"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
It’s now December and time to start thinking about New Year Resolutions for 2013. Here’s a little bit of inspiration for you to try something new next year:
What new thing are you going to try in 2013? What new things do you think I should do?
Don’t let saying grace be the Bane of your life…
Just a quick micro-rant today concerning one of my pet hates…
You may think that “Maybe” is a fairly innocent word…
…but it’s not, not at all.
When someone sends you a Facebook invite, please don’t choose “Maybe”.
Check your calendar.
Make a decision.
Be decisive.
Thank you, that is all.
Although you wouldn’t guess it from looking around, it’s not yet Christmas.
In fact, although we’ve been bombarded with Christmas stuff since the day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas season doesn’t begin for quite some time. However, since today we enter Advent, it’s now time to bring out the Advent (not Christmas!) music! Here’s my favourite Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”:
So, what’s your favourite Advent song?
The other day I was thinking about things which make me happy. It’s actually quite a difficult exercise – if you don’t believe me, give it a go. What are the things which make you really, truly happy? Where are the places you can always find joy?
After sitting down and writing the list I’ve concluded that I’m actually quite easy to please. Although in many ways I’m extremely demanding of myself and others, it doesn’t actually take a whole lot to make me happy:
In my last post I moved on to talking about some of the newer British comedy shows I love. However, soon after posting, I realized that I had missed a few more of the classic shows which are dear to my heart. So, today I’m going to remedy this by talking a little bit more about some older shows, before returning to contemporary British comedy next time…
Before there was The Daily Show, there was Drop The Dead Donkey, a sit-com set in the fictitious GlobeLink News newsroom. What was wonderful about this show was that, since it was recorded close to transmission, it commented upon contemporary issues in society and politics.
It had some really great characters such as the two news anchors, Henry Davenport and Sally Smedley, who shared a passionate mutual disdain for one another. However, my favourite character was without a doubt the field reporter, the sometimes overzealous Damien Day…
Many know Michael Crawford from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “The Phantom of the Opera”. However, not so many people know him from the show Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em where he played the hapless and accident-prone Frank Spencer. Here some great physical comedy:
Then there was Waiting For God, a comedy set in the rather surprising location of a retirement home. The two main characters are simply terrific – Diana is cynical and mean, while Tom is jovial and a little loopy. They strike up an unlikely friendship while “waiting for God”…
Finally, no discussion of my childhood comedy shows could possibly be complete without mentioning Only Fools and Horses, a show which has won a huge number of comedy awards over the years. I think it was very much inspired by another classic comedy, Steptoe and Son. Anyway, the show followed the shenanigans of Del and Rodney Trotter. These brothers make up Trotter’s Independent Traders (TIT), a company which buys and sells all kinds of merchandise, some of which include smoke-damaged fire alarms and raincoats marked “Dry clean only”.
In the clip below the brothers try their hand at chandelier repair…
Next time we’ll be back at looking at newer British comedy…
