?

is almost upon us?

For me there are two unmistakeable indicators on TV.

1. They start advertising 'Baileys'. (Doesn't anyone drink the stuff for the other 364 days of the year?)

2. The drink/drive adverts begin popping up.

All I need now is to hear Bing bloody Crosby singing White bloody Christmas!

The final straw will be seeing the usual crappy TV line-up they are going to inflict upon us.

I lose the will to live about this time every year.

Am I alone in feeling like this at Christmas?

the Liberal party scandal when it's leader, Jeremy Thorpe was disclosed as being gay?

I remember seeing a piece of graffiti at a railway station in Kent.

Under a 'Vote Liberal' poster, some wit had scrawled:

"Join the Liberal party, and widen the circle of your friends".

I still crack up when I recall it.

Compared with the showbiz scandals that are hitting the headlines today, don't you think it was all comparativey tame in the old days?

Look at Profumo. It ran for weeks and the lights were burning in Whitehall as terror-stricken mandarins wondered if their name would be found in Miss Whiplash's little black book.

All he did as shag a couple of callgirls.

That wouldn't even make news today.

Reichsfuhrer Osborne's mini-budget yesterday?

It seems all our austerity (recession/depression as you will) has at last paid off.

We will still be in the dung for another 5 years.

So it's nice to know they got is so right yet again.

Predictable too.

He's frozen benefits on the assumption that everyone who is receiving it is an idle, drunken, workshy oaf and yet again absolutely rejected any suggestion of introducing a 'mansion tax' for the super-rich.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Tory party.

Different faces, same old, make the rich richer and the poor even poorer policies.

bizarre that Kate Middleton is occupying a hospital bed because of morning sickness when so many other people are being denied a bed because of a shortage?

Only last year I suffered a burst stomach ulcer, and after sitting in A&E vomiting blood into a bucket for 5 hours, was sent home because 'we haven't got any beds'.

No wonder the poor die on average 20 years younger than the rich and privelaged.

asking us to adopt a snow leopard?

I have just done so.

I am hoping it will be delivered within the next 10 days.

I shall immediately chain it to my front door, and perhaps then I won't be bothered with the usual gaggles of tuneless carol-singers this year.

I can just sit and get quietly drunk, and enjoy my Christmas Day fish fingers and beans in peace.

And it should feel quite at home in this bloody climate!

traditional British 'Elder Statesmen'?

You know. Politicians and Cabinet Ministers with age, experience, wisdom and maturity?

I have just seen our so-called 'Health Minister' on the breakfast news.

He looks like a 6th-former, along with Osbourne, Cameron and the rest.

Labour aren't much better. The Millibands look as though they are playing truant.

How can we have faith in a bunch of upper-class hooray-henry's whose only life experience are cold showers at Eton, de-bagging at Oxford, scoffing caviar and pinching bottoms at the Henley Regatta?

Little wonder this country's going down the toilet.

who unintentionally uses spoonerisms, or comical errors in everyday speech?

I once worked with a woman who had 'muriels' on her walls at home, and whose husband had just bought a new Ford ' Angular'.

I knew another guy who simply could not pronounce the word abdomen.

It came out as abdonomen, andbonem and adbonomenen. The more he tried to say it, the less success he had.

Have you ever known anyone like this?

about our so-called caring society.

It makes the news that 13 babies have died in the last year from whooping cough.

And yet nothing is said about the estimated 20,000 old people who died from hypothermia last winter.

about our so-called caring society.

It makes the news that 13 babies have died in the last year from whooping cough.

And yet nothing is said about the estimated 20,000 old people who died from hypothermia last winter.

just losing my grip?

Living alone as I do I have much time to ponder, and have become aware that slowly, and one by one, I'm letting the formalities slide.

Where once I would shave before going out anywhere, now I find myself thinking "Oh, I can leave it for today". Similarly, I intended having a bath last night, , and found myself thinking "What difference will it make if I don't bother.? I won't be seeing anybody or going anywhere for two weeks anyway".

Now I find myself leaving dishes in the sink overnight, something i have never done. I also find myself just throwing on any old comfortable clothes, and not even trying to look smart, or even presentable. There's no-one to see me anyway.

As an ex-Army Officer of previously impeccable manners, habits and dress, I am finding this change in me extremely worrying. I am just starting not to care about anything anymore.

Is this common with people who spend their llives alone, or is it something else?

I would greatly appreciate you views.

where recession or austerity end and depression begins?

Is there some official definition or is our glorious Government downplaying the real situation in this country today?

On the local news this morning.

The number of homeless people in Lincoln has risen by 125% in 18 months due to the closure of night shelters and care centres because of Government cutbacks.

125%

This is Britain 2012, one of the so-called richer western nations.

The same Government that is giving away countless billions each year to help the poor and disadvantaged in other countries.

Enough said, I think.

got to be?

The West country has been battered by high winds, landslides, floods, and continuing heavy rain. And yet again we see stranded cars, whilst others float merrilly away on torrents of muddy water.

Why?

Because despite severe weather, flood, and gale-force wind warnings,some car drivers STILL insisted on taking their beloved idols out on the road.

And the emergency services are stretched to the limit rescuing these cretins..

What IS the matter with people like these?

It's the same when we get severe snow warnings. Out they go, no shovels, no warm blankets, no hot drinks, or snow chains. Most don't even carry a torch!

And the next morning there they are, being rescued from snowdrifts.

The emergency services ought to send these morons a bill for the cost of their rescue.

Then they might think twice about insisting on driving in hazardous conditions.

time the BBC changed their programme intros?

I don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of those idiot cyclists, the wall-of-death motorbike riders, those bloody swimming hippopotamus and those stupid dogs running round in a circle?

How about you? What intro subjects would you suggest?

I'd like to see Monty Python's naked Wurlitzer organist myself.

deja-vu?

It seems they're at it again over the Gaza strip, with Israel rattling its sabre and mobilising its reserves for an all-out crack at Hammas in Palestine, who are gleefully firing nasty things across the border.

Us seniors have seen it all before, again and again. Now another major conflict looms, to add to all the others that are raging all over the Middle East.

When will humankind learn that there are no winners or losers in a war?

There are just those who survive, and those who die.

Having just honoured our war dead on Remembrance Day, it seems the world will never learn, will it?

evening. What are you doing right now?

Are you getting ready to go out and paint the town red?

Go for a meal, or to the theatre or cinema? Perhaps a drink or ten down at the Old Bulll and Bush?

Perhaps you are seeing friends or partying until the wee hours

Do you want to know what I'm doing?

Right now I'm drinking lukewarm tea with lots of soggy biscuit at the bottom and half-watching a very silly Tarzan film. Later, I will indulge in my November bath, and go to bed with a book about 10.30.

Or I might indulge in a book and go to bed in the bath.

Or even indulge in a bed and go to book with a bath.

This is a VERY silly film you know. You can see all the chimps are really extras dressed in ape-suits. One's even having a smoke in the background.

I hope your evening promises to be more eciting than mines shaping up to be.

booze at Christmas?

I remember as a lad, my parents always had the following on the sideboard (remember them)

I bottle sherry. I bottle Sandemans ruby port. 1 bottle Warnincke's Advocaat. I bottle Crabbies green Ginger wine. 1 bottle Bailey's. 1 half-bottle Captain Morgan rum.

Also a couple of pimply glass bottles of lemonade and a few bottles of India pale Ale for shandies.

And in the days I'm talking about, that lot would give you change out of £10.

Last Christmas, I was behind a guy at asupermarket checkout. He had a shopping trolley filled to capacity with nothing but booze. Being of curious nature I clocked the bill. It came to about £220!

Do you go mad at Christmas, and lay in vast quantities of grog, or are you modest tipplers? What's your favourite noggin?

For myself, two bottles of cognac see me through the entire festive misery, including my birthday on 6th January.

of 2500 would make of our society today?

Assuming of course we are still around in 2500.

We have the Beaker people and the Mousterian culture and the Cro Magnon, and the Bronze Age etc. So how will they label us in 21st Century Britain?

The car people The computer people? The fat people? The nuclear people?

And apart from our vast concrete edifices, what small personal items will survive to tell our story?

Plastic is virtually indestructable, so there'll be plenty of that lying around, and they would dig up wristwatches and kitchen utensils and so forth. And what remains of our cars.

Will we be known as an artistically creative race?

Or a society obsessed with technology and the accumulation of wealth and killing each other?

Just savages hiding beneath an ephemereal layer of civilisation?

BBB?

It stands for Belly Button Biodiversity and is the study of bacteria to be found in belly-button fluff. (No, I haven't made it up!).

Can you imagine a scientist appearing on the Weakest Link?

"My name's Nigel. I'm a 33 year old from Bicester and I am a senior belly-button fluff examiner".

You would think that with cancers to find a cure for, the challenge of feeding the world's population, and eradicating malaria, our boffins would have better things to do than to spend all day contemplating navels.

And getting paid good money to do it.

I received a very weird message in my Yahoo mailbox today.

It was from someone called 'Walker' who stated he/she was going in for a cancer operation today, and willing me 14 milion dollars.

There was a link to the mailbox of his/her Pastor.

Is there no end to the scams people can come up with?