This weekend 17 million people watched the live 50th Anniversary episode of Coronation Street, another 17 million watched the semi-final of Strictly Come Dancing; the same number that watched the conclusion of 3 months of Simon Cowell’s self-promotion, otherwise known as the X-Factor. With Channel 5 screening the film ‘Dirty Dancing’ it was reckoned that over 32 million people in the UK watched TV at some point on Sunday evening. Those of you who have simply lost the plot or whose idea of physical exercise extends only so far as a digital workout on the handset will have been only to aware that with it was well within your capabilities to watch all of the action live and still have time to send out for a takeaway. Look at it as a dry run for the 4-day Christmas break box fest.
Unfortunately, the amount of snow and ice on the roads, part of the reason why so many people were stuck at home this weekend, may have prevented you from ever receiving your pizza/curry/kebab or whatever. If you happen to live in Scotland the chances are that you will have already forgotten the name of the X-Factor winner by the time your meal arrives (sometime next week).
According to the National Retail Consortium trade was down by 22% last week because of the inclement weather. This is the UK, the weather is our national obsession and no amount of bad weather will ever deter a rampant shopper from the right bargain.
You try explaining to a petulant 7 year-old who has talked of nothing but visiting Father Christmas since August that it won’t be possible this year, because Santa has been frozen into his car on the M8 motorway for the past 3 days.
How come in countries like Russia and China where temperatures in various parts can, on the same day, range from +40 degrees to -40 degrees yet you never hear of any great disruption to the food chain, factories, schools or the transport systems. Here, in a country only a small fraction of the size, with a climate significantly less challenging, it only takes 2 inches of snow or rain to fall in any region for the entire country to come to a grinding halt.
Approximately 4.2 billion pounds has been lost to the UK economy due to the bad weather over the past few weeks. Considering the number of companies that are dependent on the increased trade in the run up to Christmas, you can’t help but feel sorry for those who must now be fearing the worst.
Unfortunately the only people who do seem to have got out and about recently are students, the very people who normally have problems getting out of bed no matter what the weather. From the coverage I have seen and heard in recent days I’m not sure that anyone knows exactly what they are protesting about. It would appear that groups with any number of differing causes have suddenly come together for a collective moan. In part they do have a grievance, it is not a particularly good time to be a student. How many of them have been sold the idea that a good degree is a passport to a £40k pa job? Sorry, if only life was that easy. Many employers offer (or used to offer) a management track for graduate employees. With a government target figure of 50% of school-leavers going onto university or further education, that is a huge number of managers that will be looking for jobs, and with a growing number of workers now approaching retirement (if they can afford it) I wonder exactly who these future managers are intending to manage since by the time they graduate there will be no one left in the country with any marketable skills.
Saving the planet or questioning why Nick Clegg reneged on the Lib Dem education policy may be laudable though I don’t think either is a valid excuse to go on a violent rampage around the country. Where I do find a weakness in the student argument is the belief that many of them have that a university education is a right – I am sorry it is not, it is a privilege. Not as elitist as some would have us believe but a privilege none the less. Not everyone wants to, or can afford to, go to university, so why should the tax payer foot the bill for the privileged few that do wish to pursue this path to increase their career prospects. There never was such a thing as a free lunch and if the students who have already found a place at university believe that they should be entitled to a free education then I fear they are too stupid to be there in the first place. Good quality tuition does not come cheap and not all the universities will be charging the maximum of £9000 pa. No one welcomes the idea of leaving education with a debt but thankfully the mechanism for repaying this amount will not kick in until a reasonable level of income is achieved. In an ideal world everyone would be allowed to go to university for free, and I would be opening the batting and bowling for England. This is not utopia and I am stuck at home watching the sky darken as further downfalls of snow edge towards the UK from all directions.
Think of all those people whose blushes have been saved through the inability to get to this year’s office Christmas party because of the weather. No staggering home bleary eyed, having assured the colleague who has made your life a misery for most of the year that they are your bestest friend in the office (if not the world). No ending up in the broom cupboard with the new recruit from accounts. That was always my greatest fear, the dreaded conundrum of knowing you will have to confront not only that person, but also your other colleagues the next day. I used to feel guilty even when there was no chance of any ‘action’ taking place. Often I would simply grab a couple of beers and a bag of peanuts and lock myself in the broom cupboard until I heard people starting to clear up.
The run up to Christmas has always been an aspect of life that I have struggled with. How come managers who give their staff a hard time for most of the year only have to loosen their tie and put a bit of tinsel in their hair to suddenly become the life and soul of the party, at least for a few days. Which part of the Christmas story or pagan celebration involves photocopying your backside and emailing it to half the offices in Europe? Pantomime didn’t do much for me as a child and it has even less appeal when re-created in a work environment.
Looking back on life, as people tend to do when the year starts to draw to a close it is easy to see now where the dread of Christmas first embedded itself into my psyche – MY FAMILY. Much of my childhood involved being dragged around various working men’s clubs and bingo halls, spending time with my father’s large array of relatives. The only comments ever elicited in my direction were ‘ere go give this glass to Uncle Bern and ask ‘im to get me another pint of Red Barrel’ or ‘My ‘aven’t you grown’. As if I had grown at all in the week since I previously met any of them. I didn’t grow at all between the ages of 11 and 16, so I don’t know who they were mistaking me for. I just thought I was going to remain 5’ 4”. I grew 7” in between 16 and 17 and not one comment from any of them, very weird, but only if you judge that by other family’s standards.
At Christmas time we would all descend on the 3 bed-terrace of a particular matriarchal aunt. The men would always gather in the front room and the women in the back, with the stairs doubling as both buffer zone and queue for the toilet. I can still taste the rancid air from the back room, a heady mix of Elnette hairspray and Silk Cut. The room was over-packed with grim-faced aunts and family friends all checking each other’s jewellery out across a pile of vol-au-vents and a large salmon mousse. Perhaps wrongly, I assumed that the mousse was there for decoration purposes since it invariable remained intact throughout the night’s festivities. In the front room my beer-swilling uncles and their friends were hooting and hollering along to a Mrs. Mills Piano Party LP, while cradling a glass of a yellow goo, with a cherry in it! The air wreaked of Brylcreem and Old Holborn and for some reason that I associated with freemasonry they were all wearing paper hats or silly masks. It was all too surreal for a young man of my sensibilities, and I sought solace in the only place I knew I could get any peace. Having undergone the first round of ‘my, haven’t you grown’ I would disappear at the earliest opportunity to the makeshift cloakroom and hide under the pile of coats that had been deposited on my aunt’s bed. If I was very lucky I would remain undetected until the end of the evening.
I think I must have OD’d on the Alphabetti Spaghetti this week since my head is spinning with statistics. Apparently the UK has slipped down the global education league once again – Based on O-level standard English and Mathematics we now rank in the late 20s out of the 65 countries who took part in the study. I am not sure how that fits in with the government’s claims that the number of students achieving higher grades has been increasing year on year for the past 30 years. Whichever way you look at it I am sure that prospective employers are desperately keen to do something to keep the number of unemployed 18 – 24 year olds below 20% unemployment.
This year has seen more than its fair share of disasters – not only the economic ones but also the natural ones – Oil slicks in Mexico and China, forest fires in America, mining accidents in Chile and New Zealand and devastating floods on most continents. We have also suffered man-made disasters such as England’s woeful performance at the football world cup and their failure to win the bid to host the 2018 tournament following allegations of corruption within FIFA. Given the way the team under-performed in South Africa it wouldn’t surprise me if we even had to bribe our own committee representative to vote for us in Switzerland.
I would have quite liked to have seen the world cup in this country. I can remember 1966 though my dribbling skills were more slimy than slinky and chances are that I may not be here in 2030 if we are successful next time around.
Much to my delight this week I have enjoyed the feigned indignation of the moral masses at the furore caused by the untimely slip of the tongue when Radio 4’s James Naughtie tried to introduce the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on the ‘Today’ programme. The intervention of Dr. Spooner ensured that the gaffe made the front page of the tabloids on an otherwise slow news day. Quite apart from the possibility that Mr. Naughtie may have inadvertantly enunciated the views of a great many of the listeners I fear that the protectors of the public conscience, as is often the case, are too quick to throw themselves in front of a perceived offence. If you happen to be blessed with the surname ‘Hunt’ then Dr. Spooner is an occupational hazard. I like to think that the former MP for Ravensbourne held a more adult view of his predicament. On more than one occasion I heard him introduce himself at meetings as ‘Sir John Hunt, the well-known misprint.’ It is both refreshing and reassuring to hear from a politician who doesn’t take themself too seriously. It lends credence to the fact that they might be human after all.
At least this year on television we have witnessed the last hoorah of ‘Big Brother’, until it is resurrected on one of Rupert Murdoch’s more obscure satellite channels. Watching Bruce Forsyth regurgitate his act of the past 60 years throughout ‘Strictly’ is as demeaning as I am prepared to let myself go in terms of TV viewing. ‘Wossie’s’ departure from the Beeb seems to have left the manicured fingers of Graeme Norton and Claudia Winkelman to plunder the spoils of the BBC’s flagship programmes (sorry, still no suitable showcase for Patrick Kielty. Who?). With X-Factor approaching its sell by date and ‘I’m a celebrity’ struggling to attract Z-listers it can only be a matter for time before we see Ant and Dec coming the other way.
What is it that makes schedulers believe that the public are interested in watching fly on the wall documentaries about teenage tearaways, Peter André, Katy Price, Kerry Katona, embarrassing body parts or in particular Kerry Katona’s embarrassing body parts. Its not that I am squeamish, I just don’t find ritualist humiliation very entertaining (except when the English give the Aussies a good thumping at rugby or cricket). I can just imagine the programme makers pitching the idea for ‘I’m a celebrity…’ to Lord Reith. ‘Yes, your Lordship we believe the public will be fascinated to watch the likes of Richard Dimbleby, Alvar Liddell and John Snagge eat a plate of bat pooh in the jungle.’ I somehow can’t see him approving that idea, even if the contestants are still required to appear in full evening dress.
Many of the plethora of cookery programmes have come and gone, as have a number of the house and property make over shows. Alright, so I accept that cost is a major factor in television production and stations are committed to providing X many hours of output but there is presently a dirth of good quality entertainment both in daytime and peak time programming. Thankfully TV sets still have an off button.
On the subject of food I can’t help noticing how much food prices have gone up this year, especially fish, meat and dairy products. The weather may account for part of this, as well as increasing demand from the BRIC countries. With so many more mouths to feed, definitely no free lunch there. It should come as no surprise that allotments are so oversubscribed. There is no fear of me turning vegan just yet, though it may be some time before you will catch me drooling over the lamb counter at any butcher. I am not an avid watcher of where my food originates from, though I will try to buy local produce if it is clearly marked and competitively priced. It is often hard enough to locate the price of things let alone their country of origin or calorific value. As for e-numbers forget it - far too small to read, I wouldn’t know what they meant and I have no intention of paying for a degree just to find out.
My taste in food is fairly basic, I am pretty easy to cater for, strong tea with a little milk is all I ask for. I don’t do posh nosh, so widgeon and quail’s eggs will not be adorning the family platter this year. I was planning to bolster the depleted Christmas turkey offering this year with a larger portion of vegetables, including every child’s turn off, sprouts. There are 2 main varieties of sprout, a derivative of which dates back to Roman times, though their association with Brussels probably only goes back to the 13th Century.
Unfortunately the likelihood of the ground being too frozen to allow the sprouts to be harvested could throw a spanner into my preparations, in which case the family will have to make do with a traditional Dickensian Christmas as we pig out on gruel.
Undoubtedly, whatever eventually hits the dinner table will be devoured in its entirety before we settle back in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and probably fall asleep. My suspicion is that the sprouts will not be the only things being repeated this Christmas.
Seasons greetings to one and all.
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