Crisis Over Downton Christmas Special

Which one is Carson?

(Correct answer will be picked at random out of a hat and the unlucky winner will be tied to a chair and made to watch the Downton Abbey Christmas Special twice)

Mrs Flashbang issued an ultimatum last night over dinner. Adopting teenagespeak she said, rather sternly, “I’m just putting it out there, but whatever happens on Christmas Day, I’m watching Downton Abbey at 9 o’clock.” Silence followed until the youngest boy bravely went on the offensive with, “So, that means we won’t be having our annual family Monopoly argument then?”

Bloody Downton Abbey; I can’t stand it. It’s a pernicious attack on normal family life and I can see the boys and I will be forced to adapt our normal Christmas routine and retreat to the nether regions of the house to build, assemble and repair something that was unwrapped earlier in the day. With this in mind I may well have to do a quick reappraisal of the Christmas gift list and augment it with something suitable. Incidentally, anyone else noticed that the daft butler Carson bears more than a striking resemblance to Parker in Thunderbirds? The only difference is Parker was more realistic. 

That Present Thing

It's your world weary correspondents birthday tomorrow.... yippee and so on; can't wait to see what the austerity fairy is going to conjure up this year.

It's always a stressful time. I'm not very good at accepting clearly ridiculous and useless birthday gifts with the grace and gratitude that good manners and civility demand; never have been. It's not very grown up though and every year I struggle with the temptation to ask, "Did you keep the receipt?" So I'm going to give it another bash and try to be a good boy and make everyone feel warm and fluffy and I promise I won't go straight on to the internet to upgrade my birthday with some secret Dad shopping.

If I acted though, like some of these kids, Mrs Flashbang would hit me so hard and fast I'd think I was surrounded. Still, I think they've got a point............

Annabel's; Box Ticked

Somewhat to his surprise, your correspondent found himself in Annabel’s night club last evening. I don’t go to night clubs very often and in fact, am too old for night clubs, unlike my host who glides across the late evening landscape with the ease and confidence of a vintage Bentley. It is though, charming and elegant beyond expectation and easily fulfills everything one has heard about the place over the years.

Actually, no matter how smart it may be, I do recall Mrs Flashbang warning me some time ago that Annabel’s was just “an expensive place full of old men and young women.” Well, what is there not to like with that but I am left wondering, how does she know?

Still, in one of those bizarre moments which felt like an out of body experience, an evening that started with a very civilised wine tasting ended up with meeting the Colombian president on the smoking terrace. Visibility was limited however; as we stood in a fog of Cuban cigar smoke generated by El Presidento and his charming entourage. I quietly suspect that we weren’t the first patrons of Annabel’s to have an out of body experience with a Colombian export but that, of course, would be for entirely different reasons.......

Nonetheless, it means I ticked two boxes on the “things to do before you die without realising they were things to do,” list and I rather think it will be some time before I again cross the threshold of Annabel’s or meet the Colombian president. 

You Couldn't Make It Up..

Two Pigs died and met their maker this morning. I refer not to insolvent states in the Olive Oil zone, but to Mac & Mabel who were dispatched quietly by the mobile slaughter man, (his other job is as an undertaker and no, I’m not making it up), this morning and are, as I write, in the back of the car being driven to the butchers by Mrs Flashbang to be turned into cuts, sausages and bacon as part of her latest thrust toward total food security at Crumble Towers. As it happens, my soft and fluffy wife also dispatched three chickens this week because they weren’t laying in sufficient abundance to justify the odd bit of corn they eat, which seemed a bit brutal to me but that chaps, is what I live with.

It’s unfortunate that European leaders and bankers are not possessed of similar backbone. Perhaps I should send the wife to Brussels; that would show ‘em and be a welcome relief to the surviving domestic livestock.

Unfortunately, Europe continues to edge toward the danger zone and the horrible inevitability of financial meltdown at the sovereign, municipal and corporate level in Europe threatens to drag is all down. I'm not going to write about it at length here given I do enough of that in the day job but I would draw your attention to one dramatic step the Greeks are making to protect themselves from fallout.....

From the Hellenic Defence & Technology Magazine we learn that U.S. authorities have approved to grant 400 M1A1 Abrams tanks to the Greek Army, which will include options between simple refurbishment – worth tens of millions dollars for all the tanks- and upgrading to a higher level of operational capability, with a higher corresponding cost. That’ll go nicely then with the hundreds of Leopard tanks they already have of various vintages.

Shame they can’t afford to fuel the buggers, unless of course; they’re the new vehicle fleet for government ministers or to defend Athens when the Germans come asking for their money back. Then again, if they keep cutting Greek army pensions the barrels might be pointing more in than out…..

The truth of course, us that Greece is acting exactly the same way as a bloke from a Liverpool estate who’s maxed his credit cards out, has a bailiffs notice and has gone straight out and bought a new car.

You couldn’t make it up.

Laugh? I Nearly Cried........

Last evening I enjoyed an evening out with Mrs Flashbang to the O2 in South East London. It was my first visit to Tony Blair’s folly but I must say though, it’s pretty impressive. Easy to get to and with plenty of places to eat, the evening would have been a great success were it not for one teeny, weenie, gnawing drawback. …………. Peter Kay wasn’t very funny, which as a bit of a fan, spoilt my late Christmas Present somewhat. Sitting down, as instructed at 7:30pm, I had to sit through some singer called Astly, who I’ve never heard of, for a good 45 minutes. The accompaniment to the singing from the Care in the Community remedial case sitting behind me didn't much add to the evenings enjoyment but you can't win all of life's little lotteries can you. I just didn't expect to hit such a sustained losing streak. I’m sure many more people than this Astly fellas Mum think he’s good and, to be fair, he did some pretty good covers but he wasn’t quite what I was expecting or what was advertised. It was then, with all the more heightened expectation then that I sat forward when the big Lancastrian came on stage. Unfortunately, his funniest joke was one of the first,

Wife: “Why do you never take me somewhere expensive”

Kay: “Alright love, get your coat and we’ll go down t’petrol station.”

The rest of it was pretty ordinary observational humour about things like daytime television ………… eh, it’s London Peter, most people aren’t comedians or unemployed so have no clue about the daytime programmes you’re talking about. I felt a bit cheated to be honest and I like to think I know a little bit about comedy being of course, the bloke who laid out the 800 chairs in the old Caledonian Hotel ballroom in Inverness in 1976 for one of Billy Connelly’s first concerts. In fact, I nodded off a couple of times in the second half, that was until I felt the familiar sharp prod in the ribs from the War Office. One thing is for sure and for certain; the O2 is far too big for a comedian. There is simply no connection with the audience and being too remote for heckling, the traditional quality control on rubbish material is bypassed. I think the current fad for big comedy gigs will pass; after all, they are just a platform for producing the annual Christmas DVD. I wouldn’t bother buying that either…………… stick to Phoenix Nights; now that was comedic genius.

Oh, and by the way; to the pretty young thing who showed me how to buy a ticket from the machine at London Bridge station, which was obviously designed by a cunning dyslexic with a grudge against society, thank you. I must remember not to shout at ticket machines; it unnerves the other passengers.

By the way, I know it's been a while since I've been on the tube but what happened to the chocolate machines that used to sell Tiffin?