Here It Comes Again

And we find ourselves at Christmas again. It feels like only last week we were having last year’s Christmas dinner. And this is despite all the lousy things that have happened in 2025. I am thinking less about world affairs (although there have been plenty of lousy things happening in that area), and more about health matters closer to home. There has of course been my seriocomic toilet parts malignancy, but also a number of other unwanted health issues in the extended family. This year has been the gift that keeps on giving in terms of health.

Christmas kind of crept up on us this year. In the last few days we have been running about like mad things, making preparations that should have been attended to weeks ago. It also coincides with number two son moving house, and transitioning from tenant to owner-occupier. As you can imagine, that involved a lot of stressful legal and financial activity. It’s partly our own fault, for over-committing our time. We had a couple of days in London last week, and three nights up in Yorkshire at the weekend. These were extremely positive experiences. The first included a family night out to see My Neighbour Totoro, an inspired stage adaptation of the animé film of the same name, and a lunch the following day with my old pal Kevin Connelly. The second got us together with the Yorkshire extended family and we had a lovely time. However, it did mean that since we got back to Cambridge yesterday, there has been some feverish activity in preparation for Christmas.



I felt a bit stressed out yesterday and this morning, but we have done most of the necessary chores so it is now time to lighten up.

In one of the newspapers at the weekend, there was a small item in the spare time section on What We Were Watching on TV at Christmas 1985. I can’t remember the list, but I do recall that one of the programmes was Larry Grayson’s Generation Game. Larry Grayson was a gay so-called comedian of the  time whose catchphrase was ‘Shut that door!’, and he compered this silly but good-natured game show. If you think about it now, it sounds terribly naff, and I think it was even then. Anyway, time to fess up. My pals and I used to watch it before going out to the pub on a Saturday night and we would sing along with the theme song, but making one alteration to the lyric: before each occurrence of the word ‘door’ we would insert the word ‘fucking’. So we would bawl along raucously with the television:

‘Shut that fucking door,

And enjoy the generation game.

What’s in store…

 

(and so on)

 

…Larry Grayson is here to play so

SHUT THAT FUCKING DOOR!’

 

We thought ourselves ever so witty.

What are we watching this Christmas? Well, this evening there was a drinking-themed edition of Only Connect. The compere Victoria Coren Mitchell and each of the six contestants in the two teams had drinks in front of them, and every so often, each team had to sacrifice a team member for the duration of one question, while that member went to the bar to replenish the drinks. The questions were mostly on the theme of alcohol and pubs, and it was all good fun. I bet there are written complaints about it next week from those disapproving of the normalisation of alcohol consumption (as if it weren’t already normal in our culture). Miserable gits.

                                                          ************************



This in turn reminds me of an ancient joke from my childhood (what my son Tom would call a ‘dad joke’). A man drowned in a vat of whisky. It took a couple of hours as he had to get out three times to go to the lavatory.

And here’s another one, not related to alcohol at all, but again dating from the mid-twentieth century and possibly before then. A man visiting a small village in Scotland notices that there is a funeral taking place and it is clearly a major event for the village, with a substantial procession behind the coffin on its way to the cemetery.

‘Whose funeral?’ he asks a man in the procession.

‘The minister,’ the local replies, ‘Very sudden. He took ill a fortnight ago, and was dead on Tuesday.’

‘What complaint?’ asks the visitor.

‘Och, there’s no complaint. We’re all perfectly satisfied.’

I can hear the groans from here.

                                                          ************************

Speaking of my son Tom and dad jokes, he recently used an expression which I had never heard before. He’s a fit young man, but was talking about his resolve to intensify his exercise regimen, because, ‘I don’t want my bod to get dadly.’

Apparently dadly just means typical of a dad, telling awful jokes, dancing in an embarrassing manner etc. But Tom here was using it to mean rather portly in body habitus. Unfortunately he is right, I could do with losing a few kilograms. Unfortunately, weight loss is not going to happen in the near future. At Christmas, if anything my bod becomes even more dadly.

But here is where I start to boast. The hormone therapy for the prostate cancer did substantially reduce my stamina. The radiotherapy didn’t help either. I could still do the 5-kilometre Parkrun on a Saturday morning, but it knocked me for six. I have, however, registered for the Cogwheel Trust 10k run on New Year’s Eve, and have been trying to increase the distance I can run. The Thursday before last, I managed five and a half miles (about 9 kilometres), admittedly in the unimpressive time of 67 minutes. I am now pretty confident that I will be able to complete the 10k on New Year’s Eve. Wish me luck.

I was going to tell you something else, something ever so funny, but I can’t remember what it was. So instead, I wish you all Happy Holidays.

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A GOOD NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL



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