There’s just no point avoiding it any more. Christmas is rapidly approaching. Which I know because:

the ads on tv that you can’t fast-forward to escape are all about Christmas.
there are lights in all the big streets of London
you can’t drive anywhere near any kind of shopping centre or mall because there are queues of monumental proportions jamming up the roads
we’ve just had ‘black Friday’. Black because if you love shopping as much as I do, that single day represents THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD. As far as shopping goes. Even online is too busy on that day, so I’ll pass.

And also, we go away in 3 weeks, 4 days, so Christmas must be near.

The good thing about Christmas is that its one of the few times a year when they bring out good movies. You wait months and months and suddenly there are loads you want to see. We’re going to see Carol on Wednesday. Its not fast paced, its a love story. Set in the 50s. And its a lesbian love story. Not like Blue is the Warmest Colour, which was more lesbian hardcore porn, this one is soft, tasteful, sweet, moving, nice. But I’ll let you know. And I have no issues with lesbian hardcore porn but it does have a shock value.

There’s also loads of good stuff on tv. As well as football. (Which is not really an exclusively Christmas thing; more of a constant in our blessed lives).

And its odd how we choose our tv series. None but the terminally dull can watch them all. And of those only the ‘barely alive’ then watch even more on box sets.

So I missed all of Breaking Bad, I shunned The West Wing, ignored House of Cards and instead selected Homeland and Fargo. Homeland because the first series was set on a brilliant premise, of a POW from Iraq returning after 10 years imprisonment to the States. And has he been ‘turned’? Great idea. They killed him off at the end of series 1 and in fact its become better since. Series 3; wonderful.

And Fargo. The best movie ever… made about North Dakota. Certainly in my top 5 all time greats. The first series of the tv spin-off was outstanding. The now half-way through second series is spectacular. Beyond merely ‘great’. As a reviewer said yesterday; ‘its perfect’. As long as you like dark, very funny, rather weird and extremely violent. The perfect combination. True to the Coen brothers original game plan.

Certainly better than trying to play tennis in the pleasant combination of driving rain and gale-force winds. Even supermen baulk at that.

Happy wet, windy Sunday

A xxxx