The pantomime season.

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Unlike the English, the Italians don’t put on pantomimes at Christmas. With Berlusconi providing  an endless supply of corny gags, why would they? This year’s annual pantomime in Ambridge is proving unusually absorbing. The BBC itself has announced that Sunday’s episode will “change the Archers for ever” and everything seems to point to some catastrophic event at the Village Hall which will decimate the cast. Something along the lines of Tony Hancock’s The Bowmans.

   This morning Radio 4’s Today programme introduced its own edgy pantomime which inspired me to offer the following item to the spoof web-site News Thump (formerly known as Newsarse) which Sophy had drawn my attention to earlier this year:

     “Instead of a man dressed as a woman, this morning's featured Pantomime Dame was a  Dutchwoman born in Canada pretending to be British. ‘Dame’ Clara Furse wowed the audience with her insights into British culture and ‘foods’. Radio 4 listener Signor Grandicoglioni - ‘Hey you canna call me Don’ - here on a business trip from Sicily said, ‘Wadda fica. She no Breeteesh. Me, yes. Porca madonna, we Italians rulla your poxy little island for 400 years until those bloody English eemmigrants arrive and take alla da good jobs.’”

    

Don’t get me wrong, like Defoe I not only recognise that we’re a mongrel race but rejoice in the fact. When I read Hugo Rifkind’s article in today’s Spectator, ‘Nothing makes me feel as Scottish as an English New Year’s Eve’ I didn’t sneer and think ‘You’re not Scottish, you’re an Eastern European Jew’. Like his father, the former Scottish Secretary, Rifkind was born in this country which in my book makes him as British as any of the successive waves of immigrants - Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans - who’ve colonised or - Romans, Scandinavians, French, Dutch and Germans - ruled this island. Dame Clara, though, is a different kettle of fish.  Being naturalised, she’s technically British, but only someone with the complacent arrogance and lack of self-irony which this former head of the Stock Exchange displayed today would pick Britishness as a theme when invited to guest-edit Today. Like the banker she is, she thinks everything’s for sale in the globalised world she extolled in the programme. ‘Hey, I fancied being British, so I bought it!’ She’s no more British, than living in Italy for another twenty years and getting naturalised would turned me into Signor Grandicoglioni.

The nightmare journey.

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In my last post I wrote that Pat and I would be spending our first Christmas for thirty-two years without the girls. That seemed bad, but worse was to come: until yesterday afternoon I thought there was a very good chance of spending my first Christmas for sixty-seven years utterly alone. To explain:

Pat flew to England from Rimini last Tuesday. The journey was hazardous because the roads were covered with snow and ice, and, because we’re about to change the car and our snow tyres had worn out last winter, she was driving with ordinary treads. Despite this she got to the airport in time to catch her plane at 1.30. Unfortunately the plane from Stansted was half an hour late by which time it had begun to snow at Rimini. The pilot circled the airport until the runway was snow-ploughed. Whilst it was circling the plane was struck by lightning. Although it landed safely it couldn’t be used until it had been thoroughly checked which meant that Ryan Air had to send another plane from Rome. Meanwhile the snow continued to fall putting the runways out of action. Eventually the passengers were bused to Forli and from there eventually reached Stansted at 23.30 rather than 14.50 - almost nine hours late.

She was due to come home yesterday. I spent Saturday glued to the BAA web-site which reported the vast majority of flights from Stansted cancelled. At the same time the Met Office was forecasting more heavy snow. So I was virtually reconciled to spending Christmas trapped in Montefalcone - the car, of course was at the airport - sans turkey and sans Pat. But yesterday the gods smiled: Heathrow was virtually closed but nearly all the flights from Stansted took off. The plane got to Rimini on time; Pat managed to avoid crashing the car despite the snow and ice and lack of snow tyres and arrived home a nervous wreck but in one piece.

This morning I had an email from Jayne and Norman saying that the foul weather had prevented their getting to Stansted. So if Pat hadn’t made it I think I might well have died from loneliness.

End of year round-up.

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This year for the first time for 32 years we’ll be spending Christmas without the girls: Candy’s son, Quinn, wants to see his father, and Sophy and Adam have used up their annual leave. We spent Christmas in England last year for the first time since 2002, joining Deborah at her holiday home on the outskirts of Southwold.

  The highlight of the year has undoubtedly been Sophy’s marriage to Adam in Dubai on the 12th November. Being several thousand miles away we weren’t able to be as actively involved in the preparations as we’d have wished. However I did create a website for Adam and Sophy which enabled guests to keep up to date with information on the wedding and contains a link to their gallery of wedding photographs. As well as the wedding itself one of the great things about the trip to Dubai was seeing James and Gabrielle again for the first time for nine years.

  Pat’s been back to the UK virtually every month to look after Quinn when Candy’s away on business. I’ve only been across three times: for Quinn’s fourth birthday in February, in June and, finally, last week. We should have gone across together for Candy’s birthday in April but our flight was cancelled owing to the volcanic ash-cloud.

  Another of the good things about this year has been the number of family and friends who have come to see us: Warren in March, Dave in May, Sophy, Quinn and Candy in August, Mike and Julie and Richard and Jane in September, and Chris and Kate in October. Our social life has also been enhanced by Jane and David, Tony and Shona and John and Judy who have holiday homes in the comune.

  Last year’s success in getting two letters published in the Guardian was followed this year by getting one published in the Independent. However, I was completely overshadowed by Candy who had a whole article devoted to her in the Guardian in July.

   We followed this year’s election campaign in the UK with interest and weren’t surprised to see that, like Italy, the country continues to be run by an elderly media plutocrat with a fondness for much younger women. The Italians, at least, elected  Berlusconi; in Britain it doesn’t matter which party people vote for: Murdoch still pulls the strings. We noticed that Nanny England seems to be getting increasingly paranoid: not only was a chap fined for tweeting about blowing up Robin Hood airport  but a bloke from Stroud was imprisoned for having a political argument with his television set!

  I spent a lot of time this year preparing a course which didn’t run. I didn’t really expect it to: the fun was getting it ready. Apart from that, intellectual activity has largely been  confined to reading detective stories and a couple of Italian novels, one good, the other rather dull. 

  Pat’s off to England again on Tuesday, snow permitting: according to the weather forecast the sunshine and mild temperature we’ve been enjoying gives way tomorrow to snowfalls every day for the next fortnight. Unlike the UK, however, the country won’t grind to a standstill: Italy knows how to cope!

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Cap'n Jack Sparrow.

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Got back yesterday from ten days in the UK helping Candy and Quinn settle in their new labrador puppy, Cap’n Jack Sparrow, commonly known as Jack. On Friday evening I went to the Crown at Gayton with Richard and Chris Horwood. Monday afternoon was Quinn’s Nativity Play, and in the evening Matthew picked me up for dinner with himself and Charlie at their house in Dersingham. Tuesday evening I had dinner at Richard and Jane’s, and on Wednesday Candy, Quinn and I dined at the Crown Lodge.

The weather was cold but the snow held off while I was there and I got to Stansted yesterday without any problems. Unfortunately we’ve snow forecast here from Monday onwards for the foreseeable future. Pat is due to fly to the UK from Rimini on Tuesday to look after Quinn while Candy’s away on business. Whether she’ll make it is a moot point: we haven’t got snow tyres on as we’re about to change the car. Could be an interesting week!