Christmas 2022

How do we know it’s Christmas? Let me count the ways. We know 25/12 is fast approaching when celebrities begin peddling their bottled non-scents on television screen and off magazine cover. Ye shall know it’s Christmas when queues to access the basics of life everywhere, i.e., banks and post offices, supermarket checkouts and loos lengthen to proportions not seen since the days of Iron Curtain rationing and all while electronic carols jingle merrily in the background. Ye shall know it’s Christmas when the most banal of merchandise acquires, by virtue of a twist of foil wrapping paper and a sprig of holly, a decided aura of magic, when the super-brands’ mini-movies begin to air on TV, when criminally slender models extol the virtues of rich and creamy chocolate, when designer-dressed party-makers imbibe on alcoholic brew, yet remain upright enough to dance the night away. We know it’s Christmas when every hit tune for the past five decades is dredged up and served as a component in a compilation album, e.g., The Twenty Best Soft-Shoe Shuffle Hits, Twenty Songs For Granny To Rave To, Twenty Orchestrations For The Dog To Howl At, and ye shall know that Yuletide is upon us when the sanest of citizens begins to prance about in red and white, fluffy Santa hats, when the whole world becomes an insane cauldron of buying and selling, eating and drinking, boozing, carousing or simply snoozing off the toxic after-effects. Whichever part you play, have a wonderful, wonderful, time.

Why I’m cracking up

Never thought I’d see the day when eggs became as rare as hens’ teeth, but here we are. Following much foot-slog, I finally got my mitts upon a coveted carton, the precious nuggets nestling like jewels in their cardboard compartments, snug as bugs and smug as rugs at having finally attained food-superstar status. Ah, Fabergé knew exactly what he was doing! And I? In my state of egg-streme distress, I rue not having followed the career path of breeding hens, now surely the Golden Goose of domestic animals. I shed tears over all the times I have cracked open one of the little darlings and did not bother to scoop all of the white from the shells. Or let the white drip upon the kitchen counter. Or neglected to prise all the cooked stuff from saucepan or frying pan. And it brings tears to my eyes remembering those times in the supermarket when I have rejected a carton because just one happened to be cracked. Or the set of six looked less than what it, you know, what it should have: talk about the chickens coming home to roost. Now, every one is a treasure to be cosseted and canoodled; that golden yolk colour cannot be a coincidence. The problem is: what to do with my casket of eggs? Every fate seems just too banal, too final, too horrible. Omelettes? Too colloquial. Eggs Benedict? Don’t like. Cakes? Not eggy enough; my dears, I want to see the precious pearls as I consume them. Every one of the ovoid beauties has attained the status of smoked salmon, fine wine, the rarest of rare cheeses, and deserves to go out in style. Really and truly, they deserve their own show, possibly an online animation of Jack and the Beanstalk, with gold-sprayed eggs taking starring role. How about it, animators, how about it?

You’d better fear…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year
Old houses are daunting
The ghosts are a-haunting
The bats are a-flapping
And ghouls are a-tapping….and you’d better fear….’cos I’m here….wooooo-oooooh!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
The staircase is creaky
The rodents are squeaky
The attics are musty
And basements are dusty….and you’d better fear….’cos I’m here….wooooo-oooooh!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
The dark nights are scary
You’re right to be wary
‘Cos banshees are screeching
Long fingernails reaching….and you’d better fear….’cos I’m here….wooooo-oooooh!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
The werewolves are howling
And phantoms are prowling
And zombies and witches
Eat corpses with stitches…. and you’d better fear….’cos I’m here….wooooo-oooooh!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With skeletons dancing
And ghost horses prancing
With Gorgons a-glaring
And their eyes are a-staring….and you’d better fear….’cos I’m here….wooooo-wooooh!

Monster Week

No, I am not referring to the Westminster antics, rather, the glorious fright-fest about to unfold on the Blaze channel. Beginning at 8 pm every night and lasting into the small hours, it’s all very timely in the run-up to Halloween: vampires, Cyclops, Skinwalker, Mothman, big cats, big bears, giant hogs, and the biggest big of them all, Bigfoot – ah, what’s not to love? Monster Week kicks off tonight at 8 pm with a prog about our very own, very beloved Nessie. See ya there, folks!

Pieces of Eight

“Suffering sharpens the wits and misfortune makes one resourceful,” read Albert. ‘Ah, Ovid, he does one good at a time like this.’
Steve: if what he said was anyway true, we would all be in possession of razor wits, and resources – as you call them – the size of Africa. (S. opens the fridge door and takes out a cheese sandwich, whose sides are already crimping upwards.)
Me: Ovid must have known what he was talking about, having been pitched from genteel Rome into semi-savage Scythia.
Steve: then why are we all sitting around here, without the heating on and eating the leftovers from your (Steve looks at me) restaurant?
Marcia: you’re terribly grumpy tonight, Steve.
Albert: he would be, Mars: he’s just been turned down by another animation studio.
Steve: (his mouth still full of sandwich) Really!
Albert: (to Marcia) Yes, really: he was to work upon the animation for a short about seventeenth-century pirates. (Steve doesn’t reply.) And that gives me an idea: how about it, you three?
Me: how about what?
Albert: To become pirates, silly.
(here, I’ll add that ever since his success with the rain dance, yet failure to get on television, Albert has been insufferable, spinning out one daft idea after another.)
“I can’t swim.”
“I’ll lose my DBS.”
“I get seasick easily.”
“Nah! I mean, for us all to become professional pirates and perform at parties. Halloween is forthcoming, is it not? I’ll be the great Long John Silver – aye, me hearties! Steve, you be Jim Hawkins. Marcia takes on the role of the great Ann Bonny and you (he points at me) can put on your skeleton suit and be Jolly Roger.’
“Er, the skeleton suit belongs to Marcia.”
“And Ann Bonny was a real person, not to be confused with fiction.”
“We don’t have equity cards.”
Albert throws up his hands. ‘Does no one besides me want to get out of this life?’ he asks, looking about at the cottage?
And do we? Friend, that is an episode for another day.

Dear Diary: oh, what a shaman!

A curse upon the house of (James) Frazer! Ever since Albert’s rain chants have succeeded in bringing down torrents of water, fire and air upon our heads, Albie has been insufferable, comparing himself with every ancient luminary, real and mythological, from Albertus Magnus to sky-god Zeus himself. He has taken to painting a zig-zag across his forehead (too Harry Potter, I tell Albie) and wearing a garland of oak leaves (courtesy of Corn Dollies) upon his head. To crown it all, he insists upon creating booming sounds by slapping Marcia’s motor-tarp across the wall, at intervals.
“Why bother with the tarp?” asks the less successful shaman, Steven. “The larder is filled with baked beans." Actually, beanus haricotus is the extent of our diet nowadays, so intent are we upon gathering the wherewithal for a house deposit. Marcia herself is working 25 hours a day in her care home job, with barely time for a comfort break. And I? Gentle reader, do await the next entry.

A Tribute to the Magnificent Whale

On Sunday night, the Legend channel (formerly Horror), aired the Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) as part of its Vintage Vault series. When I had finished screaming and hollering with delight, I concluded that BOF is one of the best little movies to emerge from Hollywood in the past 100 years. From its opening moment, the plot veers on a roller coaster from the heights of sublimity to the depths of ludocrity, and back up again. Overall, it is a feast of visual jokes, gothic cliches and an array of characters worthy of a Dickens’ novel: the rather pompous Henry (changed from Victor) Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who is desperate to be seen as the victim but really is the instigator of all of the mischief. Valerie Hobson plays his beautiful girlfriend, Elizabeth, while Dr Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) is the new evil genius. The irascible servant Minnie (Una O’Connor) delivers marvellous comic asides and needless to say, the inimitable Boris Karloff sparkles darkly in his original role as the misunderstood Monster. Highlights include the tender scenes where the all-too-human Monster, longing for food, warmth and friendship is drawn into the cottage of a blind old man and bonds with him, the fabulous steampunky apparatus that elevates the female cadaver to the lightening storm, and the moment she emerges from her bandages, her hairdo a combo of Egyptian queen and Marge Simpson gone wrong. We even get to meet the ghosts of Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), her husband the poet Percy Bysse Shelley and their friend Lord Byron. When the Bride rejects her intended spouse, the Monster’s bitterness is palpably human. But I won’t spoil all the surprises: do see this masterpiece of classic cinema from the magnificent Whale.