A few weeks ago during November, I thought that it might be a jolly good idea to start my Christmas shopping so I’d be pretty much ahead of the game when it came to Christmas itself. I’ve had that idea before, on a number of occasions. The strange thing is I’ve never actually done anything about it. Oh well, there’s always next year.

About a week before Christmas, I bought a load of stuff from Ebay and various other places and finally, with a few days to spare, I felt ready for Christmas. On the Monday prior to Christmas we went to our favourite restaurant, Ego. Ego has a special Monday offer with a reduced price for two courses and £10 off a bottle of wine. What I’ve always liked about Ego is that even though the food isn’t actually outstanding, the staff are. They don’t make excuses if you complain, they just sort out whatever the problem is with your food or your wine or whatever it is. Just lately the food there has been a little tame but on that particular Monday our meal was really rather lovely and as a fully paid up member of the Society of Northern Tightwads, the £20 off our two bottles of wine went down a treat.

Tuesday was our day for Cheapy Chippy Tuesday which is a special Tuesday deal at our local chip shop and as a cup of tea goes so well with fish and chips it was also a chance to have a totally alcohol-free day.

Tuesday is usually the day for the quiz down at the Pier Inn but for whatever reason they were having their Christmas version on Wednesday so the next day we went down for a couple of pints and to join in. We didn’t win which was a shame but it was fun anyway, what with some music and a raffle. Our friends Ray and Helen were there and they mentioned that on the following day, Thursday, Ray and his fellow musician Dean would be performing a number of glam rock era songs in their musical alter ego as the Boogie Brothers. That led to a discussion about the efficacy of playing songs by the now disgraced king of glam rock Gary Glitter.

Glitter is another music icon now airbrushed from history. You won’t find him performing on old episodes of Top of the Pops. On a recent TV show about the glam rock era Glitter only got passing mention but none of his music was played. Back in the 1970’s he was a big star but his downfall came when he took a computer to be repaired and it was found to have numerous pornographic images of young girls. Still, is it possible to separate the man from his music? Can we enjoy Gary’s old songs and still condemn him for his pervy activity? Ray was thinking the same thing. If he did a Glitter song in his act, how well would it go down? I told him that we would be there the next day to listen to his music even though we would have to leave early for our regular Thursday quiz night.

That particular night I was wearing a gold signet ring that Liz had bought me some time ago. I’ve always rather loved that ring. I had lost it a while ago but after a little thought and a mental reconstruction of the last time I had worn it, I realised where I had left it. Anyway, reunited with my ring I wore it out to the quiz at the Pier Inn that night. When I came home to get changed, I opened my drawer to pop in the ring but dropped it. I heard a metallic ping so I guessed it had bounced off a fan that was down by the side of the bed which we had used quite a lot during the summer. I lifted up the fan but I couldn’t find the ring. The next day I shifted the fan and a load of books and other stuff that was down there but the ring still eluded me. Later I asked Liz to take a look but she couldn’t find it either. I looked again but it wasn’t there. Where could it have gone? What the heck had happened? I wasn’t happy.

I can’t say that the TV channels have given us much new to watch this Christmas. We watched The Sound of Music over Christmas, one of Liz’s favourite films. I’m not much of a fan of musicals but I do love The Sound of Music. The performances are fabulous as are the songs. I remember once seeing Julie Andrews on a talk show complaining about the goody two shoes image the film had given her. Maybe the film did do that although I’m not so sure but it’s a film that has given a lot of joy to a lot of people and I hope she felt proud about being a part of it.

A different sort of music was performed in The Glenn Miller Story, a film that was shown again on Boxing Day. I really loved that movie when I first saw it on TV back in the 1960’s. Sadly, as much as I loved it then, when I see it these days it is a little disappointing. James Stewart was far too old to play Glenn Miller.

June Alyson played Glenn’s wife and she elevated the use of the word ‘annoying’ to a new level with her constant beginning or ending of a phrase with ‘Honestly!’ I imagine the scriptwriter was fairly pleased with himself, coming up with a cute bit of business like that. Wrong! If I had been Glenn Miller and June Alyson my wife, I would have been sorely tempted to employ some appropriately placed Gaffer tape to remedy that situation.

Another moment in the film comes when Glenn comes home from work and his wife takes him upstairs and says, ‘look what just arrived,’ and guess what had arrived! Two children who seemed to have appeared in time honoured fashion via the unseen stork. Of course, they may have been adopted, I really don’t know because it wasn’t really explained very well but it was a little bit like one of those moments in old episodes of Blue Peter, the children’s TV show, where Valerie Singleton or John Noakes would say, ‘and here’s one I made earlier!’

I must have mentioned in previous posts about how I used to have a cassette tape recorder and how many times I used to drag my poor brother into performing the skits and plays I used to write.

One time we did a skit on the Glenn Miller story and there was me in my best American accent drawling, James Stewart style, ‘that sound, that certain sound, I need to find that certain sound and I’m gonna keep on looking till I find it.’ Throw in my brother blowing a raspberry down a cardboard tube and cue me as James Stewart: ‘That sound, that certain sound: That’s it! I’ve found it!’

One last Glenn Miller memory: Back in the 1970’s I went to see the actual Glenn Miller Orchestra. They were touring the UK and they appeared at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester headed not of course by Glenn Miller but bandleader Buddy De Franco. I didn’t manage to drag any of my friends along so I took my mum with me.

My mum died this year aged 93. It was sad to see her go but at the same time good to see her released from pain and confusion.

The one new thing I watched on TV this Christmas was the new Doctor Who. I’ve watched Doctor Who off and on since I was a child from the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell up to the present. The Doctor, in case you didn’t know, is an alien from the planet Gallifrey whose body ‘regenerates’ every so often which is pretty convenient for when a new actor begins to play the part. In 2017 the Doctor regenerated into a woman for some reason and now the latest Doctor has regenerated into a black man. There were a lot of good points in this Christmas edition of Doctor Who. The production values were excellent, the photography was good. There was a new assistant introduced who seemed pretty interesting with a fascinating and mysterious backstory. On the flip side, the main story about goblins who steal a new baby so they can feed it to a monster resembling Jabba the Hut from Star Wars was a bit weak. I liked the new Doctor’s leather jacket though.

Thursday was a bit of a disaster for us. Our bus into St Annes never appeared so we had to get a taxi. That made us late for tapas at the 54 restaurant and we had to miss out the Boogie Brothers at the Pier Inn so we could get to the Lord Derby in time for the quiz. Hope the glam rock night went ok!

Anyway, fast forward to Christmas morning. It had actually only just gone midnight on Christmas Eve when Liz handed me a small present. It was very small and I guessed it was something like a walnut whip or something small to eat but when I tore off the wrapping paper and opened it, I was surprised to find my lost ring. Yes, Liz had found it after all and had wrapped it up to give me a cheeky surprise on Christmas morning.

Hope you all had a good Christmas and best wishes for 2024.

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