Carr: Chatty Man Christmas Special”  or whatever else you choose to “goggle” at on your particular choice of “box”, because that’s what we do and, for many of us, it’s what we’ve always done and, do you know what…? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So enjoy your Christmas telly this year, guilt-free and in the sure knowledge that you’re probably not the only one, wherever and whenever it is that you choose to actually watch it in this multi-platform, out-of-time universe in which we now live. Savour and enjoy all of those bright shiny new programmes because one day, they too will become the stuff of glowing nostalgia and fond, or perhaps not so fond, memory for other observers, some of which are not yet even born.

Happy viewing, and a Merry Christmas to one and all from this dark corner of Lesser Blogfordshire, which, you’ll no doubt feel comforted to learn, is currently being illuminated by the gentle, ever-changing flickering of the idiot box sitting in the corner of the living room and which remains very much the centre of life in these here parts.

TELLY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS TELLY PAST (part twenty four)

Rather sinister looking pantomime characters and a masked dancing harlequin adorn the cover of the Radio Times of Christmas 1988 in a painting by Lynda Gray. Rather weirdly, because of the way the dates fell that year, this is the only issue of the many we have looked at this year that, like in this very year of 2011, finishes before the end of the holiday season and required purchasers to buy another issue to cover New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and the remaining Bank Holidays connected to that weekend and, because of that, what we can discover about the New Year’s programming has been lost in time, at least as far as my little random box of saved magazines goes. I’m sure, however, that if you were really interested (and after the past three weeks, why on Earth would you be…?), a quick search of the wibbly-wobbly-web would provide you with all of the answers you seek.

Incidentally, the seemingly haphazard or “random nature” of the various copies of the listings magazines that I have chosen to share with you this Christmastime is simply to do with the order in which they came out of the box which I found in my attic, and has no other secret agenda. On another year, I may very well have opened another box instead and our journey would have been very different, although, I don’t reckon I’ll be trying to do that any time soon.

I promise.

Meanwhile, an entire week into this particular two week edition of that listings magazine we have all come to loathe this past few weeks, the content of Christmas Eve is revealed to us with “Jimbo and the Jet Set”, “Corners” and “Chucklevision” leading into “Going Live!” with Philip Schofield and Sarah Greene. Then, after “Yogi’s First Christmas”, a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon (whatever happened to those?) and (Gawdblessya) “Mary Poppins”, Desmond Morris investigated the domestic cat in “Tiger on the Tiles” until a visit to “Bob’s Christmas Full House”  led rather nicely into the very nicely timed “Santa Claus: The Movie”. After the sitcoms “’Allo ’Allo” and “Last of the Summer Wine” got us into a mellow mood, “Jagged Edge” turned up to get us all spooked up again. Luckily “Christmas Eve with Val Doonican” was there to calm us back down again before a “First Communion” and John Wayne in “The Searchers” saw us all off up that wooden hill. Alternatively, on BBC2, you could spend your evening with The National Youth Music Theatre performing “The Ragged Child” and The American Film Institute Salute to Jack Lemmon leading into his performance in “The Front Page”.

Christmas Day started early on Christmas Morning with a selection of children’s TV like “The Christmas Raccoons” all under the umbrella title of “Now It’s Christmas” with Simon Parkin, Andy Crane and their guests. After worshipping at Paisley Abbey, BBC1 handed over to “Christmas Morning with Noel” which included more of the dubious hilarity of “Auntie’s Bloomers” but I don’t suppose anyone was paying that much attention. After that, a special “It’s a Christmas Knockout” from Walt Disney World included a bizarre list of celebrities including Richard Roundtree, George Lazenby, Bernie Clifton, Meatloaf and Toyah who I’m pretty sure never, ever appeared on the same bill before or since. Unique! Less unique was yet another “Best Christmas Walford’s Ever Had” and Bruno Brookes, Gary Davies and Anthea Turner leading into the Queen’s speech with the “Top of the Pops Christmas Show”. Rather appropriately (for this series of  witterings anyway) BBC1 then went “Back to the Future” for the very first time, before heading back to Peckham for “Only Fools and Horses” followed by Cliff Richard and Sally Magnusson hosting “A Christmas Celebration” for “Songs of Praise” at 6.30 PM, featuring another eclectic list of celebrities from Thora Hird to Ian McCaskill. After that, the channel returned to the fun and frolics of “Bread” and “The Russ Abbot Christmas Show” before showing the fabulous “Silverado” for the very first time. I think I still may have that tape somewhere as it was my very first Christmas with a video machine as I’d started working in my first proper job the previous January.

BBC2 didn’t even get up until 10.00 AM that day and then spent most of it at the “Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Concert” as well as showing films like “Storm Boy”, “The Bible… in the Beginning”, “The Family” and “Some Like It Hot” and a play starring Zoe Wanamaker called “Once in a Lifetime” about teaching silent movie actors how to talk when the talkies came in.

Boxing Day meant that “The Black Stallion Returns” before Roger Moore played an amiable Nazi Officer (if that isn’t too oxymoronic) in “Escape to Athena”. The day was generally made up of fairly familiar fare with “Jim’ll Fix It”, “A Question of Sport” and “The Paul Daniels Magic Christmas Show” alongside the seasonal delights of “The World’s Strongest Man” and “Disney Time”. The later evening was spent with “Beverley Hills Cop” getting its first British television airing, “The Lenny Henry Special” (he’s come a long way since “The Fosters”…), a “Bruce and Ronnie” (Forsyth and Corbett) Christmas spectacular featuring Fiona Fullerton, and “Fiddler on the Roof”. BBC2 meanwhile, spent another day mostly at the movies after finally getting out of bed at 11.00 AM (perhaps it had regressed towards teenagerdom again…?), although when the films are a list like “Fort Apache”, “The Ladykillers”, “The Maltese Falcon”, “Otello”, “Local Hero” and “Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back” (ah, how ironic…) you tend to forgive them.

Finally, we end this journey (apart from tomorrow’s Coda, of course) with a look at the New Year’s television… but of course we can’t. There is, at least, a helpful page  rather tantalisingly listing the weekend’s programmes, so I can tell you that the Saturday morning film was “One Hour to Doomsday” and BBC1 spent much of New Year’s Eve with Perry Mason, and that BBC2 started 1989 in the company of the Eurythmics and David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour, and that the thing that seemed to be getting BBC1 most excited about New Year’s Day was “Amadeus”. Perhaps, after all this research into the ghosts of Christmas Telly Past, we could now hazard an educated guess as to how the day worked out, but to do that would be wrong in this environment of factual reportage, so I think we’ll just have to think instead of the general brilliance of the Christmas Telly of yesteryear and just put on our rose-tinted spectacles and prepare to be astounded.

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS TELLY PAST (part twenty three)

“Oh Crikey! It’s Des O’Connor!” You could almost sense the spirit of Eric Morecambe, that cornerstone of Christmas Television past spinning in his grave as TV Times chose to end the 1980s with dear old Des as its cover star. Ah well, never mind, we must be tolerant.

They were, after all, simpler TV Times, simpler TV Times…

ITV on Christmas Eve now started with nearly three and a half hours of “TV-AM” before the daytime was taken over by “The Disney Club” and an hour long “Meditation” from the Parish Church of St Mary’s, Nether Alderley, Cheshire. At noon, Father John Fagan looked after abandoned AIDS babies in Brooklyn, New York, followed by “This is Your Right” and “Aap Kaa Hak”. The cosy world of Christmas TV was changing, but not enough for “The Reluctant Dragon” not to follow the news. After that, the timely seasonal reminder of George C Scott as “Scrooge” took over before “Highway to Heaven”, The “Bullseye Christmas Special”, “Coronation Street” and “Highway” took ITV viewers through to the evening’s big movie “Pied Piper” starring Peter O’Toole, after which Nigel Kneale’s adaptation of “The Woman in Black” scared the bejesus out of us and made sure that no-one who watched it would get a good night’s sleep. Because we now lived in a 24 hour television environment, more movies would see you through to the next “TV-AM” if you really struggled to get to sleep or the children woke you at 2.00 AM demanding presents.

Channel Four was well into its groove by now, and filled its Christmas Eve with documentaries (on  Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan, Fish Keepers and the racehorse Desert Orchid), Christmas cartoons, the ballet “Cinderella”, Jonathan Ross, American Football and a range of movies including “Road to Utopia”, a TV adaptation of “Anne of Green Gables”, “Julia” starring Jane Fonda and the Marx Brothers in “Monkey Business” as well as an hour long look at “Stryper” a born again Christian Heavy Metal band.

After “TV-AM”, Christmas Day on ITV included a live morning family show hosted by Anneka Rice, then at noon, James Bond had his own Christmassy adventure “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” whilst wearing George Lazenby’s face. Her Majesty herself then addressed the nation before Cosgrove Hall’s “B.F.G” film entertained the whole family. The evening brought a “Strike It Lucky Christmas Special” with Michael Barrymore, and a “Comedy Christmas Box” with Jim Davidson (Ah! How things change!) before a visit to “Coronation Street”, and a Christmassy slice of “After Henry” . After this there was a long night of films including “Down and Out in Beverley Hills” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Channel Four spent Christmas Day showing its usual eclectic mix including “The Adventures of Tintin”, Laurence Olivier tributes in showings of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Richard III”, “An Evening for Armenia”, “The Snowman” and “The Little Sweep”.

Boxing Day on ITV that year included “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger”, “Return of the Jedi” and “Danny the Champion of the World” as well as some of its own productions like “T-Bag’s Christmas Special” and a “Run the Gauntlet Christmas Special” The evening meant a “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune”, believe it or not an old episode of “George and Mildred” at 7.30 PM, “The Bill”, and “Shelley” with Hywel Bennett, before getting all ruthless with three ruthless films, “Ruthless People”, “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and “Escape from New York”.

Over on Four, things remained much calmer after the afternoon racing with “The Red Shoes”, the ballet “Swan Lake” and Olivier in “The Prince and the Showgirl”, but not calm enough that the Marx Brothers couldn’t turn up “At the Circus”.

New Year’s Eve that year featured athletics (far too vigorous), “Paint Your Wagon” and “The Karen Carpenter Story” amidst the usual Sunday evening fare, before we were presented with “Cilla’s Goodbye to the ’80s” for two and a half hours (I wonder whether she sang… Oh dear…) before Mark McManus (Yes, that one!) and Stanley Baxter hosted “The New Year Show” hopefully without finding that there had been a “Muddarrr”. Channel Four had a “Sticky New Year with Julian Clary” (so daring…) after the movie “Pirates of Penzance” (consults “Roger’s Profanasaurus” and retires quietly).

New Year’s Day and the 1990s meant “Bigfoot: King of the Monster Trucks”, “Interceptor” with Annabel Croft and  “The Last Starfighter”. Something told me that the 1990s were going to be LOUD!!! Still, lovely Gordon Burns was there with a “Krypton Factor Celebrity Special” and there was also some Ice Skating to relax you until “The Match” between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. Later on, “Taggart” did indeed find a Muddarrr, so I’m sure that everyone was happy, even if serious rifts had developed in the Corkhill family over on Channel Four and then the rest of the evening was reduced to the kind of clip show that I might have enjoyed, even if no-one else would: “The A-Z of TV”.

Gotta love that Channel Four…