The Good Life

When I was growing up, a combination of constant Radio 4 and a limit on what we were allowed to watch on television left me with a peculiar lack of exposure to pop culture and the 'in' things in entertainment, but has left me with a lasting affection for certain shows which were probably incongruous with my age and other interests.

While the sound of the shipping forecast makes me feel like I've been hypnotised and Allen Bennet's voice reminds me strongly of times spent in the airing cupboard recording my own books on tape, The Good Life still holds a vaguely titillating thrill for me which is at once comforting and risque. As a child, I was allowed to watch The Good Life because it was a relatively harmless comedy, but as a programme clearly written for adults (what else could possibly explain the fervour with which Felicity Kendal's bum has been admired ever since it was first seen in dirty work trousers?) it also contained occasional oblique references to adult themes. Off the cuff remarks about the pill, the state of other people's marriages and vague references to extra marital affection still make my inner child say 'Ummmm!', and I think the fact that both couples were child free made for an exciting departure from the lives of my parents and their friends, all of which seemed very glamorous and exotic when I was younger.

Whenever I see repeats of the Good Life I find myself compelled to watch, enjoying the magnificent outfits sported by Margot, the reassuring contentment of Tom and Barbara and the exemplary use of the word 'bombastic' by Margot when being shaken by the elbows. As feel-good comedies go, The Good Life really does the job and I only hope they continue to show it on UK Gold forever.

What's going on

Recently we have noticed a spate of peculiar programming, partly because it's Christmas so we've had more spare time, but mostly because the Boy Wonder is ill and we haven't really left the house for a fortnight. This has lead to the discovery of some of the weirdest programming we have even come across, and some of the highlights have been:

Liza Tarbuck and Huey Morgan in 'Liza and Huey's Pet Nation', where this pair who clearly are unlikely to have met under normal circumstances host a sort of clip/talk show about animals. For some reason.

Celebrity Parents SOS , which we only discovered this afternoon, featured Jonathan Ross's mum and Vinnie Jones's dad helping a couple to sort out their house, tidy up the garden and learn basic car maintenance. I'm reliably informed by the listings that this show will also include Jeremy Clarkson's mum, Sarah Beeny's dad, Charlotte Church's stepdad and Ben Fogle's mum, coming to the rescue of feckless people without the wit to solve their own problems nor the money to call in a professional - who came up with this?!

Pineapple Dance Studios, in which Louis Spence prances around being entertainingly camp whilst the tragic Spinal Tap-esque Andrew Stone deludes himself about his potential pop career and sexuality for the amusement of the viewing public all with peculiar staged dance routines carrying on in the background and increasingly unlikely scenarios in which the other members of the 'cast' are required to perform peculiar activities for 'publicity' etc.

New Year's Resolutions

As the Boy Wonder languishes through his second week of lurgy and we contemplate a quiet new year's eve together, naturally my thoughts have turned to what I hope to achieve in the next year. It's going to be pretty tricky to be honest, as we have had a totally awesome 2010 what with our extended sojourn in the States, the arrival of our niece and the implementation of our plans for self-employment, so it's going to be pretty hard to top. However, I have managed to scrape together a few ambitions to attempt over the next year, and in case I've forgotten what they were by the end of January I might as well record them for posterity:

1. Channel the slightly compulsive tendencies I have into something useful - rather than obsessing over whether the bottles in the cupboard are all facing forwards, I will try to spend that time achieving a basic level of cleanliness about the house. Living in a giant dust bunny, however beautifully aligned the condiments may be, suggests a substantial flaw in my ability to prioritise, which I intend to correct.

2. Make some inroads into our long term plans to try and live a dual life between here and New Orleans.

3. Write something which has the potential to be published i.e complete any writing project to my satisfaction.

4. Spend less time buggering about on the internet and more time getting gigs for the Boy Wonder.

5. Move the bloody fence to where it's supposed to be after all the stupid admin work that needed doing, paperwork, solicitors and faff the fence will be moved to its correct position!

I think that's about it - hopefully there's nothing on there which will prove insurmountable, but you never know, now that we have cider shelves a lot of things seem more challenging...

One of my biggest fears

I worry that on a night like this, when posting under the influence of a small amount of alcohol, I will post my innermost thoughts on the blog I manage for the company for whom I work. I imagine this is the technological era's equivalent of dreaming about taking an exam in the nude.

The best days of your life...

The only way in which my school days were the best of my life is in the opportunity they afforded me for purchasing, storing and using stationery. I now have to feed this habit by obsessively dividing things into plastic folders and secretly dreaming of owning a filing cabinet.

Curiouser and curiouser

Well, on checking the oil today (which by the way, our car doesn't actually seem to use, but that's another matter), the Boy Wonder found a banana skin and a prawn cracker on top of the car battery. We have come up with several possible theories on how this could have happened, but basically none of them make sense except the idea that someone with access to the car and keys popped the bonnet and put them there, presumably for a prank.

We know it wasn't left there when it was shipped as we had to jump start it three times to get it out of the port, and it couldn't have been done without popping the bonnet from the inside as the clip isn't broken. But, if you had access to the keys (which several people would have done) and wanted to play a prank, why make it something so obscure and such a rubbish prank? Why a banana skin and a prawn cracker? Why leave them in the engine where they are quite unlikely to be found? And another few 'whys' just for good measure because everything about this is weird.

So, until we can find out what happened, this will be consigned to the 'inexplicably mystery' files, along with the unfeasibly massive bird poo we once found on the windscreen, the unexpected turning up on TV of two friends who we didn't know even knew each other and the time we met someone the Boy Wonder knew from childhood in a laundry room in Canada.  Let's hope that the quest for answers turns up something so we can close this case before it drives me mad.

Excuses

Today, after a frustrating and ultimately fruitless attempt to find a boot fair and purchase amazingly cheap vintage guitars, we ended up at a PTA craft fair of a school down the road. I was caught giving perhaps my most audacious excuse for failing to make a purchase: 'I'm tempted, but my knitted food collection is already out of hand, I can't buy any more.'

The saddest thing is that it is genuinely true...