Aaaarrrrghhh! It is 11 o’clock on Christmas morning and I have spent the last two hours screaming increasingly offensive expletives at a “Disney Princess” kitchenette that I am trying (and failing) to screw together. The instructions’ diagrams have been scrawled by the same misanthrope responsible for IKEA’s.
Is this some bloody IQ test?
I should be downstairs sipping Harveys Bristol cream and chewing Twiglets. Lily flits around complaining about the tardiness of her Disney kitchenette. Pah! It is not as if she will be able to cook the turkey on it later today. The botch job is finally completed just before I take a blow-torch to it. The basin and the hob are sort of in the right place, its plastic turrets crowned with lurid pink witches hats, Princess Aurora and Snow White waving serenely out of the window, oblivious to the angst they caused me. Needless to say, the Disney kitchenette keeps them entertained for approximately four minutes.
But I have to applaud my two little offspring. They waited patiently for two hours before we allowed them to open their presents, which had miraculously appeared next to the chimney overnight. If we had boys, they would have launched themselves at the gifts like rabid Rottweilers and most likely have broken their toys by now. Daisy’s wish came true in the form of her reversible Snow White/Sleeping Beauty full-length gown (size 3-4 year old) that she will spend the next three days curtsying and waltzing around the house/castle in. In addition to her kitchenette, Lily receives a chunky “Kids Active”digital camera, although the images do not quite replicate those depicted on the subliminal adverts shown every 5-minutes on Milkshake each morning. Tomoko opens up her ridiculously expensive Issa dress (thank God…it was in the pre-Xmas sale) and is forced to admit that as a husband purblind to fashion trends, I have an uncanny knack of picking out chic appareil for my fragrant better half. It must be all those years working in an office overlooking Vogue House.
At midday we pop round next door for a glass of champagne and then return to finish off the turkey. We do not gather around the table until 4.00pm, by which time most of the Christmas Day is over. Christmas is like sex…a long drawn out build-up and blink and you’ll miss it climax.
I open a bottle of Saint Aubin Remilly ’04 from Marc Colin, which is absolutely delicious and within an hour of stuffing my face, I become half man/half turkey. Tomoko’s homemade stuffing is a delight, a welcome change from Paxo sage & onion, although it does have the same propensity for causing uncontrollable flatulence for the next 48-hours, likewise most of the United Kingdom. If only we could harness all that methane. Personally, I blame stuffing for the thinning of the ozone layer, but I doubt that subject was broached at the recent Copenhagen summit.
True to form, Lily and Daisy are besotted by their most cheapest presents instead of the most expensive. I could have given them a lump of coal each and they would have been ecstatic. Maybe I will next year.
In the evening, we sit down to see what BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five have served up from Christmas.
The answer is a steaming dog turd of a TV schedule.
Why is it that every Christmas Day, schedulers serve up programs that are either utterly patronizing/banal or utterly pretentious and miserable. ITV’s offerings is so turgid I am not even going to waste words discuss it.
The BBC starts well with a pleasing interpretation of kids’ favourite book: “The Gruffalo”. Eastenders is predictably depressing, macabre but watchable. However, Doctor Who is insufferable sci-fi clap-trap entitled “The End of Time”. It is as if the BBC execs actually believe that title, such has been the unrelenting hype to this climactic episode. Hey guys, time is not really ending. It’s just some pseudo intellectual hokum designed to propel David Tennant into his post-Who career. Part 2 is on New Year’s Day…I will make sure I am not watching. The Royle Family and Catherine Tate, like Victoria Wood the previous night, is simply a reminder of shows once worth watching, but exhumed to trounce opposing channels in the crucial ratings battle, they fail to engender a single laugh. I flick over to BBC2, midway through a 7-hour opera from Covent Garden and wonder who on earth would want to watch such high-brow culture when Shrek is on the other side.
Back to “Gavin and Stacey”, which is the best thing all day, as it makes me laugh and warms the cockles of the heart. Apart from that, it is a succession of stultifying repeats, The Incredibles (which the entire nation has on DVD anyway) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which is utterly and confusing and as pretentious as Doctor Who.
Where are Morecambe & Wise?
Where are the genuine Xmas specials of yesteryear…”Only Fools and Horses” or “The Office”?
Where is Quincy’s Quest? (In fact, where is Tommy Steele these days???)
Where are the performers with…now what was it called…talent? Excuse me, but I don’t consider the solipsistic, erstwhile Daily Mirror gossip columnist Piers Morgan compulsive TV viewing and yet he pops up on every other program, usually wittering on about Susan Boyle. I turn on the radio and it’s bloody Doctor Who…with Catherine Tate.
I may refuse to pay my TV license fee in protest. Bring on Boxing Day…
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | christmas day, disney, turkey, xmas tv schedule
Never ‘got’ the David Tennant as Dr Who thing – he just arches his eyebrows a lot and pretends not to be Scottish. I too heard him and La Tate on R2 the next day and they were bloody awful -smug, in-jokey, simpering, you name it…