January is on the Horizon

Tighten your (seat) belts

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings instead of ones of comfort and joy as the Christmas carol goes, but when the last mince pie crumb has been gobbled, when the credits have rolled on the Christmas ‘EastEnders’ with Nasty Nick making a comeback (again) and when Father Christmas has ridden away all sleigh bells ting-ting-ting-a-ling for another year, the bleak mid-winter is upon us. Yep, it’s January folks – acknowledged by most normal people as the most depressing month of the year; a time for huge credit card bills, that dreaded Monday morning back-to-work feeling but ten times worse and - why do this to yourself? – detoxing!

I think the depression actually starts on the last day of December. All that pressure to have the best night of your life EVER! As much as I tell myself that I just don’t care, that the midnight chimes of Big Ben cannot lure me into singing Auld Lang Syne after several hundred gins, that I’m far too old to be traipsing around Trafalgar Square at 3am on New Year’s Day trying to work out which night bus will take me south of the river, the pressure still gets me in the end. A few days before Christmas, I start to panic that all my friends have already made plans and my lack of invitations means that it won’t be the best night of my life EVER – it never is…cue a dinner party in Olympia and gin!

So, January starts with a hangover and it never seems to pick up pace from here. Well, the word on the street seems to be to spend more – yes, that’s right, credit schmunch – to get oneself through January. Boris Johnson (before you groan and hit your head repeatedly on your keyboard, please pause and take a moment to reflect on the sheer stupidity of the man we - yes, London, this is your fault - put in charge) has already been expounding the virtues of splashing cash. In a campaign reminiscent of wartime recruitment posters, our over-sized public schoolboy of a mayor appears to be saying “Your Economy Needs You”. In a roundabout sort of bumbling way - still, no surprises there – I’m guessing the phrase credit crunch isn’t heard much around the halls of Eton.

Here it is:

Boris was going to give his entire family home-made chutney for Christmas – “Yes, kiddos, Father Christmas is giving you chutney for Christmas whether you like it or not”, he writes in ‘The Daily Telegraph, “and he’s giving the same to his brothers and sisters and his parents and his in-laws and frankly just about everybody else to whom he owes festive tokens of fiefdom and fealty.”

And then he had a visitation from an angel who said unto him: thou have enough money Mr Johnson to stop being so tight and giving everyone chutney for Christmas. He goes on (and on): “…I am afraid to say that I have been assailed by uncharacteristic doubt. I look up at those thrifty brown pots of gloop, and then I look down at the paper, and I see that terrible things are happening on the high street of Britain, with sales down 8•4 per cent year on year. I see that Jaguar Land Rover, makers of luxury cars, are in danger of going under – and I wonder am I doing the right thing?”

Then he says something about the proletariat and here’s the crux: “And of course if everybody else gives nothing but chutney, then the economy will completely seize up, and by this time next year no one will have enough money to pay even for the sugar or the vinegar, and the nation will be reduced to such a state of penury that even home-made Christmas presents will be too expensive for us to produce.”

Well, with arguments like that, it’s easy to see how he became Mayor of London. The moral of this little chutney story seems to be that - if we have cash to spend, as Boris does - going to the shops is our “patriotic duty”. What about his duty? I thought he was meant to be spending his time running London instead of writing about chutney in The Daily Telegraph. Frankly, it makes me never want to set foot in another shop ever again. So bah humbug to that!

Still, there is another, in my opinion much more sensible, way to get through January. Go on holiday! Say goodbye to the January blues and say hello to New York, Hong Kong, Athens. The absolute best bit about the start of the year has to be a whole new quota of annual leave to play with and with airlines feeling the pinch, cheap flights are now ten a penny. Well, you can get to New York for £259, which is still pretty good. There is the small matter of the pound being really rather small when you get there but hey, the travel industry needs you!

Don’t bother with easyJet or Ryanair – they don’t even allocate you seats; getting on the plane resembles the first day of the January sales on Oxford Street, not a pleasant way to start your holiday. No, no, no, with Virgin and BA trying to undercut each other, it’s far better to enjoy the free gin and tonics.

Oh, and one more word of advice – with all those empty seats in business class, try for an upgrade! January’s looking up…

It's Not To Be

We’ve been following the progress of David Tennant’s Hamlet from Shakespeare’s birthplace to West End stage with avid interest, so much were we looking forward to him performing a soliloquy or seven at the Novello Theatre. But “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” have got him just where it hurts: in a back injury. The Dr Who star has had surgery but – sob! – it does mean he’s currently out of action. Still, the show must go on, there’s no point crying over slipped discs and Patrick Stewart is still in it. And, of course, Edward Bennett – Tennant’s understudy a few weeks ago but now taking centre stage as a really rather impressive Hamlet.

Death warrants, signed with a fair hand

Henry VIII, he’s always good for a bit of gory English history – he killed two wives, 20 peers, a handful of his closest friends, three abbots and a cardinal, to name but a few. But why dwell on that when we could look at…his handwriting. Yep, it’s a new approach by the British Library to present Henry the man (I’m sure Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard’s headless bodies are turning in their graves). The new exhibition is opening in April to mark the 500th anniversary of his accession to the throne, exploring a reign that spans his good-looking days, his Catholic piety (obviously pre-Reformation) and his military prowess – with a bit of tyranny dotted around.

Let's wrap it up

It’s not going to knock X Factor winner Alexandra Burke off the Christmas number one slot but you’ve got to give those crazy kids down at Thames Water credit for trying. In a stuffy press release about not pouring turkey fat down the drain after Christmas dinner – ‘Anti-fat advice’ for Londoners ignorant of that fact that ‘Fat blocks sewers’ – there’s a hidden gem at the end. Employee Steve Rock fought off stiff competition from over 60 others to win the song competition. His version of ‘God rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ goes:
‘This Christmas think of sewer-men
Who tremble in dismay
When grease from goose and fatted fowl
Is idly poured away.’
On that note…

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